‘It’s deadline day and my boss thinks I’m working really hard, but guess what? I’m on Facebook!’ Thus went the status message on someone’s Facebook profile the other day. And truth be told, it summed up the situation all too succinctly. Call it the future of online social networking. But the office is where much of the networking happens to be taking place these days. And suddenly, workforces from across the world — regardless of position, in-house work culture or office hours — seem to be happily giving in to the rising trend of keeping up with their friends and contacts while they are in their workplace.

It’s a nice concept, really — being the company’s guest and actually getting paid to indulge in some carefree socialising in between deadlines. Obviously, the surfers aren’t complaining.

The only people miffed at the development are some of those on the other side of the table. The first wave of reports from the West seems to be hinting at a serious human resource problem that could snowball to critically affect businesses around the world. Online socialising, say the reports, may be injurious to the health of a company.

Sample the figures. A survey conducted recently in the United Kingdom indicated that British businesses might be losing a combined £1.38 billion annually, in terms of man-hours spent by their employees on networking sites. More than half of those surveyed admitted to accessing networking sites at work, and spending an average of 40 minutes a week on them.

These trends are not confined to the UK alone. A June report published by Internet monitoring firm Nielsen Online said Facebook was the top networking site in the United States in terms of usage, with 87 million visitors spending a monthly average of four hours and 39 minutes on the site from both home and work. Another Nielsen report earlier in the year indicated that an astounding 42 per cent of Twitter users belonged to the age group 35-49 — essentially the workforce.

India, as always, is yet to wake up to the possible consequences of this trend. But the alarm bells have started ringing. “We do not have statistical research available so far but we believe that a large number of organisations are aware of the impact of social media sites,” says Rahul Goyal, marketing and strategy head at HR consultants Ma Foi. “Many, in fact, have taken several measures to prevent employees from spending productive time on these sites. The most common measure is disallowing access.”

That means that one fine morning, you walk into office to realise that you can no longer log in to your favourite networking site and carry over the saucy gossip you were having with your friends from the night before. “That’s regimental,” shouts Anuradha Biswas (not her real name), a young journalist from Delhi, who happens to be an active office networker. Her reason for crying foul? “Well, catching up with friends is a nice way to de-stress in between work hours. Besides, as a journalist, I often use these sites to network with my sources. Surely, that can’t be bad for work, right?”

An art director at a Delhi-based advertising firm would like to second that. “These days, work hours have drastically eaten into the time that would earlier be reserved for socialising,” says the designer who doesn’t want to be named. “Given that you don’t get home before 10 pm six days a week, where’s the problem if people spend a few moments during work to engage in some light-hearted interaction with friends? As long as it doesn’t affect deadlines, I don’t think anyone should have an issue.”

Not everyone shares Sharma’s perspective. “Blocking these sites is the most potent way out,” believes Goyal. “Or else it will become a major impediment to effective usage of productive hours.”

However, simple as it may seem, many within the HR fraternity have realised that blocking access to popular networking sites isn’t the most effective way of keeping employees away from them. After all, technology brews its own antidote. Some experts point out that employees in many offices have started bringing their laptops with data cards, so that they can beat such curbs and independently log into banned websites.

So needless to say, some brains in the boardroom have started taking a more liberal approach to the issue. “Interestingly, many companies have actually started leveraging these sites at work, encouraging their employees to use them for connecting with business contacts,” says Hema Ravichandar, strategic HR adviser and former global HR head at Infosys. “On the other hand, they are also laying down policies that aim to bring about responsible use of these sites. Specifying fixed time slots is one option,” she observes.

Supria Dhanda, HR general manager at a leading global telecom company, admits that increased networking in office might impact the overall productivity of a firm. “But then, one aspect of a growing economy like India’s is the ability of employees to network with people across the world, if only to get more work done,” she observes, even while admitting that she is an active online networker herself. “So yes, at one level, people probably need to network. Whether this will adversely affect businesses or not it’s perhaps still too early to tell,” she says. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

And then there are people like Nagananda Kumar, HR director at advertising giants Lowe Lintas, who are quite comfortable with the issue, and would actually refrain from laying down restrictive policies. “We’re not Aurangzebs here,” laughs Kumar. “The people we recruit are all responsible adults, who know how to utilise their time in a productive manner. As long as companies select a responsible and mature workforce and provide them with a healthy work environment, they shouldn’t run into any trouble here,” he observes. “It’s all about treating your employees right and making them feel comfortable at work, and getting back the best from them.”

Workers would surely ‘like’ that, Facebook style.