Out of 1.4 billion people who use the internet, over 25 million people have a LinkedIn profile.
The 64,000-employee global financial services firm, Merrill Lynch, with its own corporate profile and over 500 employees on LinkedIn, provides a series of declarations on its website that the company is grounded to the tenets of corporate social responsibility:
- We foster broad inclusion in the financial markets.
- We recognize the importance of…encouraging investment in ways that support responsible and sustainable development.
- We believe that there is a high correlation between appropriately-regulated free capital markets and a free society.
- Merrill Lynch’s Office of Public Policy…engages in dialogues with interested groups throughout the world, believing that open communication and mutual understanding facilitate a just and tolerant society.
Despite this, I received an email today from a friend of mine who holds a senior-level position at Merrill Lynch and informed me that the company recently began blocking access to LinkedIn.
I appreciate firms wanting to increase worker productivity by restricting access to pornographic, gambling, and retail websites, even instant messaging applications, but a networking tool like LinkedIn? Surely, the IT department recognizes the difference between sites with high malware possibility like MySpace and sites that restrict third-party applications like LinkedIn?
How does productivity go up if a financial advisor is restricted from investing in sustainable development and engaging in open communication and mutual understanding with global citizens?
My LinkedIn network includes 213 friends, colleagues, former co-workers and classmates, and assorted acquaintances representing 66 industries, including information technology, marketing, and telecommunications.
- My 213 contacts, growing in number every week, are themselves connected to 20,800 people. In other words, I am separated by two degrees from 20,800 people.
- Expanding to three degrees of separation, I am connected to over 1.7 million people who also have LinkedIn profiles.
If I can gain access to 1.7 million people through a simple message via messaging my 213 contacts who in turn message their contacts, imagine the power of a company like Merrill Lynch and how any number of their 64,000 employees could be connected to the world, answering questions, providing mentoring advice, and recruiting new employees.
What do you think?
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Comments:
Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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{ 3 comments }
I can understand why such a company might be wary of allowing its employees access to global, essentially uncontrolled networks like LinkedIn outside its own systems. There are privacy issues from the primary perspective, in that it might not want outsiders to have access to its employees (prevent targeting and headhunting for instance), but also from other effects such as a disgruntled employee answering questions negatively or linking up with other like-minded Li users. Lots of reasons. Of course, you such an employee could still do damage in their own time on their own computer, but that’s less controllable.
Clearly the executives at ML are not reading “Groundswell”.
I bet Merrill could get incredible feedback and generate new business from LinkedIn.
It’s too bad they hire people they don’t really trust. Sure makes me want to put my money with ML.
@David: I can understand a company preventing employees from accessing MySpace and Facebook, for instance, each of which allow viewable profiles to have third-party applications. LinkedIn doesn’t allow outside developers to plug into their site users, nor are there ads, which begs the question why any company, ML or other, would block it.
@Nooozeguy: For all I know, it’s not a ML-wide policy; might be specific departments. But the point remains which I tried to illustrate if the company backs CSR, why wouldn’t they take that to the openness of the web?
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