It’s surveys like this that drive my fellow blogger and social networking evangelist Kris Dunn completely bonkers.

A new survey of chief information officers by Robert Half Technology found that 54 percent “said their firms do not allow employees to visit social networking sites for any reason while at work.”

An additional 19 percent said that their organization allows the use of social networking sites for business purposes only, while some 26 percent said their workers could use such sites for personal use while on the job.

“Using social networking sites may divert employees’ attention away from more pressing priorities, so it’s understandable that some companies limit access,” said Dave Willmer, executive director of Robert Half Technology, in a press release about the study. “For some professions, however, these sites can be leveraged as effective business tools, which may be why about one in five companies allows their use for work-related purposes.”

Here’s my take: Doesn’t this sound a lot like the discussions and debates we used to have about employees using the Internet while at work? There was a lot of time and energy spent on policing shortsighted policies that were constructed around the notion that anyone who was on the Internet while at work must be goofing off and not doing their job.

That was a wrongheaded notion in many, many workplaces, and I can’t help but think that not allowing employees on social networking sites while they’re on the job is following along the same path.

We’ve written here at workforce.com about the perils and pluses of social networking, but a lot of that was focused on the notion of posting too much personal information online and how that might come back to bite you.

Smart companies, however, are finding ways to integrate social networking technology for the benefit of their workers, like BestBuy did with its BlueShirt Nation site. But, there are also potential legal issues for organizations that use social networking for recruiting, and forward-thinking organizations are proactively working to craft employee policies that deal with things like how workers use Twitter in today’s workplace world.

But telling workers they can’t use social networking sites while at the office seems to be a move that is both regressive and foolhardy, especially since so many workers use smart phones or other such devices to access their social networks. That’s a lot harder to police than it was back when you could simply block all Internet access on office computers.

Robert Half’s Willmer does offer one piece of solid advice along with this survey: a caution that employees should always exercise good judgment, no matter how lenient their company’s social networking policy.

“Professionals should let common sense prevail when using Facebook and similar sites—even outside of business hours,” he said. “Regrettable posts can be a career liability.”

Yes, that’s always the worst-case scenario. Workers can always post something regrettable that might damage their career, but to my way of thinking, that’s a lot more likely in a world where organizations try to keep employers away from social networking while on the job rather than coming up with a smart policy to deal with that eventuality.

Workers in this day and age are going to use social networking sites and I don’t think there’s any way to get around that. This latest survey simply tells me that all too many businesses simply haven’t faced up to that fact yet. Maybe more will use this recession as an opportunity to work on figuring that out.

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