How times have changed – and for once I’m not just talking about the economic situation. Just last year social networking sites were seen as the cause of all evil by employers and, often, HR practitioners. Lazy staff would sit browsing all day long, chatting to their friends (who also apparently had nothing to do) and updating their status (“at work and bored”). There was also the moral conundrum as to whether or not to “look up” potential recruits, who seemed to have no qualms about what incriminating pictures were there for anyone to see.

Now things are different on both sides. As jobs are squeezed it’s unlikely anyone thinks they will have time to sit idling on the net, and anyone in the unfortunate position to be looking for a new position would be well advised to keep their “net-rep” in check.

But employers are also now welcoming these tools. Several speakers at this year’s CIPD HRD conference admitted that banning sites such as Facebook and Twitter at work would deter future generations of talent, “who use them like an extension of their arm”, from joining their organisations. Other speakers said they had begun to embed them into their training and development practices. The idea of “reverse mentoring” (where Gen Y helps its older and more senior colleagues get to grips with the likes of Twitter) was particularly innovative. Of course the idea of using free platforms to share learning and knowledge is particularly welcome in the current economic climate, but regardless of that it seems to make a lot of sense. It’s flexible, real-time and cost efficient, especially when you consider that, according to one of the speakers, only 10 per cent of formal training is transferred to the workplace.

Retracting bans on these various sites will not be easy but perhaps Twitter is a good start. The site has been designed not to take up much of anyone’s time but can be used by organisations in a number of innovative ways in the learning and development arena – networking, sharing ideas and knowledge and links to articles to name but a few.