Demos, the UK think tank, this week published a pamphlet on the impact of social networks in the workplace. Called Network Citizens, the report is a qualitative study of six workplaces that documents their internal and external networks. Unsurprisingly, much of the focus is on the role of technology, and how it is changing the nature and scale of networking.
Many public sector agencies view access to social networks, the likes of Facebook, Twitter and – incomprehensibly – LinkedIn, with what can only be described as either fear or deep suspicion. Some of them even go so far as to block access to these sites:
…these technologies are most often though of as social – more pleasure than business. When discussed in the context of work, they have tended to be regarded as a drain on productivity, a leaking of people’s social lives into office hours.
Network Citizens [PDF 356 KB], p.17
That last clause is a telling one. As if, in the minds of the people that think blocking access to these sites will make people more productive (or protect them from themselves…), there is some sort of impermeable divide between what we do at work and who we are.
The fact of the matter is that professional public servants, like any knowledge workers, rely on a range of competencies in their roles. And many of those competencies are based on interpersonal skills. In short, in order to just do their jobs passably well, they need to be able to interact with a range of people inside and outside the organization. In order to excel at their job, they need to be able to draw on the knowledge and experience of their networks.
Given the economic crisis that we are facing, and the constrictive impact that this will have on agency budgets, the imperative to develop higher levels of staff engagement (and the resulting increases in productivity) is paramount. As the authors of the report note:
These social ties are strong predictors of wellbeing at work; to that extent, networked firms are happy firms, too.
p.27, my emphasis
Of course, there are risks associated with new technologies. Or, more particularly, with the behaviours that these technologies enable. The case yesterday of the Virgin employees dismissed for comments on Facebook is a good example. It highlights the need for appropriate guidance to ensure employees can use the tools confidently and responsibly.
Weighed against the alternative approach, blocking access, this risk is at least manageable; and in the short term. The implications of blocking will likely be far more deleterious. First, for many skilled and connected professionals, a disconnected workplace will be the equivalent of a career backwater. Second, from an organizational point of view, you are effectively abandoning what is now a competitive advantage and will soon be the industry standard.
Attempts to control employees’ use of social networking software in the office may end up damaging the organisation in the long run by depleting its network capital.
p.72
One other interesting aspect that this paper raised was seeing it through the context of a larger, quantitative piece of research. Earlier this year, academics at Harvard Business School published a fascinating analysis of the communications activities of a multi-national organization.
The data we analyze include the complete record, as drawn from the firm’s servers, of e-mail communications and scheduled meetings (both face-to-face and conference calls) among 30,328 people during an observation period of roughly three months.
Communication (and Coordination?) in a Modern, Complex Organization, [PDF 645 KB] p. 12
The conclusion that the authors reach suggests to me that, rather than adopt a suspicious or sceptical view of social software, organizations would be well advised to accelerate the use of these networks (both in terms of the technology and the behavioural aspects). For public sector agencies, that tend to be more hierarchical and siloed anyway, these tools offer opportunities to improve internal communications, lift engagement and – in what would admittedly amount to a harmonic convergence – promote innovative and transformative practice.
The authors found that:
The overall conclusion to emerge from the dyad-level analysis is that organizational structure and geographic space sharply delimit patterns of exchange. Social categories also influence propensities to interact, but the magnitudes of their effects are modest relative to those of organizational structure and the (organizationally assigned) spatial organization of BigCo.
p. 37
The message is clear. Understand the change that is happening inside your agencies. Ensure that you provide people the sorts of tools that will allow them to develop professionally and to invest and grow their social capital. Attempts to restrict the ability of your staff to build their networks (online or off) will only result in a disengaged workforce that expends most of its ingenuity trying to get around your blocks in order to find a job that is both fulfilling and professionally relevant.
Photo: luc legay
While chatting with 
