Introduction
Social networks such as facebook, twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn have affected the performance and productivity of employees both negatively and positively. Some of these social networks are purely chatting sites where employees waste valuable working time on. On the other hand, these sites are source of information where employees can acquire information from hence gain more knowledge.
Let us look at both sides of the coin before concluding anything i.e. both the advantages and disadvantages of allowing employees to have access to the social networking sites during working hours.
Information resource and Fast communication medium
It is believed that most of the very successful businesses have the best and fast communication mediums. These forms of communication devices allow employees to surf the internet a high speeds allowing them access to information that in one way or another assist them in solving some of their work problems.
Also their access to some social networks e.g. LinkedIn may help them meet new professionals form different fields who can assist them in solving some problems. This is most commonly done by posting questions of any kind and the people involved in those fields responds to them at no cost, one can also view previously answered questions (Reinhild 16). This would be cheaper than contacting a specialist for some advice.
Social networks help in improving communication between employees, suppliers, and customers. Communicating through the social networks helps in reducing the workload of some employees for instance if customers and the employees communicate through them the overload on emails would be greatly be reduced and the employees would be able to filter the information by their relevance.
In other words, it is easier to retrieve only the information that is relevant if you are communicating through social networks than if you are communicating with e-mails (Reinhild 16).
Team work Building
According to a research conducted by AT&T enterprise, social networks help in building and encouraging teamwork in a firm. This is due to the increased collaboration between colleagues who can easily communicate to each other from their working positions. The idea of having something in common in this case a social network account helps in strengthening employees’ inter personal relationships.
This can be directly interpreted to better performance and productivity by the employees as a result of good working conditions which the employees are happy about (At&t Enterprice 4-6).
Advertisements and purchases
Most social networks contain links to software application and other websites that may be beneficial to firms. Let us first talk about software applications and tools that are advertised on the social networks websites. Most software vendors usually offer an initial free trial version of the application.
This allows a company to download the application at no cost. The employees also get a chance of familiarizing themselves with the application and evaluating its performance. By so doing, a company is able to only purchase applications that are of good quality and reliable (Jeff 2-3).
Companies can also advertise their products on the social network websites which is cheaper than other forms of advertisements. They also target more people due to the fact that they are globally available to anyone with access to the internet.
Time Wastage
On the other hand, though the social networks enhance productivity in some ways it also costs most companies a lot of money. Philip Wicks conducted a research and concluded that employees at companies that do not restrict access to social networks waste on average 40 minutes every week.
This added up to a total of 233 million working hours wasted monthly considering all the companies that allow unrestricted surfing (they account for 54% of all companies in the country). This is quite a lot of time even though not all workers are 100 percent productive even those that have no access to social networks (Natalie 16).
Considering the positive side of it i.e., before the emergence of social networks employees used to waste time on water dispensers, coffee talk and chitchatting with colleagues. The constant walking o the slippery floors consumed more time and attention that the social networks do.
Leakage of information
It is very hard to know a genuine friend in the social networks and this puts companies at a great risk due to the face that some company’s secrets can be obtained through its employees for instance a competitor may want some information about a company’s operations and pretend to be a customer.
After contacting a employee though a social network e.g. LinkedIn he can easily acquire the information. Another way that confidential information can be exposed is when the employees upload information about a company without considering its importance
Exposure to Viruses and Spyware
Some items found these networks are not secure and it has been a big for IT experts to determine genuine and secure items from the insecure ones. It is clear that employees use company’s computers and network to access this websites, this makes them vulnerable to spyware and viruses. Removing them and repairing the damages cost by the virus and spyware would costs a company a lot of valuable time and money.
Bandwidth and Legal Liability
The cost of transferring data from the computers that the employees use and the social network servers is incurred by the companies. This is a cost that has no direct returns to the company and if not regulated it would lead to massive losses.
Also, though this would have no effect on companies with advanced communication devices, the constant surfing may over load a firm’s network for instance if every employee wax surfing the internet and either downloading or uploading files then the network of accompany may be overloaded with activities that are not productive.
The employees may also engage in illegal activities through on the social networks e.g. uploading pirated material. If a firm is unable to determine the person it may be forced to suffer the consequences.
Conclusion
Social networks can either affect a company’s success or failure either directly or indirectly. In my opinion, social networks are good and they should not be banned from use during working hours. What companies should do is that they should come up with policies that would help in regulating them.
These policies should include how long one is supposed to access these websites, what they should and they should not disclose about the company etc. They should also clearly define the punishment of not following them.
Lastly, companies should set up an internal social network that with unlimited access that all employees can socialize in. the management should also encourage the use of the internal social network over the external ones and this would help in solving this problem which I consider as more social than it is technological.
Works Cited
At&t Enterprice. “Social Networking in the Workplace Increases Efficiency”. (2008). Web.
Jeff, Clabaugh. “Social media advertising to quadruple” (2011): pp 2-3 Washington Business Journal. Web.
Natalie, Stechyson, ” Communication: Sixty per cent of region’s firms use technology, compared to 55 per cent nationally” Knowing the value of social media. B1, (2011): pp 16 Telegraph-Journal. Web.
Reinhild, Bode. Paola Andrea Victoria and Dora P. Arévalo Valencia. “Knowledge management and communication to address information access and power asymmetries for resource-poor producers in value chains”. Issue no.4 (1). (2008): p 5. Knowledge Management for Development Journal. Web.