Imagine managing a stable of workers who knowingly disregard IT policies, who think your company’s social media and mobile device usage polices are stale, and who believe they are not responsible for protecting company information and devices.

It sounds like a network TV sitcom plot, but it’s not. It’s Gen Y, and, according to a recent Cisco survey, it’s a reality.

The future of work, according to Cisco.

For its annual Connected World Technology Report, Cisco surveyed 1,441 college students aged 18-24, and 1,412 employees aged 21-29 in 14 countries. The purpose of the study was to gain insight into the behavior and expectations of the next generation of workers, and how their demands for information access are changing the future of work. The study was conducted between May and June 2011.

Among the more notable findings:

• Internet as Basic Human Necessity: One of every three college students and employees surveyed globally (33%) believes the Internet is a fundamental resource for the human race – as important as air, water, food and shelter. About half (49% of college students and 47% of employees) believe it is “pretty close” to that level of importance. Combined, four of every five college students and young employees believe Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Consumerization of IT Cisco, FACEBOOK, Generation Y, InformationWeek, millennials, mobility, Twitter

While the Marines are busy banning social media and some corporations are clamping down on Twitter and its ilk, the state government of California is encouraging its workers to embrace Web 2.0.

California officially adopted the use of social media. But it’s hardly a Farmville free-for-all.

On Feb. 26, the state officially adopted the use of social media. But it’s hardly a Farmville free-for-all.

The state issued a policy that sets clear rules for its use, including a limitation to only authorized users who have been trained regarding their roles, responsibilities and security risks. (View a PDF of the policy here.)

The document states: “State agencies are encouraged to use social media technologies to engage their customers and employees. Many state entities, including the Governor, have used these communication channels with great success but as with most technologies, there is a measure of risk that must be addressed and mitigated.”

In addition to the policy, the state issued a five-page “Social Media Standard,” which includes a few interesting clauses (read the full document in PDF form here):

No. 8: “Users shall not utilize tools or techniques to spoof, masquerade, or assume any identity or credentials except for legitimate law enforcement purposes, or for other legitimate State purposes as defined in agency policy.”

No. 9: “Users shall avoid mixing their professional information with their personal information.”

And, No. 10: “Users shall not use their work password on social media web sites.”

Participating agencies must comply with the policy by July 1.

Related reading: “What We’re Reading: If  Harvard Says So Edition” | “Social Media: The Elephant in the Office”

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Jenny Sweeney Social Media California, CIO, FACEBOOK, Farmville, government, Social Media, the Marines, Twitter, YouTube

We may very well be embarking on the decade of the customer. Social media, especially Twitter, has empowered customers, and the recession has reminded businesses that keeping clients is easier than bringing in new ones.

It’s like watching your siblings bicker at Sunday dinner. Ugh. Enough already. Bring on a solution.

With the current state of customer service, a renewed focus would be a welcome change.

Look at current tech publications and you will surely find a rant or three about horrific customer experiences (for a recent one, see CIO.com’s “Tech Vendors Behaving Badly”). Search Twitter for “customer service” and you will find scores of tweets cursing the ineptitude of Company X and Company Y.

It’s like watching your siblings bicker at Sunday dinner. Ugh. Enough already. Bring on a solution.

You can start by taking note of a recent book, “Your Call is (Not That) Important to Us,” written by Emily Yellin (http://www.emilyyellin.com/) and featured in a recent AARP Bulletin story. Yellin, a journalist, wrote the book after enduring a particularly frustrating customer service experience herself.

Her book presents a fresh look at the customer service industry, and offers the average person some insight into the reasons many companies opt to automate and outsource to foreign companies. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Customer Service AARP, CIO.com, Customer Service, Dell, Emily Yellin, FACEBOOK, JetBlue, Outsourcing, Twitter, Zappos

It’s that time of year when we look back on what was and ponder what is to come. The year 2009 brought a number of significant tech developments — the iPhone as a legitimate business tool (AT&T’s bandwidth issues notwithstanding); the Cloud’s emergence; grandmothers embracing social media; Windows 7 — all of which promise to change the way we work.

Still, all our readers cared about was learning how to use a secondary axis in Excel, how to change BlackBerry calendar views, and why help desk techs are so surly.

Here’s a list of our top 10 posts from 2009. Read and enjoy.

10. Get It Together: 5 Ways to Stay Organized in Outlook
9. 5 Lessons to Learn Before Outsourcing
8. A Kinder, Gentler Help Desk
7. Top 5 Most-Asked Help Desk Questions
6. 7 Productivity-Boosting iPhone Tips
5. Out of Office, Out of Mind
4. How the Help Desk Earns its Bad Reputation
3. Follow the Format: 5 MS Word Tips for Managers
2. 4 BlackBerry Tips Every Manager Should Know
1. Management Tool Best Practices: 3 Excel Tips that Promise Charting Greatness

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Jenny Sweeney Year in Review BlackBerry, Excel, FACEBOOK, How To, iPhone, Outlook, Social Media, the Cloud, tips and tricks, Twitter, Windows Mobile

The recent software and tech news is all about making the best of what you have. Bloomberg reports that in Venezuela, they’re tweeting their way around traffic snarls to get to work on time; Chief Learning Officer reports on the unlikely good that’s come out of the recession; and CIO.com offers three tips to get the most out of Microsoft Office. Read on…

Training is likely the number one way to get more out of Office, or any software for that matter.

