Have you been messing around on Facebook today at work? I only ask because one of the biggest barriers to corporates accepting Web 2.0 in the workplace appears to be a concern by top management that employees latest cunning ruse to spin the company into the bankruptcy courts is to spend every working minute on social networking sites instead of …well working.

Yesterday Web 2.0 Strategies conference held a panel discussion on the pros and cons of tools such as Facebook in the workplace (I would have posted this earlier but I was caught up on IM with a few mates discussing Germany’s shock defeat in Euro 2008, surprising huh?)

Anyway back to social networking tools. At the moment the vast majority of employers appear to put restrictions of varying degrees of ferocity on the use of Facebook et al. The most usual appears to be only use at lunchtime or before/after core work hours. At least that was the verdict from around 70% of the show of hands at the conference. Of course not all employers are the same. Those with Web 2.0 tools to promulgate are much more likely to encourage an open access approach to social networking. These firms proclaim the benefit of social networking as a business tool, such as a way to find information quickly - though like any other tool some training is usually required. They have common sense procedures (i.e. don’t reveal any data, corporate or social which could be exploited or stolen).

A leading London law firm recently banned Facebook and then was forced to do a U-turn as presumably desperate juniors who never see daylight because of the ridiculous working hours explained they needed some form of social life.

A lot of this angst has little to do with technology tools. If you can’t trust your employees to access Facebook in a responsible manner, can you trust them to make a sensible business decision in any other area? Maybe the recruitment policy and company culture need to be examined.

Web 2.0 is accelerating the blurring of the boundaries between work and the rest of our lives. We no longer necessarily go to work but work comes to us through mobile technology and communication tools. Social tools are here to stay: yes a small minority of employees will abuse these tools just as the unmotivated and poorly managed always have found methods to shirk. Much more significantly, management will gradually start to grasp the benefits as these tools are profitably integrated into the working environment.

See www.web2strategies.co.uk for more details.