Post on 07-Apr-2023
Social Media in the WorkplaceSocial Problems in the workplace
Author: Frank Harpenau
We live in a world driven by technology and every day social
media assumes a more prominent role as a preferred channel of
communication. People are connected better today with what is
going on in the world than they have ever been. People use social
media to know if their favorite sports team won or if Aunt Betty
won at the casino and it’s all a finger touch away. The top four
social sites are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+ which
have become a must for the social media fan. However, with
employees spending so much time on social media there is a sharp
decline in day to day work being done. Companies have to deal
more with declining profits because of low work productivity and
its costing millions and lots of time dealing with non-productive
employees.
Allowing employees to access social media online during work
hours can be a distraction. Employees may lose valuable work time
playing games, talking to friends and updating their own personal
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Social Media in the WorkplaceSocial Problems in the workplace
Author: Frank Harpenau
profiles. To keep employees away from the distraction of social
media networks while on the job many companies have chosen to
implement a social media policy to limit the use of company
property for personal use on the internet. However, these
policies are difficult to enforce if employees are allowed to use
their personal cellphones or bring their own laptops to the
workplace. A company that I use to work for actually banned all
social media sites because it was affecting customer care and
they took it one step further by not allowing anyone to use their
personal cell phones while on company time. Sounds harsh but the
ban actually increased productivity tenfold.
This all seems too much to me so I did some research and
found that at companies with more than 1,000 employees with these
kinds of digital distractions can waste more than $10 million
each year with 60% of the distractions involving social networks,
text messaging, IMs or email. In fact just navigating between
multiple tabs and windows to keep an eye on a wide variety of
apps is a huge distraction in itself. Another interesting fact is
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Author: Frank Harpenau
almost half of the employees said they worked just 15 minutes or
less without getting interrupted or distracted and more than half
said they wasted at least one hour everyday due to social media
distraction.
This to me is a huge issue that will only get larger and
waste a lot of resources getting employees under control. Another
point to make is that even though these distractions are money
wasters for companies they also affect an individual’s ability
negatively to creatively solve problems or think deeply about
work-related issues, efficiently process information and meet
deadlines. So not only do you have employees being non-productive
you also have them losing their minds, so to speak, from being
distracted from social media.
Some companies that have a usage of internet will put a
tracker on each company computer to see what sites their
employees are going to. This helped some companies gain more
control of what employees are doing with their 8 hours a day
because they were able to run software to see where and how long
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Social Media in the WorkplaceSocial Problems in the workplace
Author: Frank Harpenau
they were on signed on for. However, companies also found that
when multiple employees use the same computer during the same
shift it was hard to pin point the offender so they took it a
step further and made it where each individual employee was
assigned a ID that they had to use each time they logged onto the
internet. Now they were able to track who the offenders were and
where they were going. It also gave employer’s specific
information on how long they were at each website which helped
them reprimand the right employee instead of the whole team. This
became beneficial for everyone and soon the non-productive
employees either quit or were let go.
With employees spending more time away from work by being
occupied with grandma posting a new recipe on Facebook or wishing
someone a happy birthday via Twitter employees were also putting
the company at a greater risk for malware or as some of us call
it a virus. This is obviously of the downsides with using social
media in the workplace because there is the possibility of
opening the corporate network to malware. Malware is intrusive
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Author: Frank Harpenau
software that can potentially damage company computers and
networks. This type of software can also create an entrance point
into the company's network for hackers causing a possible
security breach and place viruses in the system that can corrupt
files, destroy databases and possibly give the hackers valuable
personal information from consumers. Most corporate grade
firewalls protect against the intrusion of software such as
malware but sometimes all it takes is for an employee to click on
a link or open an email that gives the hacker full access. This
is also why medium to large corporations have the best
information technical support system they can afford. With the
often high use of work computers for internet access, technical
support teams for companies generally scan the system regularly
for malware but being a hacker or spreading viruses is not an
eight to five job, it’s around the clock protection and
protecting files or databases comes at a high cost for companies.
To me it seems more like playing the game battleship or playing a
chess match then it seems like a someone writing some strange
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Author: Frank Harpenau
code that has a bunch of zero’s and one’s put together. Either
way we see it we companies still have to protect what is theirs
before its posted all over the internet and on the news that your
company has a breach of stolen information by a group of highly
skilled nerds with nothing else to do while they’re waiting for
the next video game to come out.
For some companies they have embraced social media instead
of trying to fight the uphill battle with their employees.
Instead of trying to micromanage their employees they instead
used social media to their advantage in the workplace. Companies
started to use social media more as a public relations tool
because it allowed companies to benefit through posts, blogs and
pictures which makes the company easier to relate to for the
average consumer. Companies also started figuring out they can
use social media to gather mailing lists, promote special offers,
showcase product pictures and post positive media reviews from
customers or clients. By using this method companies began to
feel better and they now have a very inexpensive if not free way
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to promote their business to a wide audience all by the use of
social media. Today you will see companies growing their
marketing bigger because a large part of “getting the word out”
is done through social media and it will continue to grow.
Competition for business has always been fierce but now the
average Joe has just as much possibility for success as the big
boys do.
Another benefit that companies began to see for social media
is that they were able to find top notch employees. Sites like
LinkedIn which is an online social network for business
professionals that is designed specifically for professional
networking. The site connects people with finding a job,
discovering sales leads, connecting with potential business
partners rather than simply making friends or sharing media like
photos, videos and music. One of the best features about the site
for corporations is searching for highly qualified candidates to
full positions within their companies but one of the best
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features of this site is that companies can see peoples work
history, past or current co-workers opinions of the potential
employee and how these same co-workers rate the person on job
skills. If everything looks good companies can be proactive by
sending an email to people suggesting if the person is interested
in applying.
