At last week's round-table discussion about the 'consumerisation' of IT, representatives from Intel and Dimension Data agreed that cutting off social media tools in the workplace could do more harm than good.
“At Intel, we learnt the hard way that cutting off these tools actually inhibits some business,” said principal engineer at Intel IT Dave Buchholz.
“With a growing group of younger, more intelligent and more tech-savvy employees coming into the workplace, we are finding that the more you put up walls and roadblocks, the more they will try to get around it.”
Discussing the impact of consumer electronics in the workplace, Dimension Data CTO Mayan Mathen added that trying to “refocus” employees to sit at their desks and just work at their computers, simply doesn't work.
“The proliferation of smartphones and always-on devices has changed people's mindsets. Even if you block a social network on a work PC, the employee will do it regardless via their phone or other means.”
Connected mindset
Mathen added that since individuals now have an “always connected” mindset, instead of changing it, it is better to focus on the promotion of safer use and safer browsing in the corporate environment - because people will always find a loophole otherwise.
“Just because you don't allow them to do it on your computer, doesn't mean they're not going to do it. What we're saying is that you can actually make your employees more productive by just allowing them to have a screen open that they can check every once in a while,” explained director of innovation and pathfinding at Intel IT Jim Sutorka.
“At Intel, instead of saying no, we say we're going to allow you to use Facebook and Twitter and all of these things, but let's talk about how you use them. So we try to explain to employees what's ok and what isn't. We've also introduced internal social networking.”
Sutorka and Buchholz also explained that social media tools, such as YouTube, are actually used for business purposes in some instances. “So the 'cut-off and block' mentality doesn't always work - you actually end up hindering your business,” said Sutorka.
“You have to enable it, and you have to try and enable it in as safe a way as possible - and a lot of that is through educational programmes and communications.”
Consumer shift
It's not only social networking that is of concern to big enterprise. As pointed out by Buchholz, while IT shops used to be at the cutting-edge of new technology, there has been a fundamental shift towards the consumer.
“The users themselves are becoming faster adopters of new technologies and, while IT shops used to be at the cutting-edge, they are now seen as the dinosaurs in the tech scene.
“When devices are designed from the ground up on a consumer perspective, they won't always fit the corporate mould - which forces us to change from an IT perspective,” explained Buchholz.
Intel used the example of introducing Apple Macs into the workplace. “We tried to make them fit in with the way other corporate issue devices worked in the same space, but that just didn't work at all.
“People are feeling empowered by new tools and devices, and they no longer call up the IT guys and say 'I have a problem'. Now they say 'I have a problem and this is what I need you to do'.”
Incorporating the new
Last year, Intel turned on support for non-corporate issue, small form factor devices.
“We had great demand from Android, iPhone and Windows phone users - everyone was really saying that they wanted to be able to bring their phones into their working environment,” said Buchholz.
“Instead of supporting a single model, we put in place an infrastructure that can support multiple models. So, instead of telling people yes or no, we said depending on what your device can support, we'll give you different levels of support.”
Intel has since turned on 11 000 personal devices. “We have more than tripled our environment - by simply enabling people, and it makes them really happy.”
The corporate IT environment cannot be changed at the flick of a switch, however, and Buchholz likened changing the Intel environment to trying to turn the Titanic.
According to Mathen, as the Internet generation starts to make its way through the ranks in the workplace, it brings a very different perspective of IT.
“They expect to see 'cool tech' in the workplace and they expect to be enabled to use the devices they are already accustomed to using.”
Mathen also noted that SMEs are a huge driving force behind the embracing of new technologies in the workplace. “For many small business owners, their smartphones are their primary office - their primary business tool. Larger enterprises are taking longer to come around.”
“The 'consumerisation' of IT is real, it's here - our users are demanding it and it's not a question of if, it's when and how fast,” concluded Sutorka.
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