Final Paper for Social Problems in the Workplace

In the

Workplace !!!

Author: Frank Harpenau

Social Media in the WorkplaceSocial Problems in the workplace


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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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http://www.shrm.org/about/foundation/products/documents/social%20media%20briefing-%20final.pdf

http://www2.viterbo.edu:2056/ehost/detail?sid=82458105-2987-402f-864a-653dc6a1e175@sessionmgr114&vid=0#db=e000xna&AN=359929

http://www.heartlandbank.com/heartland-bank-blog/understanding_facebook_twitter_youtube_in_the_workplace

http://www.ehow.com/info_10067176_impact-social-media-workplace-pros-cons.html

http://www.ehow.com/info_10067176_impact-social-media-workplace-pros-cons.html

http://www.toptensocialmedia.com/social-media-social-buzz/10-pros-and-cons-of-social-media/

http://www.toptensocialmedia.com/social-media-social-buzz/10-pros-and-cons-of-social-media/

Final Paper for Social Problems in the Workplace

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