I saw this cartoon on a blog here, so I’ll have to give the link back so I can use the cartoon.

Today’s news brings us the story of 13 Virgin employees from Britain sacked due to inappropriate discussion about their employer and the customers they serve. Article here 

Treated right, there is nothing more beneficial to your career than effective networking. It opens doors, bypasses HR departments and gets you recommendations that you never can get from hitting the newspaper classifieds or going to the job boards and applying for a job “cold”. 

Social networking sites can also be the worst thing that can happen to your career if you abuse the privilege. Remember the Internet rule: there is nothing private on the internet! Keep saying it until you believe it! Ask yourself before your fingers hit the keyboard–would the managing director want to see this?

Todays Age newspaper takes a fascinating look at whether employers should allow employees to use Facebook in the office. The analysis of the figures is fascinating – as quoted from the article:

Some of the major findings were:

:: Blockers: 20 per cent of Australian businesses block employee access to the sites.

:: Age: Use of social networking sites is massively dictated by age. If you are over 35 you are the loneliest person on Facebook, with only 4 per cent of workers using it at the office. But usage rises precipitously to 25 per cent for the 25-35 year age group and to almost 33 per cent for those under 25.

:: Perception: Only 14 per cent of workers use social networking sites at work but 76 per cent of employees who use the internet at the office said they saw benefit to organisations if they allow employees to access these sites while at work. Some of the reasons given were:

- shows trust by the organisation in the employees

- gives workers a break and keeps them fresh

- allows employees to network with each other, customers and suppliers.

:: Recruiting: 46 per cent of social network site users said that if faced with two competing job offers that were roughly equivalent but one organisation blocked Facebook, the employee would go for the organisation that did not block.