What Facebook costs business

[rpm]

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/General/990.html

 

[rpm]

Another Facebook article for Lydon, Gregmcc, Ekhaatvensters and firiends

 

[XCentricdave]

On the other hand, a friend and former colleague of mine, Vincent Maher (now strategist at the M&G online) caused a stir last week by suggesting that Facebook would "cost the South African economy more than R100m over the next 6 months". He bases this on a rough calculation of lost productivity.

Personally I believe that people have simply swapped window gazing, a*se scratching and myriad other time consuming activities to indulge in the latest trend. One could argue that badly organised, poorly focused meetings and CC'd emails are the greatest time thieves in business today - and a little more time getting this right would improve productivity far more than blocking social sites. Sure a few people will surf the internet all day; that is down to poor management really. But by all means block if that will work best for your business.

Also, to get onto a favourite muse, it would be interesting to compare bandwidth consumed by massive powerpoint, excel and word documents emailing around. Perhaps only count the CC's to people who never read them and the replies (with doc attached again) saying 'absolutely fine, no changes'. These can easily be 5Mbytes a doc, a few CCs and replies (50Mbytes). You use 3Gb in 6 days with 10 new documents created a day. Now how's that for some oriental maths?

 

[icyrus]

The article is a load of garbage. Narrow minded views are always funny to read though.

 

[gregmcc]

Woo hoo! You've made my day

What it costs the company I work for.......nothing. Its blocked!

 

[skoob]

Woo hoo! You've made my day

What it costs the company I work for.......nothing. Its blocked!

hmm, same like our company...in a way...am so glad that its blocked.

 

[hoover99]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

say something new.

 

[antowan]

It says a lot about the sorry and expensive state of bandwidth in this country...

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

Aah that's our second for today, keep it up

 

[Ivan...]

Facebook causes cancer, Facebook is bad for pregnant women, Facebook kills

There are more Facebook articles on the front page than Telkom articles..

 

[DominionZA]

I have directly felt the pain of this site.

I run a small software dev company. We are 6 big. About 1.5 months back, I was struggling to figure our why so much development time was logged, yet deadlines where not reached. I ended up installing tracking software to track machine usage on my developers machines so I could monitor them and determine where the problem lay.

Turns out, one of my guys was a facebook addict. Between facebook and MSN, he would spend 2/3 of his working day messaging and playing, yet log a full days work in his timesheets. I left it for two weeks to gather data so I had sufficient proof. I then approached the person in question, he said "sorry, won't do it again" and I left it at that. Another two weeks goes by, nothing changes, so I check the logs again. *sigh* Still the same habits. Now knows he is monitored, yet carries on.

Needless to say, we got extremely close to losing the client he was coding for. I managed to get us a second chance with the client, and my developer has "resigned".

I am all for letting my staff manage themselves. As long as I see productivity from them, I don't really care how they go about doing it. They all have full open access to the net, gaming capable machines for LAN'ing, LCD screens, etc... When I get taken advantage of though, it is just not on.

This episode did not result in me blocking internet access. I simply replace the staff member (he did get a chance remember). The other guys also go to facebook and play with IM apps, but they are productive and don't let their personal lives influence what they are paid for. As a result, they are left to manage themselves.

It's a tough call. But when an employee is paid to do a job, why should the company have to take the fall for an addiction the employee is unable to control. It hurts, and hurts bad. Maybe not so much for a large corporate, but for a small company it can literally break them. I was there...

 

[BobbyMac]

So.... what does MyADSL cost businesses?

 

[nictron]

So.... what does MyADSL cost businesses?

I think there is a big difference between MyADSL and FaceBook, MyADSL is a information and news site, the forum also provides you with allot of information and networking abilities to solve problems.

If FaceBook is setup to network between allot of individuals with different knowledge criteria and use that to further their knowledge and solve problems, then it has a value to business.

Using it to communicate with your friends and not being productive is a waste of company time.

May I ask what is the difference between an employee leaving the office and chatting with their friend in a coffee shop and an employee wasting time on FaceBook? it the same thing both are not working!

I also agree with XCentricdave that well managed and monitored staff are less likely to waste time.

 

[SlappY]

Oh comon people you dont have to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out. You morons who argue that it doesnt cost companies obviously dont live in the real world. Let me put it in simple terms.

If someone is using Facebook, they arent doing there work. There, a nice simple calculation. And dont come with that whole business value BS. Cause it has none. A pen and piece of paper has more business value than facebook, infact my desk paperweight has more value.

 

[skoob]

I think there is a big difference between MyADSL and FaceBook, MyADSL is a information and news site, the forum also provides you with allot of information and networking abilities to solve problems.

If FaceBook is setup to network between allot of individuals with different knowledge criteria and use that to further their knowledge and solve problems, then it has a value to business.

Using it to communicate with your friends and not being productive is a waste of company time.

May I ask what is the difference between an employee leaving the office and chatting with their friend in a coffee shop and an employee wasting time on FaceBook? it the same thing both are not working!

I also agree with XCentricdave that well managed and monitored staff are less likely to waste time.

Valid point - but chatting on My ADSL or Facebook etc is using company tools. Its like an employee looking for another job.
1. Use of a company telephone to call for appointments etc
2. Internet to search for jobs
3. Fax machine to send CV
4. E-mail to send CV

Those are company tools and should not be abused M2cW

 

[gregmcc]

Also browsing FB (and other non work related sites) is a waste of company resources. A worker who is browsing real business related sites might be experiencing slow response because half the company is browsing FB.

We allow users to go to most common non work related sites, but clearly sites like FB/dating/youtube etc will be abused are not work related and are blocked.

 

[Malasius]

Its simple. Facebook should be used in your own time on your own bandwidth!

 

[bobby.quinne]

Personally I believe that people have simply swapped window gazing, a*se scratching and myriad other time consuming activities to indulge in the latest trend. One could argue that badly organised, poorly focused meetings and CC'd emails are the greatest time thieves in business today - and a little more time getting this right would improve productivity far more than blocking social sites. Sure a few people will surf the internet all day; that is down to poor management really. But by all means block if that will work best for your business.

I agree completely with you. As an example previous project I was on, the main development team had 18 developers. Everytime someone update from the repository they spent the better part of several hours resolving compile issues within the projects. To management this is productive and they denied there was a problem.
Management perceive that since they are doing work related to the project its fine, even tho developers were wasting time fighting with issues that should not have been there in the first place.

 

[icyrus]

I also agree with XCentricdave that well managed and monitored staff are less likely to waste time.

Treat your staff like children and you can then expect them to act like children.

Oh comon people you dont have to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out. You morons who argue that it doesnt cost companies obviously dont live in the real world. Let me put it in simple terms.

If someone is using Facebook, they arent doing there work. There, a nice simple calculation. And dont come with that whole business value BS. Cause it has none. A pen and piece of paper has more business value than facebook, infact my desk paperweight has more value.

Here we have a perfect example of the narrow-minded thinking that is so predominate in South Africa that it has seen us come last in all kinds of service delivery surveys.

Here is a little bit of info for you to ponder: you could chain your employees to their desk, lock down their computers to the point where they can do nothing with them but work and that still doesn't guarantee that the time they spend in the office will be time they are actually working.

Needless to say, I can't imagine what sort of pitiful working environment you lot create for your employees.

 

[Chatmaster]

Here we have a perfect example of the narrow-minded thinking that is so predominate in South Africa that it has seen us come last in all kinds of service delivery surveys.

Sooooo true!

Needless to say, I can't imagine what sort of pitiful working environment you lot create for your employees.

One that will see expensive and high personnel turnover.