Peninsula’s Facebook research is wrong

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Law firm Peninsula has released some extremely dubious research into the negative impacts of employees using Facebook. I’ve fired off several letters to newspapers that have simply published the spurious data, without bothering to do any fact checking (or even really thinking about it).

Your Fact of the Day cites Peninsula’s latest research on the negative impacts of Facebook for employers. Peninsula’s data might be an opinion, but it certainly isn’t fact and provides a very short-sighted and one-sided view of the world of social networking sites such as Facebook. Whilst the results can indicate the amount of time employees spend on Facebook during the working day, who is to say that time spent on Facebook is time ‘wasted’? Peninsula fail to recognise that for many employers, Facebook is actually a benefit, providing employees with opportunities to network with clients and potential new businesses, resulting in an increase in productivity rather than a loss as Peninsula suggest. The creation of business related groups allows employees to exchange ideas, access information across the globe and build relationships with other organisations.

It is impossible to hold back the tide of change and employers should be setting guidelines and providing support and training to ensure they benefit from social networks, rather than being one of those whose business suffers because it is stuck in the past.

Employers need to recognise the potential that social networking, in particular Facebook, can hold and use this to their advantage instead of concentrating on perceived negatives.

Lots of other good commentary including Dennis Howlett and Neville Hobson.