Employees chatting about their company on social networking sites?
We recently covered how a school in Vadodara (Gujarat) suspended six students for using abusive language on FB and now, Infosys plans to introduce a ‘social media policy’ that will enable it to take legal action against employees who leak confidential company information on social networking sites.
“..there are instances when two people working on the same project posted project information on sites like Facebook, least bothered about the fact that this is an information leakage made on an unprotected site,
The social media policy we plan to introduce will talk about the dos and donts of an employee participating in social media. It is like a code of conduct which aims at stopping the employees from sharing confidential and sensitive company information on unprotected places like social networking sites” – report.
An earlier report by Assocham even claimed that social networking sites kills productivity to an extent of 12.5%!
Employee Dissatisfaction?
7,833 employees quit Infosys in Q1 of 2010 and one can gauge the dissatisfaction level from the below ‘Google suggest’ options (via):
Before employee dissatisfaction hits the public domain, its important for Infosys to ensure that employees are made clear and be held responsible for their tweets/FB status updates.
Though one has to agree that sharing confidential information in public domain is a strict no-no, we sincerely hope that policies like these aren’t meant to curb the ‘employee democracy’, the option of talking about the good/bad points about their employer.
Aside, interesting to note that Infosys recently launched iEngage, a social media platform (SAAS) that energizes the enterprise’s social media marketing, eCommerce, customer care, and employee engagement strategies.
Ah well, how about eating one’s dog food?
Hmm. While they’re well within their rights to safeguard confidential data, one only hopes this will not be used as a stick to quell all public discussion around Infosys from the employees end. Unfortunately, employee contracts are overarching and sweep almost everything related to the company, including the employees own financial data, interests, etc, under the “confidential” carpet. One would have loved to see a leader like Infy embrace openness vis-a-vis its practices, employee issues etc.
Of course, it might be too early too comment – let’s wait for the first instance in which this is used to understand its real intent.
Infosys is now run by a bunch of assholes in the middle management. Read this
http://www.adityanaik.com/infosys-powered-by-intellect-driven-by-what/
@safads Thats surely a v jaundiced pov. They’ve built a very large, strong organization on the back of delivering to their clients, employees who have been with them and benefited substantially as well. Yes, every org sees some loss of direction, misses out on carrying people along, as it grows. Whats important is that those commandeering the ship respond to these with forward looking solutions, not react with shortsighted ones. Its a very capable team and Infy’s managed to solve a lot many things better than many orgs, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see the former, not the latter. Of course, time will tell.
The middle management sucks, but you want to believe only a part of the story. Usual expected response – crush the opponents.
heavy-handedness is becoming a mantra in Indian companies, even though prevention is better than cure, it seems like they are trying to prevent the public/customers from learning the lack of morale or lack of whatever.. in classical MBA jargon, is it a problem or a symptom?
Infosys Management feels that it is living in the stones ages and it expects their employees to be weeded to an organisation that thrives ob media Hype.. after Narayan murthy and Nilekani .. the bunch of jokers that are running Infosys are total crap
When most organisations are trying to use social media to reach out to their stake holders including theor own employees. Unless your employees are happy your customers will never be
Infosys probably thinks that having social media policies will act as a deterrent ,but i guess they dont have brains t understand ,, that even even if 11,000 people leave infosys every quarter ( which is the latest attrition ) there would be enough fodder to malign infosys.. So Mrs Nandita Gujral .. how would you stop former Infosysians to tweet or blog about your retarded policies.. How would you stop people posting their tweets by different users names through dynamic IP ?
Instead of quelling employee dissatisfaction.. Infosys ideally should have used the social media to provide their part of the story and accepted the fact that though the logic of irace was good.. the implementation was bad .. However seems one of india’s so called biggest and brightest tech companies actually treats their employees like 19th Century factory workers
We’ve seen this kind of reaction before in companies trying hard to preserve productivity while initally allowing freedom. Unforatunately, being reactive instead of proactive only leads to bad PR. A simple “purpose of use while on the job” statement, as simple as one side of a sheet of copy paper will suffice. When a choice has to be made, productivity wins over democracy at the workplace. Democracy obviously wins at home. A proactive “purpose of use” statement crafted with input from employees is best.
This is not a surprising reaction. Social media is misunderstood by both the general public and employers in just about every industry. The overall right to free speach and information etc… should be respected just like respecting someone’s right to go to the library and read what they want. But, rightfully so, the chances of someone being given a 15 minute break in the middle of their shift at work to go to the library is slim. Social media as a vehicle has a place and that place should support both the role of the company and the employees at the same time.
commonman Jul 14th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
They started to block “last day ” “quitting infy mails” in public forum in the infy network , so they went to social networks and blogs. By placing too many restrictions they are just doing much more damage.
Instead of blocking communication and forums to vent frustration , they can concentrate on listening genuine ones and clarify them .
If you dont listen to your child’s issues and problem and work on it, they are going to complain to every classmate or teacher or anyone he or she comes in contact with. Beating them up or making them shut their mouth everytime they open their mouth is going to attack and affect their morale and going to just work against you.Already you had moved away from employee-friendly , non-hierarchial organisation to most-hated, indian-government like organisation and left “quitting” as the only option. HR dept had become against employees and started to work like mouthpiece for middle management’s dictatorship.
Work on your HEAR and other forums and make it efficient .
You are running a service company unless your employees are happy your clients are not going to be and if no clients – NOTHING.
Check these blogs
http://www.adityanaik.com/infosys-powered-by-intellect-driven-by-what/
http://proudprasad.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-policy-on-social-media-frustration.html
http://proudprasad.blogspot.com/2010/07/dog-eat-dog-or-survival-of-fittest-my.html
Yet again… they have done something to add-up to the employees frustration. With such high attirition rate in last quarter… how r they going to tame the ex-infoscions…!
This policy is only going to do more bad to compnay.
How can a company dont trust its employees.. and they say.. WE ARE FAMILY…! sad..!
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