48% Of British Companies Have Banned Twitter At Work - Shea Bennett

Survey shows the fear of British employers when confronted with an epochal upheaval in media:

A new survey of 2,500 British employers has revealed the impact the social media channels have made on businesses in the UK, although possibly not in the productive way you might think.

The research, conducted by PR firm Lewis Communications and IT firm HCL Technologies discovered that almost half of all British employers have banned Twitter and Facebook from the workplace, which perhaps suggests a continuing naivety of the benefits of social media for all businesses, and also raises questions about employee rights.

The study showed that 48 per cent of the UK companies polled have stopped employees sending tweets and status updates in the past 12 months, with 45 per cent of those surveyed doing so because they feared their business reputation was at stake.

Maybe this is an opportunity go build the right Twitter appliance: one that allows companies to listen well, analyze trends that could have an impact on their business, and carefully manage and monitor how employees interact with the outside world.

Could ultimately be a win-win.