A Curious Case of the End Justifies the Means

“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it” according to Eric Qualman, best-selling author of Socialnomics and motivational speaker. This may be self-evident, but the way in which companies think about social media the risk vs the reward— employee engagement, impact on productivity, collaboration —is constantly evolving”.

According to a survey conducted by TeamLease, organizations that allow unrestricted usage of social media at their workplace risk losing 15% to as much as 45% of the total productivity owing to social media indulgence alone and around 32% of the total time spend on social media during working hours is used for personal work indicating a huge loss of official resources and productivity. This underpins the fact that even though employees may primarily access social networking sites for business-related activities, it does not necessarily signal business focus and can have a detrimental effect on productivity. Apart from the loss of productivity, survey respondents also described that the extensive usage of social media by employees has resulted in an increase in loss of confidential information, defamation, misinformation and employee solicitation.

Drunken driving however cannot be a case against cars. Social media is emerging as an important tool to help employees collaborate more easily and its valued by employees particularly when they operate out widely dispersed environments. For many others, like the millennials, social media has almost become a way of life and expression. Hence many organisations are adapting to this behaviour by channelsing important messaging, conversations and communications leveraging social media even if it is restricted within the enterprise. In an era where emails seem outdated to the new breed of employees at the work place social media has a potential to become the key messaging tool and at the core liberating for the new gen employees. With improved access to internet bandwith and speed in data transmission we are witnessing interesting innovations at workplace using social media. If organisations are able to connect employees with a strong sense of purpose the worries around misuse and loss of productivity can be minimised. As a matter of fact, motivated employees shall become trailblazers of channelising social media capabilities gainfully and intelligently to collaborate and innovate. One cannot wish away the important of social media at workplace today just like we cannot wish away the importance of Internet and there is no better testimony than social media gainst like Facebook and Whatsapp seriously considerly launching the enterprise versions of both these tools (already on BETA for same). The argument is really hinging on how much is too much. Anything unrestricted comes with its risk however a carefully designed social media policy can help employers optimise organisational needs with those of their employees. Some suggested measures would include :