Blabber is a godsend for Facebook

- I’ve been fired! – My friend Helen is crying on the phone. – For nothing!
- Is it really for nothing?
- The boss said that I’m wasting too much time in Facebook.

For not advanced users I’ll explain: Facebook is a social network, reminding a diary where you may take notes of everything that happens to you: some events, your impression… Your notes may be seen only by your friends – people whom you allow access to your notes.

I open Helen’s page and what do I see? Every hour and even more often,
the girl messages about everything that happens to her. She’s given a task to prepare a report – instead if doing that she is jotting in the Internet: “I was asked to write a report! Long and boring”. So, that not very hard for competitors to find out what is Helen’s department doing, the work schedule and, the most interesting thing, to learn staff characteristics first-hand.

Yet, Helen hit upon the idea of adding her immediate superior to a friend list! So she was pounding the keys of a typewriter and snitched on herself.

As revealed, not only Helen…

Excessive social activity in the World Wide Web may play a bad joke even with a successful career. Every third Russian firm has dealt with the information leak through the Internet (source: HeadHunter). Even though three of four companies have strict rules about confidential information. But how to refrain if Facebook and Twitter are “freezing” without news? (It is said that there is a Social Network addiction disorder – a person can’t take a step without informing the Internet about that momentous event!)

Besides losing the confidential information, superiors don’t like that employees are too busy with personal problems during the working hours, i.e., they are getting sloppy!

In 32% of organizations it is being watched intensely everything that goes out by e-mail or spread in social networks. Monitoring the employees’ blogs is provided in 24% of the organizations.

Theoretically, to leak information using work computer (or take it out on some other carrier) is not so easy. But when a person gets home, he or she may share thoughts in blog or a social network – and then the chances that the act will come unnoticed by his boss are increasing. Companies are becoming more and more afraid of putting some of their employees’ foot in their mouth.

- Social networks are good place for preliminary information gathering during business intelligence, - Roman Romachev, an expert, told “KP”. – There are no any graveyards, but it often becomes clear which side gets close. There are all conditions: more than a half of users are ready to write something about their job on the internet. For example, that a boss is not very good person. 30% of the respondents made a clear breast of making without any malice online notes containing inside information about their work. And women are more talkative – 37% of unauthorized information is spread by them.

And about 31% of workers are ready to snitch on their colleagues who lost their inhibitions.

The companies’ counterintelligence still lies behind in efficiency. Only 10% of organizations are applying educational measures to its too talkative employees.

But this is until the time comes… Dismissals of to talkative workers have already begun. Yet little by little – that’s not easy to find a corresponding article in a labor code. Further there will be more fun.


COMPETENTLY

“You can’t hide in the Internet”, - says Yuri Virovets, HeadHunter’s President.

- Social Networks made the idea of a private life very smashing. People often reveal some information about themselves which state and financial organizations are trying to conceal. And that’s the problem – many people feel the difference between their private and professional life with difficulty. When person’s thoughts, ideas, actions become well known to everybody, and to the company where he works as well, the consequences may vary a lot: it may be both an immediate career rise and a quick firing.

There is no any recipe how to make peace between career and being open in social networks. The main thing is to remember that in Internet information doesn’t disappear. And you can’t hide behind a tricky nickname – it is very easy to reveal the real author. Internet is a public place and it is necessary to behave there according to your status in real life.


BY THE WAY

Nude prevents career

- Social networks reveal a lot of information about private live of employees of an organization, - says Timur Iosebashvili, director of joblist.ru, a site for jobseekers. – One big financial company didn’t hire a department director because HR department had found in the Internet his beach photos. It should seem, what is the problem? But these photos may be seen by everybody. And it means that they may be seen by partners or clients and it will impact on the company’s image.
To lesser mortals the requirements aren’t so strict. It is unlikely that someone will fire an accountant because of his or her photo in a swimsuit or even without it in the Net.

There is a statistics in the USA – 70% of commercial secrets may be charmed out. Frequently with the help of the Internet. Employers block the access to such internet-messengers as ICQ, G-Talk, Jabber, Yahoo IM, social networks (VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and Facebook) and blogs to protect themselves somehow. Expense to that it makes a success in reducing the amount of leakage. But it is usual for people to communicate with each other and job – is one of the most popular themes for a conversation. Whether it is in-personal meeting or Internet communication, any information or opinion that an individual has, may be revealed voluntarily or involuntarily. Information doesn’t dissolve in Net, but accumulates, so sooner or later it may come to competititves’ hands.

GOT CAUGHT

If you have a blog – close it!

Last summer, Marketing and Advertising Director of Don Plaza congress-hotel Ekaterina Serebryakova lost her job. PR specialist and a journalist from Rostov thinks that the cause of the firing was a criticism of company and directors expressed in her blog. Notably, it is not only a hotel that suffered because of her severe remarks but also a company working on improving the image of whole Rostov region.

And in UK at the end of January Katie Furlong, Royal Bank of Scotland’s ex-consultant on debts, lost 6 thousand pounds (approximately 300 thousand rubles) because of her excessive sociability. She fell under the planned job cut and was going to receive solid redundancy payment. And she didn’t delay to write about it in Facebook. When the Bank governance found out about that, Katie was fired for another reason – for violations of the secrecy declaration. And no relief was paid.