SOCIAL MEDIA IS ADVERSLY AFFECTING PRODUCTIVITY AT WORKPLACE
The growth in social media platform is increasing exponentially and questions are arising about their impact on the productivity at the workplace. This leads to another issue which is the affect of the grapevine spreading through social media causing harm to organization’s reputation.
In many businesses, social networking sites are used to communicate with clients. However these sites can also prove a great distraction to employees who show more interest in a “Facebook post” rather than their work. Social media is eclipsing traditional drains on employee productivity, such as excessive hallway talk or telephone usage. Nucleus research reported that Facebook shaves 1.5 percent of office productivity. Another research named as Morse claims that British companies lost 2.2 billion a year to the social phenomenon. Various discussions have been held about the negative consequences of social media which are not studied. This includes encouraging poor grammar usage, spreading of wrong information which are often treated as facts, creation of a culture in which single mistake can cause irreparable harm to a person’s reputation or career, making platform for cyber bullying and increase in threat of identity theft.
Although the discussions have concluded so much negative consequences of social media, major impact lies on the productivity of an organization. The continuous updating of tweets as well as Facebook activities during work hours gives rise to diminished productivity. Employer policies that prohibit or discourage social media usage for non work related issues are often impractical to enforce. While many companies have used some software products that block employee access to specific websites, the increase in number of mobile phones that operate independently of company networks make the blocking ineffective. Blocking access to...