Tweeting in Traffic is OK… in Venezuela

Whoever says Twitter is an ego-driven time-waster should spend a day in a Caracas traffic jam. In a recent Bloomberg News article, reporter Daniel Cancel writes about the Twitter revolution in Venezuela. Because the country’s gasoline is so cheap, there are twice as many cars than the roads can handle — which, naturally, means ample traffic jams. Enter the BlackBerry, Twitter and @Trafico, which Venezuelans are using to navigate their way through the gridlock.

Venezuelans, Cancel notes in his article, are way ahead of the rest of the world in terms of using Twitter as a traffic tool. And, for anyone concerned about Tweeting while driving, average speeds in Caracas are 7 to 9 miles per hour. Read the story here.

The Beauty of Recession: Increased Adaptability

November’s Chief Learning Officer offers up the finest in Glass-Half-Full news with “Recession’s Silver Lining? Increased Adaptability,” which reports that American workers have become more flexible in the past few years. Some highlights from the piece: Read more…

Jenny Sweeney This Week in Tech News @Trafico, Bloomberg, Caracas, Chief Learning Officer, CIO.com, Cloud Computing, Microsoft Office, recession, Twitter, Venezuela

We have lists on the brain, largely due to the recent debut of Twitter’s new “lists” feature, which enables users to create and share lists of people to follow. Twitter lists are like Follow Friday on Red Bull, and are the microblogging service’s logical next step.

Mashable.com’s Pete Cashmore writes this of lists on CNN.com: They cut down Twitter’s noise and arguably make it more useful.

Indeed, lists — and “how-to” guides and the like — enable you to break down large amounts of information into easier-to-use bits. And that’s the essence of what we do in software support. Some of our more list-like posts continue to get ample clicks, perhaps because of their utility. Among them:

4 BlackBerry Tips Every Manager Should Know

7 Productivity-Boosting iPhone Tips

5 Microsoft Word Formatting Tips

Windows 7: What IT and End-Users Need to Know

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Jenny Sweeney Lists BlackBerry, cnn.com, Follow Friday, iPhone, Pete Cashmore, Red Bull, Twitter, Windows 7, Word

In an April post, I looked at the financial impact human error can have on a company. With news of Best Buy’s recent web site pricing doozy, it seems only fitting to revisit the issue.

Yesterday, Best Buy shocked customers with a whopper of a deal: a 52-inch Samsung HDTV for $9.99. Orders came in and credit cards were charged. Some customers attempted to buy up to 10 televisions each.

Best Buy issued a statement saying it would not honor the pricing error, so it may have saved itself heaps of money. Some companies haven’t been so lucky.

It was a mistake, of course, and the company corrected it promptly. The sale price should have been listed as $1,699.99. Still, customers were miffed, and Best Buy had to get to the business of refunding credit cards that had been charged, and doing a little reputation management via its web site, on Twitter, and elsewhere.

Best Buy issued a statement saying it would not honor the pricing error, so it may have saved itself heaps of money. Some companies haven’t been so lucky. Foul-ups involving a few decimal places may seem innocuous, but even the smallest mistake can cause millions of dollars in damage.

Consider the results of a landmark Dartmouth College study, which I wrote about in April. It offers a clear picture of what’s at stake. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney FAIL Best Buy, calculations, Dartmouth College, Excel, HDTVs, pricing error, Twitter

Last week’s two-hour Twitter outage was inconvenient for some, devastating to others. Whether it affected you at all is irrelevant; it proved that social media has become omnipresent.

I sure will be happy when it finally gets itself settled. Every day the media feeds us findings of new studies, fresh reports, and the latest arguments from industry experts about social media’s productivity-boosting power or time-sapping potential.

The outrage over the outage proved that social media matters.

Here are highlights from this week’s stories:

Marines: The Few, The Proud, The Banned
Last week also brought news of the United States Marine Corps banning sites like Twitter and Facebook on military networks. The Marines cited security concerns. We think they’re just too rigid to wrap their minds around the whole Web 2.0 mess.

CIO.com blogger C.G. Lynch responded to the Marine social media ban with a post urging other organizations not to follow the military’s lead. For organizations that don’t have national security at stake, he asserted, banning Twitter and the like is hasty. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Social Media FACEBOOK, productivity, Twitter, U.S. Marines

If you think Twitter, and social media in general, is a fad, think again. Not only has the number of unique visitors to Twitter increased exponentially in the past year, the percentage of people who use it only at work is double that of those who use it only at home.

According to a recent study by Nielsen Research, Twitter saw a 1,382 percent growth from February 2008 to February 2009*. What’s more, 62 percent of respondents said they access Twitter from work only; 35 percent access it from home only.

This is what we do know: Twitter (and LinkedIn, and Facebook, and MySpace…) is wildly popular, and is used mostly at work. What’s unclear, however, is how to manage it in the enterprise.

Your options include ignoring it and blocking its use, or devising a plan that teaches employees how to use it without sullying your brand or exposing the company to security breaches. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Social Media CIO, FACEBOOK, LinkedIn, MySpace, Nielsen, productivity, Sophos, Twitter