How Facebook(ing) Can Improve Work Productivity

In a study dating back almost 2 years ago, Melbourne University's department of Marketing & Management demonstrated how a workforce that takes planned work breaks with Facebook is actually 9% more productive.

The fundamentals behind why this works can be found in guaranteeing the appropriate strategy, effective communication & engagement principles so that a workforce can plan for success. It's about finding the right rhythm & planning your 60-90 minute work sprints.

Social networks are NOT the problem

The problem most companies are facing today isn't the Internet or Social Media, it's the lack of effective Leadership. 86% o senior executive agree that the biggest challenge is to mobilize their workforce, yet 53% of staff are unable to explain their companies strategy. What's wrong with this picture? Leadership is about setting direction & delegating, it's about using a “story-telling cascade” to build a shared and compelling narrative about the need for change.. or the results you expect to achieve. The competitive advantage of the twenty-first century is increasingly derived from hard-to-copy intangible assets such as company culture and leadership effectiveness.

People Strategies First

Leveraging insight from Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage; Charles Darwin’s observation that “the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment” may have become something of a cliché in the literature on change management, but it has never rung more true in the business world. The ability to manage an organization dynamically so that it can both shape its environment and rapidly adapt to it is becoming the most important source of competitive advantage in the twenty-first century. Success is about winning not just in the marketplace for customers, but also in the marketplace for talented employees.

The role of business in society is changing. As we work more and socialize less, the time we have left for traditional activities involving our family, our local community, and our religious institutions is declining. As a result, our sense of meaning and identity is increasingly derived from the workplace (our jobs) and the marketplace (the products and service we buy). The message is that talented employees are not content to be cogs in a machine geared to hitting quarterly performance numbers. They want to work in dynamic workplaces where they feel empowered to make meaningful, positive change happen.

You Can't Manage What You Can Measure

Once you've got your people strategy effectively in place, what mechanisms will you use to measure active contribution toward company results? How will you address the 7 simple questions that drive your strategic plans; Who, What, When, Where, How, Why? And most importantly, how will you answer the always difficult “but Should we or Shouldn’t we?” questions?

By empowering your team with a solid Vision and aligning them around agreed strategies, you'll also need to ensure a fine balance of productive work sprints coupled with recovery breaks.

Why not let them Facebook when you know you're already getting he very best out of your people? What measurements do you have in place that give you confidence of how your team is engaging their available productive capacity?