Council staff banned from Facebook after notching up 71 days
A council has banned its staff from using a popular social networking site after its staff ran up 572 hours, the equivalent of 71 working days, on the site in one month.
Portsmouth City Council introduced the organisation-wide ban on Facebook following the emergence of figures released under Freedom of Information rules.
Current internet usage rules allow staff to access Facebook during lunch breaks and after work, but now all 4,500 council employees will have to justify having access to the site at any time.
Council chief executive David Williams said: "We intend to restrict internet access to social networking sites more than at present for non-business use."
Mark Wallace, a spokesman for the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "It is a huge amount of work time, and therefore [taxpayers'] money was being wasted."
He added that 71 days lost in just one month was "a shocking figure" and backed the council's management skills and moves to block the site.
Experts warned retailers last month that those which do not embrace social networking websites are missing out on raising their brand identity.
Elemental Communications said that giving major retailers the opportunity to make sales directly through websites such as Facebook, may make them more willing to raise awareness of their brand identity through social networking websites.
Should Facebook be banned at work?
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To put this in context, 4,500 staff ran up 572 hours in a month, or about eight minutes each. That's around two minutes a week.
Portsmouth did allow access in lunchtimes and after work and can't say whether this time was racked up during those periods.
Even if you assume that only a third of the staff used Facebook, that's a restrained six minutes a week, or about the same as a quick cigarette break. And I bet Portsmouth haven't banned staff from nipping outside for a smoke.
While the headline figure has caused a lot of outrage, it seems that put in context Portsmouth staff are pretty hard-working! And they can still use social media on their phone if they really want to, without the council having a clue how much time they're spending on it.
Quite right Tom. This is overly sensational and for me represents really poor management by Portsmouth Council. You hire people to do a job, presumably trusting them to do that job well, then proceed to treat them like children that can't be trusted to manage their time.
I agree. How much time are people spending on the internet or making phone calls unrelated to their work?
I agree with you all that this is just a way of drawing unnecessary attention. If I compare what happened at Portsmouth with some of the Local Government Authorities in Nigeria, I and many others would be happier if their crime was only using 8 minutes of their paid time for something else.
And I just got finished reading a published report about how employees are ultimately more productive if they're allowed to use the internet at work - even for leisure. If workers were robots, every minute on the job might have an equal value of productivity. But people don't work that way, we're motivated by those brief breaks of socialization and relaxation.
Here's the story with the productivity results:
http://uninews.unimelb.edu.au/news/5750/
Andrew Dilnot and Michael Blastland in their book "The Tiger that isn't" encourage asking the question "Is that a big number?". Whilst the person from the Taxpayers' Alliance seemed to think it was I would agree with the other comments here that in relation to the number of employees it doesn't seem large.
Spending time on social networking sites leaves a digital trail that you can measure so is likely to be looked at. Sitting at your desk day dreaming / chatting / etc doesn't. I'd suggest the management challenge is actually to build an engaged workforce and then trust them to deliver. Yes you need to be able to handle abuses of that trust and give employees guidelines but permitting them to become familiar with new and emerging technologies, such as social networking, will be important if you want them to have innovative ideas on how to use those systems in support of your business.