Companies are swarming to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, hoping to boost their brands, connect with customers and even find new employees.

But they're also struggling to rein in potential problems. Employers cringe at the thought of employees revealing proprietary information, hackers making mischief or a roomful of workers busy reconnecting with old high school friends on Facebook instead of doing their jobs.

The ubiquity of social networking – 77 percent of workers have a Facebook account, for example, and 61 percent of those access Facebook on the job, according to Boston-based Nucleus Research – complicates matters.

Nucleus last July estimated that on-the-job use of Facebook alone costs companies 1.5 percent of total employee productivity.

Policies on employee use of social networks are all over the map, from total bans on internal access to no policy at all.

A 2009 survey by the Minneapolis-based Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics found that just one in three businesses have a general policy for employee online activity including use of social networks.

The survey – titled "Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Compliance: What are Companies Doing?" – also found that half have no policy for employee online activity outside work, and just 10 percent have a specific policy addressing social networking sites.

Roy Snell, the society's CEO, said employers should have a clear policy in place and supervisors to enforce it while encouraging their employees to use social media to network with their industry peers.

The full story is available at the Sacramento Bee.