Social media hits work output
 There is absolutely no doubt that connectivity is a must to work and
live in a modern society. Most formal jobs today need a computer with
internet access and at home, internet use has become increasingly
popular mainly in the urban and suburban areas and rapidly penetrating
rural areas across the country.
The social networking sites, such as Myspace, Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, Friendster, and many other sites, becomes your cyber home;
your home away from home if you will, after you get acclimated to the
community.
You affinity to the sites becomes evident by the fact that if your
computer is down for a couple of days, or you can't log in for a few
days, for whatever reason, you miss the interaction of your favourite
social networking site. You miss the feeling of community that these
sites offer - no doubt.
But like in any good thing, this also comes with numerous
disadvantages particularly in the work environment. Productivity
decreases as a result of employees checking their social network
accounts, and some of them even play games online - who pays for all
these? Are you aware of the cost of this habit to the employer? How do
you deal with it; stricter policy compliance or awareness - or both?
The employee's time has become increasingly expensive in every single
industry and more so in the labour intensive service industries.
Employees should clearly understand that excessive personal internet use
at work is no more acceptable than spending time on personal phone
calls.
Self-discipline
Of course, you may not be able to restrict access only to some
selected programs; however, there are so many alternatives that simply
override your restrictions. Employees can also be monitored, but this
seems to be an extreme situation. You might also think about blocking
internet access entirely but you should know that this is not a good
solution. Sometimes your employees have to do research online about the
projects they are working on or as a part of the sales development
process. So it's a big dilemma for the employer.
What is really important is awareness. The employer has to make it
clear that spending time online during work hours for activities not
related to the job description is not tolerated because it affects the
performance of the company. Honesty, integrity and loyalty to the
organisation are natural attributes that would ensure sanity more than
the imposition of technical barriers.
An employee doing social networking to unwind after long hours of
challenging work can be tolerated to some extent as the person has to
unwind a bit and who knows maybe new ideas will pop up - the human mind
works in mysterious ways and strange things happen. Some employees such
as programmers or designers, feel the need to relax, read and see things
that are not strictly related to their work, to unwind.
Honesty
The correct assessment of the workload an employee can handle and
monitoring productivity would give you an idea how much time may be
available for an employee to engage in non-work related browsing.
Setting optimistic targets that will use the entire working hours with
time to take breaks will discourage people from spending time on social
networks.
If the targets are met, then it doesn't really matter whether an
employee is logging on to Facebook or not. If targets are not being met,
then this is a clear issue of incompetence or lack of commitment on the
part of the employee which needs to be addressed.
If employees like to use their time to 'tweet' or 'update a status',
then they are free to do so. But they could also have a snack, make a
phone call home or get a haircut. It really doesn't matter. Remember,
companies figured out policies around personal phone calls back in the
day, and it was done without all the hand-wringing and head-scratching.
This is no different.
Clear policy and guidelines to use social networks will help maintain
productivity. But more importantly employee honesty, integrity and
loyalty are primary demands to overcome this issue for the good of both
parties. |
