Creative Class

Does Twitter improve workplace productivity, or on balance does it distract employees and detract from their overall performance?

Globe and Mail writer Tavia Grant wrote about this very subject this week. Here’s a summary of the pros and cons of Twitter from her article:

The proponents

Jen Evans, president of Toronto-based Sequentia Communications, has 1,649 followers and tracks the musings of 1,283 others. She is a huge Twitter fan – for herself and her staff of 16.

Her business involves connecting businesses with clients, and she’s found Twitter invaluable for recruiting, drumming up business and building her brand.

Having staff on Twitter can be a “visibility enhancer,” she says.

Larger companies, too, are jumping on board.

Telus Corp. allows Twitter time at work. “You have to trust employees,” says spokesman Shawn Hall, who personally uses it “all the time” to stay connected to journalists, public relations groups and the telecommunications community.

The opponents

Employers are still wrestling with policies on Facebook and other more established social networking sites, never mind Twitter. But some, including several government departments, such as those for the City of Toronto, ban personal use at work.

Murray Key, operations manager of a steel warehousing company in Edmonton, can’t stand to see staff whittle away their work hours on any kind of social networking.

“There is a time and place to be a social butterfly, to play inane games and to waste personal time, but for the vast majority of us, that place is not at work,” he says.

Experiment with it

…Twitter has emerged as a “powerful tool that can speed up the metabolism of an organization, keep everyone better informed and enable greater agility and responsiveness to changing conditions.” [says Don Tapscott].

He encourages people to experiment with it. Managers should try it out – at least to understand how it works – and give employees a chance “to self-organize and collaborate using these tools,” he says.

Given Richard’s announcements that he’s now tweeting on Twitter, I thought I’d ask the CreativeClass.com audience for their thoughts.

So, to Twitter or not to Twitter?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 9:18 am and is filed under Media, Technology & Innovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.