One of the more popular social media sites that companies
check is Facebook. Facebook’s began as a simple networking tool
for college students to mainly let their buddies know where the
parties were and to look at the pictures from those parties
afterwards. As Facebook grew companies were able to use the site
as a marketing tool for business to integrate their business
vision. Companies were using Facebook to exploit marketing
possibilities by creating a simple page for their business which
also served as having a website on Facebook or as some saw it was
having an interactive yellow pages listing which Facebook users
could follow and be notified when companies market different
products, offer deals and help build their brand.
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Social Media in the WorkplaceSocial Problems in the workplace
Author: Frank Harpenau
One of the things a lot of companies do before they hire
someone is to check current applicants Facebook pages to make
sure there aren’t any red flags before hiring them. Possible red
flags that companies check for most are such things like drugs,
drinking, badmouthing former employers, and lying about one’s
qualifications. Another good reason for checking out a potential
employees Facebook page before inviting them in for an interview
will be a good reflection of how good they’ll be at the job. I
know with being in law enforcement I am always asked if I have a
Facebook page and if they can have access to it. I asked my
current employer after I was hired if they have seen any Dr.
Jykel and Mr. Hide employees on Facebook while going through the
interview process. She told me I would not believe it even if I
saw it with my own eyes because some people are naive and believe
what they are doing on Facebook would not cause any issues after
getting hired as a law enforcement officer or in the criminal
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justice field. She then told me that one of the candidates was
high on the hiring process until they were able to look at his
Facebook page. Once they pulled up his page they saw that he was
part of a white supremacies group and the district he would have
been covering was highly populated with African Americans. As you
can just about guess he was not selected but did send her an
email asking what he could of done differently to become a
stronger candidate for the next time a position opens up. This
gives evidence that no matter what the position is that people
apply for your company still needs to check on every person who
is applying and be very through when checking.
Like Facebook, Twitter also began as a social networking
tool for friends to keep in touch but has thrived into a full
scale business marketing tool. Twitter uses 140 character or
“tweets” which are really just short messages that appear in the
homepage of the user who follows the chosen account. Twitter just
like Facebook have companies that post recent news, market
products and direct attention to special offers on new items. One
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of the unique things Twitter uses is a called “Hashtags” which is
a word or phrase followed by a pound sign that can also be
searched for on twitter. This means that followers or users
looking for info on a topic can be directed to your account by
simply attaching a hashtag to particular concepts or ideas in
your business’s tweets.
Some people believe that Twitter is just another social
media distraction and is just an amusing time waster. But you'll
find plenty of people arguing the opposite that Twitter can lead
to improved communication and some pick that it might even
replace e-mail and generate better productivity which in business
sense makes twitter a viable option for companies to use. I
personally do have a Twitter account but do not have all of the
expertise knowledge that I should have.
Google+ is a relative newcomer but is quickly becoming an
important tool for businesses looking to increase their presence
in the world of social media marketing. Google+ has features that
enable businesses to utilize its model in the same ways Twitter
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and Facebook are used such as product marketing, news release,
the building of a “follower” base, etc. However it also has
several features these others do not. Google+’s “Promote” option
allows you to customize your promotional content by creating
different groupings of followers that you can then market
differently to and then there is the “Measure” feature that gives
businesses an interactive measurement of how their Google+ page
is being used. One of the nicest features Google+ has is that it
offers a tutorial for businesses which gives advice on how best
to use its features.
I myself do not know enough about Google+ but am learning as
I go. However, the future of Google+ planned features that could
definitely disrupt the way we communicate and work with others. I
am sure Google+ will likely tie itself into Gmail, Calendar and
other Google Apps that businesses use. I believe it's likely
their social service will actually become a added "plus" to
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Google services, not just an additional noisemaker on our
computer.
The final one of the top four is YouTube and it probably is
the most controversial one of all four. When an employee sits on
YouTube watching videos they are using large sums of bandwidth
that will slow down the speed in which information is accessed
over the internet. Now if you have everyone doing the same thing
you can image how slow people’s connection to the internet is.
This is why some companies will put a limit of bandwidth when
accessing the internet or they will also keep track at how much
bandwidth an employee is using and if you are the secretary at
the front desk you might be have some explaining to do.
Completely cutting off the Internet for personal use may not
be the best approach to handling employee’s abuse their privilege
but in some cases it might be the only option. Being able to
access the Internet and social media sites can be a nice benefit
to employees. For instance, paying a bill online during a lunch
break or sending a note to a friend on Facebook can provide
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Author: Frank Harpenau
flexibility in the workplace. This, in turn, can boost employee
morale which is what every company wants, happy employees.
As time goes on social media will get further embedded into
the corporate world and social media conglomerates will keep
creating new apps to download on our smart phones and computers.
The social media “web” as some people call it has proven to be
an amazing source of information. It tracks our likes, dislikes,
updates and interactions with the world which are all critical
parts of the social media uprising which has led to a much
deeper understanding of consumer behavior. Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube and Google have all figured out ways to turn this data
into billion dollar industry. Within time these social media
icons will know what we’re thinking before we do by how we
interact with our devices every day.
The bottom line is these companies see their next wave of
growth coming from connecting us to the things in our lives. So
just don’t be surprised if one day you find yourself chatting
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with, or at least controlling, your next presentation by using
your favorite social media application.
Work Cited
http://www.toptensocialmedia.com/social-media-social-buzz/10-pros-and-
cons-of-social-media/
http://www.ehow.com/info_10067176_impact-social-media-workplace-pros-
cons.html
Social Media in the workplace- long link
Auditing Social Media: A Governance and Risk Guide - Viterbo Library
Social Media in the Workplace- long link
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