How Does Social Media Use Affect The Workplace?
Pros of Social Media
When it comes to your business, social media can add great value. There are several pros to creating a company social media profile. This allows your business to have an online footprint that is easily searchable. You can provide updates in real-time for your clients and attract potential new clients who are looking online for services you provide or products you manufacture. Social media allows your customers and potential customers to give you instant feedback through comments, allowing you to tend to their needs right away.
Additionally, social media is a great promotional tool that allows you to get the PR that is practically free. We say “practically” because you will no doubt be employing someone to be your social media manager.
Another pro for implementing social media practices in the workplace is that many recent graduates/ millennials you may hire to work at your company are technological natives. That means they were basically born with their smartphones in their hands. They know the ins and outs of every social media platform and are always the early adopters when new platforms enter the market.
However, social media can also affect the workplace in a negative way.
Cons of Social Media
One of the major cons of social media is that it can provide a great distraction from the rest of the work that needs to be done. Your social media manager will have their hands full, tweeting, instagramming, and blogging. Alas, it is your other employees you should be worried about.
Blocking social media in the workplace is proven to be ineffective. Employees will instead check their phones and in turn, waste even more time. Furthermore, when you ban something like social media, employees will see that as a challenge and spend less time working and more time discreetly checking their mobile profiles.
Nonetheless, before you implement a “No Facebook” policy, consider this: When social media sites aren’t blocked, it can decrease productivity at the beginning, but after the novelty of having social media at the office wears off, employees will get their work done. It will also help you weed out the employees who simply don’t care about their work and want to spend all day talking with friends online and updating their personal blog.
If you do allow social media to be a driving presence in your workplace, remember that the Internet can get company computers very sick. Malware and other intrusive software are easily downloaded via social media. Remind your employees not to download or click on anything fishy. The last thing you need is a company-wide virus that shuts down online communications for days because one of your employees accidentally clicked on a cat video.
It is important to try and avoid the negative sides of social media use and utilize all the positives it can bring to the company. A proper online training on social media can help employees do that. Online training software can be designed for the purpose of making the employees aware of negatives and positives of social media use in the workplace.