Interview with Gunaseker C Rajaratam

AW: Should companies allow employees to have access to social networking sites?

 

GR:  Blogs, social networking and now the next best thing Google Wave! , I have heard managers lament loss of productivity. i remember the same laments when computers were new and you had those dumb 2D games that everybody were playing on office computers.

I actually encouraged my team of around 30 field staff to play as much as they could on the spare office computers. And when I had a huge project that had loads of data entry work, the filed staff themselves started entering the data they collect when they return to the office. The project was completed on the scheduled date with excellent data accuracy that I could not have expected if I had appointed data entry operators or subcontracted the work.

 

 

AW: Do you think it limits productivity? What guidelines should be set in place if so?

 

GR: A smart company would realize that it could pay to allow people to have their fill of the new technologies and when the technology stabilizes the time spent by each employee would become less. Some companies could even exploit the familiarity and skills among their employees as I did.

 

Gunaseker C Rajaratam – Promoter at Methodlab India