The problem isn’t Facebook, it’s apathy

Banning employees from using networking websites such as Facebook, as an estimated 70% of UK employers have done, is hopelessly naive. The reality is that wherever you have large offices, state-run or private, you will have people finding innovative ways to waste time. Banning Facebook will simply lead to a revival of other quaint time-fillers, such as the fictional dentist appointment.

The real issue is that most people either hate or are indifferent to their jobs.

Image via CrunchBase

According to Gallup, one in five workers is actively disengaged from their job and a further three in five are described as sleepwalking through their day. Confronting this apathy requires a huge shift away from mass employment in large offices towards entrepreneurship and self-employment. A global survey by the Career Innovation Group reported a significantly higher level of job satisfaction among the self-employed. The work itself may be identical, but people feel a closer connection with their output and have an incentive to make their business work.

In other words, they are paid for being productive, not for turning up.

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Originally posted 2008-11-16 22:11:04.

BlackBerrys are bad for the soul

Image by jurvetson

Users boast that once you have a BlackBerry, no time is dead time. Ten minutes waiting for a train are no longer lost, but used to plough through the email backload. The BlackBerry is such a tool of liberation that even the beach can become your office!

These defences are bogus.

A more truthful explanation for the ubiquity of these devices is that they are a status symbol suggesting indispensability – a sensation that hooks the user. The line you almost never hear is my employer makes me carry this thing. The truth is we’re doing it to ourselves.

Image via Wikipedia

Cohorts of workers are turning themselves into virtual slaves, on duty day and night for no extra payment. Their work now intrudes into their bathrooms, their bedrooms, even their sleep. Paid time off work was a right that had to be fought for and won, yet now we are giving it away voluntarily, seduced by a neat, shiny little gadget. We need to win back the time and mental space we’ve lost.

Your BlackBerry is bad for your soul.

Switch it off.

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Originally posted 2008-11-20 00:02:20.