By Katrina Ganin

Australia leads the world in online social engagement, with the highest global average for time spent each month engaging in social media.

Of concern to all organisations, including government agencies, is the widespread use of social networking at work and the unintended security breaches that are created as a result. Setting aside the debate about whether this decreases an employee’s productivity, the increased security threat is something that government agencies must address in a multidisciplinary way that includes senior management, human resources and IT.

Some organisations opt to ban and block the use of social media at work but this is an incomplete solution as employees are able to readily access these sites via portable devices such as smartphones.

Gartner predicts social networking will replace email as a leading means of communication by 2014: some 250 million already log onto Facebook every day.

Moreover, with 73 per cent of Australian workers accessing social networking sites, according to a recent Newspoll survey commissioned by Symantec, the use of social media by employees while at work is an issue that is now firmly part of the corporate landscape.

Some 48 per cent of workplaces did not officially allow employees to look at social networking sites during work hours, the survey showed, and while almost a quarter of Australian workers (24 per cent) access social networks during work hours, just under a third of these do so without approval from their employers.  Read More>>

Read the full report: The dangers of getting social at work [PDF]

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