Comments on: Managers beware: Facebook isn’t the problem — e-mail is.

By: Social media isn’t the problem — interruptions are. -- Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:36:19 +0000

[...] said something similar before, and now Joshua-Michéle Ross of O’Reilly Radar says it well in this post: The fact is that [...]

By: Top November 2008 posts. -- Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

Top November 2008 posts. -- Hoover’s Business Insight Zone — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:07:17 +0000

[...] Managers beware: Facebook isn’t the problem — e-mail is. [...]

By: Monkeys love bananas, humans love e-mails. -- Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:07:30 +0000

[...] That’s the takeaway lesson from a Guardian article that Scott Hanson was kind enough to point out in a comment a little while back. [...]

By: Tim Walker

Tim Walker — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:07:34 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Scott, and especially for the link. Once you mentioned it, I remembered having seen (some years ago, if memory serves) an article about variable reinforcement. The experiment cited had to do with giving a variable interval reinforcement schedule to monkeys who could push a button to *sometimes* get a piece of fruit; they couldn’t keep themselves away from that button.

By: Scott Hanson

Scott Hanson — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:01:05 +0000

Exactly – and don’t forget that email is as addictive as gambling :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/28/email.addiction

Dr Tom Stafford, a lecturer at the University of Sheffield and co-author of the book Mind Hacks, believes that the same fundamental learning mechanisms that drive gambling addicts are also at work in email users. “Both slot machines and email follow something called a ‘variable interval reinforcement schedule’,” he says, “which has been established as the way to train in the strongest habits. This means that rather than reward an action every time it is performed, you reward it sometimes, but not in a predictable way. So with email, usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there’s something wonderful – an invite out, or maybe some juicy gossip – and I get a reward.” This is enough to make it difficult for us to resist checking email, even when we’ve only just looked.

By: Miz Liz

Miz Liz — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:18:14 +0000

I think that Dan hit the nail here – ban it and you make it worse. Flexibility within an established framework coupled with management’s trust in their staff makes for a more productive worker. Whether it’s email, cell phones or facebook, workers need to stay connected to the outside world, even in their little cubicles.

By: Dan Markovitz

Dan Markovitz — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:12:01 +0000

I’m a firm believer in setting broad guidelines and giving people room to live within those. Setting hard and fast rules lead immediately to workers figuring out how to game the system.

If you tell your staff they get 10 days of vacation, they’ll immediately think of a way to get 11 or 12 days. If you tell them that you trust them and that they simply need to get the job done, they make take fewer days, and in any event, will accomplish their goals.

Ban Facebook? Now you’ve just motivated staff to find a way around the ban. Tell them they can play Scrabble so long as they get their work done? Now you’re on the road to a happier, healthier, more productive workplace.

(Of course, this means that your company has to hire the right kind of people….)