• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, July 11, 2011

After years of ambivalence, American business executives are finally embracing (and even encouraging) the use of social networks like Facebook and Twitter for business-related communications, according to a new survey from Robert Half Technology. But at the same time the phone survey of 1,400 chief information officers from companies with 100+ employees revealed that companies are also tightening social media policies to prevent employees from using social media for personal purposes at work.

Overall 51% of CIOs surveyed said they permit employees to use social media sites for business purposes -- up from 19% in 2009, for an almost three-fold increase in two years. Conversely, proportion of CIOs who said social media use at work is "prohibited completely" decreased from 54% to 31% over the same period.

But the CIOs are also firming up corporate social media policies, distinguishing between professional and personal uses -- and discouraging the latter. The proportion who said they let employees visit social media for "limited" personal use decreased from 16% in 2009 to 14% in 2011, while the share who said they allow it for "any type of personal use" decreased from 10% to 4%.

Of course, just because CIOs promulgate rules prohibiting social media for personal uses doesn't mean that employees abide by them. According to the Cisco 2010 Midyear Security Report, which includes the results of a survey of employees from around the world, 50% of the employees surveyed said they ignored corporate policies which ban social media in the workplace, and over one quarter of the employees surveyed said they had changed the security settings on their work computers so they can carry on their social media activities unhindered. Last year a separate study by IDC found that "30 percent to 40 percent of Internet use in the workplace is unrelated to business."

In May 2010 I wrote about a global survey by Clearswift, a software security company, which found that 57% of employees ages 25-34 do personal tasks like checking social networks, emailing, and online shopping while in the workplace. This doesn't mean they're flagrantly slacking off, however: 66% of all employees in the Clearswift survey said they stay later or work through lunch to make up for the time they spend on personal Internet use. And there are consequences to excessive corporate hardass-ery: 62% of employees of all ages said they should be able to log into social networks or access personal email from work, and 21% of young adults said they would turn down a job if it didn't allow them to access social network sites or their personal email during work hours.