Do 54% of businesses have it wrong? The majority believe that allowing your employees to visit social media sites like Facebook and Twitter while at work will decrease productivity. Apparently, they’re absolutely wrong.
Depending on which study you look at (and there are several that yield opposite conclusions) you can make a case for either side. We’re sticking with this one from SocialCast, probably because it looks really nice and the facts make sense. Before you dismiss it, think about it. If employees are allowed to relax a bit at work and stay on top of their social profiles, they time they spend doing work should increase in efficiency.
Then again, maybe it won’t. Who really knows? It’s one of those situations where, depending on who you’re asking and what study you reference, a case can be made for or against social media use at work. We’re going with this one:
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Learn more about working and social media on this social media blog.
About JD Rucker
At our workplace, we allow our employees to surf the internet for personal use under a monitored environment. Since we started implementing this policy, we’ve seen that the productivity at our office improved and less employees abuse the free-surfing benefits.
I see people who participate on social network sites like facebook or twitter, sometimes share this kind of messages: “Made very Good productivity last two days! Just because I am not on Facebook!”. Companies, who you talk about in this post, might have this kind of feeling. They might see these social network sites as major distracting things and hence avoid them! But I think, if your business has something to work with online activities, I would recommend them to engage their employees for sometime on social networks. Just as the stats reveal, I believe, RULES should sometimes ignore to handle these situations
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Twitter and Facebook are powerful tools and great for productivity in small business and marketing but I am not sure if staff usage is good.
Some offices seem to find that staff are more productive and spend less time emailing friends when allowed to have Facebook and twitter on in the background while others have found that staff spend much to much time chatting to friends and looking through their friends profiles.
Well I myself find pretty addictive some of the new .me websites especially catchy ones are formspring.me and simpleanswer.me
just if my boss knew how much time I spend on those during my work time
The evidence is pretty clear. Employers who restrict use of social media tools in the office are making a mistake. Employees who feel like they have a good work/life balance are happier and more productive people. Nice to see we know have data to prove this.
Hi – i represent a hotel in Malta and this week we launched a competition on our facebook fan page which increased our fans from 5K to 17K. How do you suggest we keep them coming for more and how can we use this list for marketing purposes?
Very nice article. Everyone is going to have a different opinion on this topic. I personally believe allowing employees to use social sites on a personal accord during work, with MODERATION can be very useful. Liked said above, taking a break from work stress will lead to increased productivity in the long run!
Awesome Article! I will now be printing and sharing this with my GM and the IT guys. The way I see it, my co-workers and I all use Twitter and Facebook on our smartphones while at work anyway and we still get everything done. This just makes it easier and continues to promote the “business mindset” since we’re using an office computer instead of our phones.
I do not see any point in disallowing employees from visiting social media sites. Rather it allows employees to fresh up their working ideas after a short, yet desirable, break. From the business point of view, organizations should employ maximum of their employees’ network to build community around their products and services. By doing so, they are really maximizing their business chances.
There are 2 questions:
1) are there really separate breaks for social interaction?
2) Is a social break a good idea for morale?
As for question 1;
The data are very clear that any interruption in a train of thought is very costly, and has an adverse impact on productivity. If an employee can separate time-on-task from time spent on social exchanges, then work should not suffer.
As for question 2;
Duh! Unless you have some kind of fight going on, that is detrimental to your mental health at the moment, social interaction is almost always positive.
This article really caught my attention. It really did make me question whether social media use at work does yield higher productivity. After much thought, I am going to have to say I agree with that statement to some degree. I am currently a college student. From experience I do believe when I take a break and visit SMS’s while studying I can become more productive after. But, that is not to say this is the case for everyone and it certainly does not mean this is an effective strategy for me ALL of the time. The internet can be extremely distracting and depending on what is going on and what content I am viewing definitely determines my productivity. Like anything in life, SNS are good in small doses. I am sure they have the ability to aid productivity at work yet they should not be abused. If companies are going to allow their employees to view them in the office they have to trust that they have enough self control and will not take advantage of their privileges.