Why you shouldn’t use Facebook at Work

Despite the fact most banks block Facebook, in a surprise move, The Royal Bank of Scotland has become Britain’s first major company to adopt the new Facebook for Work. By the end of 2016 RBS’s 100,000 strong staff will be invited to try the new service, which it hopes will become the watercooler of the digital age.

While we welcome innovation and collaboration at work with open arms, Facebook at Work leaves us feeling cold.

One of the best and worst things about the service is its familiarity. The Facebook you know and like (sorry), will remain completely separate from the one at work, but to the untrained eye it looks near identical.

Be careful how you share

The problem extends to the mobile app, which looks like a carbon copy of the one you use on your phone to share pictures of night out, treasured family moments and political rants at election-time.

This is history repeating. Remember the countless examples of Twitter slip ups where employees drunkenly (or even sober) post the f-bomb to their corporate account, only to wake up the next morning to a social media storm in a teacup?

The last thing we need is another way for employees to embarrass themselves in front of their boss.

Putting the potential for a comms disaster aside, there are so many questions left unanswered. Everybody agrees email isn’t working anymore, but is Facebook really the answer?

Social anxiety

Nobody is sure how Facebook expects people to use the service at work. On the iOS store page for Facebook at Work screenshots show employees sharing humblebrags like this:

“Can’t believe I’ve been at Acme for two years! I couldn’t ask for a better workplace. feeling love at Acme HQ”

If the other screenshots are to be believed, expect endless event invitations to Friday night beers and a brand new messenger for colleagues to get hold of you out of office hours.

Or worst still – a whole new way for the office letch to keep tabs on you.

What Facebook forgets is the majority internet users are “lurkers”, people who use social media as a way to consume media, not to contribute to it. In other words, the 90% who like reading about other people’s lives and not sharing their own.

In this new world of Facebook at work, will employees be made to feel guilty if they decide not to share at work? Or miss out on a promotion?

Blurred lines

The lines between work and play have already been blurred and Facebook at work won’t make it any better. The Blackberry already did most of the damage, turning the 9-5 workday into near 24 hour connectivity for almost all workers.

Collaboration tools like Slack, Yammer and Huddle have been wildly successful ways for employees to work smarter, no matter where they are. Other than being great products, their success lies in the simple fact they know what they exist for.

Slack is a personal favourite at The Memo. It connects our team together through simple and fast communication and when the work day is done, so is Slack.

Facebook needs a slice of the business market. This move is about staying one step ahead of Linkedin and Google, and RBS will not be the last corporate to jump on board.

But this is not about making you feel happier. Or making your workplace more collaborative. It’s about Facebook making more money from you, your thoughts and your emotions.

And that’s the simple reason why you shouldn’t use Facebook at Work.