If you are still blocking your employees from using social media because you fear it will halt productivity, you’ve been reading the wrong research.

In an article published Nov. 11 in the Harvard Business Review, writers Jeanne C. Meister and Karie Willyerd make the case for the “uber-connected” organization of 2010. First, they assert, access to social media improves productivity. They point to the results of a study conducted by the University of Melbourne in Australia, which found that those who browse the internet for non-work-related purposes — within reason of course — are 9 percent more productive than their counterparts who don’t. (We wrote about this study when it was published in April. Read it here.)

Meister and Willyerd point to two other reasons companies should champion the use of social media: they maintain that the new workforce will seek out jobs that encourage the use of it, and add that companies that provide access to IM, Facebook, wikis, Twitter, etc. have more engaged workers.

If anything, keep this in mind: Those millennials… they “are prepared to bypass corporate IT departments if these tools are blocked.”

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