Don't Delay

This seems as if it is a discussion of free will vs. environmental influences governing our behavior.

I disagree with your comments that Rutledge was engaging in "positively wishful thinking," which was uncalled for by the way. Social media and it's usage cannot be avoided. However, I think that to completely forbid its usage will lead to greater problems than it actually causes.

Trying to come up with a sensible plan will lead to a better acceptance of enforcement when 'real lines' of misbehavior are crossed. A zero tolerance policy in an area that doesn't call for it often leads to widespread disobedience (in minor ways - cell phones, etc.). Or if punishment is too harsh and no one dares disobey it will lead to resentment and low morale depending on what the issue is. It will be just one more reason to quit when something better becomes available.

After reading both blog posts, I’m inclined to think you are simply taking one phrase out of context and making that the focus of your blog post.

Every good manager (at least the ones I know) have tried to determine how to motivate employees to stay on task and be productive. And from a manager and employee perspective, everyone procrastinates and gets distracted at work - no matter how many things are put in place to motivate a certain type of behavior. I personally just think it is part of human nature - but I’m not the expert on that, I believe that is your field.

However, I don’t believe her blog was meant to be a definitive “study” on the dynamics of social media use in the workplace in effort to get people to “self-regulate or self-terminate” a certain type of behavior, nor do I think a blog post is really the place for such a thing. I think it was more about not treating social media like the root of all evil. Plus - I tend to take blogs for what they are, words to spark further conversation and thinking on a topic.

After reading both blog posts, I’m inclined to think you are simply taking one phrase out of context and making that the focus of your blog post.

Every good manager (at least the ones I know) have tried to determine how to motivate employees to stay on task and be productive. And from a manager and employee perspective, everyone procrastinates and gets distracted at work - no matter how many things are put in place to motivate a certain type of behavior. I personally just think it is part of human nature - but I’m not the expert on that, I believe that is your field.

However, I don’t believe her blog was meant to be a definitive “study” on the dynamics of social media use in the workplace in effort to get people to “self-regulate or self-terminate” a certain type of behavior, nor do I think a blog post is really the place for such a thing. I think it was more about not treating social media like the root of all evil. Plus - I tend to take blogs for what they are, words to spark further conversation and thinking on a topic.

I had written replies to each of the comments above, but the system seemed to have gone down and I lost them. I'm going to simplify this second draft into one reply mainly because I have the flu (and have since Saturday), and I just got back from the hospital where I got IV fluids for dehydration. All this is to say, that I'm not spending too much time writing or working today.

Ok, to my reply: I don't see why "positively wishful thinking" is/was uncalled for. I think I called it as I see it. It's wishful thinking to believe that setting up the right environmental conditions will result in compliant and appropriate use by everyone involved. It simply doesn't happen. In fact, with social media in particular, it's very problematic. Let's take another example with social media, texting while driving. In Utah, if you're caught texting while you drive, you can get up to 3 months in jail. If you kill someone in an accident while doing that, you can get 15 years. We know that texting, social media, while driving is more dangerous than driving drunk, but still people don't stop doing it.

Whether it be endangering the lives of others on the road or wasting employers' money, no one has the right to believe they can use social media whenever and where ever they want. We can, and do, establish policies about use. Of course, teens who heard about the policies in Utah (and other states) said that they wouldn't stop, that they couldn't as they felt so addicted.

This is really part of the issue that I spoke to as well. It's seductively easy to fulfill what seems to be a social need with social media. I think most of it is specious to real social needs, but that is all relative and remains to be seen. In any case, people do get hooked on a constant flow of messages and they will continue to do this at others' expense (risking lives on highways or wasting time while being employed by someone else). We can help them help themselves with appropriate policy, and we need to. I applaud companies who have recognized what a problem social media can be.

Finally, quite rightly, Pamela pointed out that other forms of social media have been around a long time and people can and did/do waste time on it, for example the telephone. Yout bet. But, the telephone is much more public, and if you were to sit at your desk at work and talk on the phone as much as too many people text, tweet and update others with newer forms of social media, you would be fired, no question about it. No manager ever tolerated this amoutn of time off task on the telephone. Because people can hide this new social media, and they are hiding it despite the fact that ti is essentially stealing from their employer, then it's time to set up policy to say, "no more."

That's my position based on what I have learned about the frailties of human nature and self-regulation failure. At times, we need policy to help us help ourselves. Note that I say, "at times." It's not a black or white thing, and it's certainly not free will vs environmental control, nothing really is. It's always a dance between nature and nurture, and we need to recognize when our nature requires a special kind of nurture in order to make the best choices for the long run.

My thoughts for this rather exhausting day. I appreciate you taking the time to write your replies, and I hope in my flu-exhaustion I'm not overly blunt or difficult to understand.
respectfully,
tim

Hi everyone,

I think I can add something to conversation as a former employee of a company that had a zero tolerance policy on both cell phones and social networks. Initially, it was used for the sake of confidentiality to protect our company's clintele. We still had a computer in the break room that had access to facebook and twitter. However, we lost that not long after employees started to take longer breaks to send messages to their friends. It may seem unfiar, but the privelege to use the internet during breaks was abused. I know facebook is not at fault here, but it's much better to remove facebook from the workplace than the distracted employees.

People get distracted rather easily. Most often to repair negative emotions. Most computer users think they can multitask by complteing their work while chatting on facebook. I'm afraid that's not the case. A recent study suggested that heavy media multitaskers are ssceptible to interference from irrelvant distratcions and performed wose in task-switching and memory tasks than those who multitask less. The main point here is that there is merit in just working on your job.

Get well soon Tim. :)

Eric

I have been giving this a lot of thought (probably because I am putting off things that I ought to be doing :)) recently and I think that we may be looking to external processes to solve a problem of inner processing. To quote Tim from another blog entry, I think that this is "colouring outside the lines".

I've been approaching this issue from the notion of spaces and what is acceptable behavior within those spaces. In the inner space of one's mind there is a desire to Twitter, a personal act that is personally acceptable because it reports on personal experience. Twittering is a behavior that may or may not be acceptable in an outer space of, say, a workplace, for whatever reason: it's noisy, it wastes employer resources, it leaks intellectual property... But that is a space that is controlled by the employer and the employer is free to set the rules of behavior within such a space. Just as one sets the rules of behavior within one's own self.

The problem arises when one wants to apply the rules of behavior of one's inner space within an outer space where they may or may not be acceptable. This misapplication seems to be common these days.

Externally-applied "rules of engagement" will not address the bad behavior. The motivation for that has to come from within. We cannot look to workplace policies to address procrastination due to overuse of social networking technologies.

Although policies may serve as a guide for those who are unfamiliar with how to behave in a work space, this works only if the employee accepts that guidance.

So policies will not help in a direct way, and they may not even help in an indirect way. What they do provide is a mechanism that the employer can use to require (surface) conformance. From an inventory point of view that is... efficient... Humans often respond better to other approaches, however.

I really appreciate your reminder that the gratification of facebook, which has a quick-turnaround for social/emotional payback, can derail our progress on reaching more onerous and solitary goals. The nature of facebook is exponential--as the number of friends grows, so does your stream of updates become more varied and dense, and you get drawn into any number of the social circles from your past. in many ways it's a wonderful thing, and it has re-opened connections that i would otherwise have lost. but I worry about its very real potential to be slowly bleeding my work hours of productivity and undermining the momentum I need for focused concentration. Keep raising the red flag, Tim.