Social Networking at Workplace

We live in a world where staying connected with people at all times has become a part of life. Even businesses have not been left untouched by this growing bug of social networking. The issue becomes all the more relevant when social networking takes away those minutes or hours of our daily life when we are supposed to create value for our organisations. The growth of social networking platforms has been phenomenal. Millions of people around the world with access to the Internet are members of one or more social networks. They have a permanent online presence where they create profiles, share photos and thoughts with friends and spend hours catching up with them.

A little bit of maths can reveal why most employers are hesitant to provide access to social networking sites at the workplace. If every employee in a 100-strong workforce spent 30 minutes on a social networking site every day, that would work out to a loss of 13000 hours of productivity in one year! A 50 hour of non productive work per day can be a cause of great concern for any management. Especially, when workers are paid on an hourly basis and companies taking cost cutting measures; it is difficult for management to provide the luxury of social networks to their employees. At the same time social networks can be a major consideration for keeping up the employee demands.

Also, social networks have evolved as a means of communication preferred by today’s employees. For managers it is important to think of a strategy for generating value through these social networks to justify the opportunity cost involved in embracing these networks. The possibilities for leveraging social media tools are enormous. Companies can utilize these social networks for widening there reach at a little cost. Social networks are emerging as an upcoming marketing and advertising channel. Social networks can be evaluated from the standpoint of corporate communications where Intranet is being updated by adding social features to existing processes. It can be used as a new approach to human resources strategy by bridging internal and external communications and tackle pressing recruitment and retention concerns.

Companies can use the idea of social networking in promoting informal employee networks or communities. They can be an inexpensive and efficient way of sharing knowledge and ideas. These informal networks can serve a two way purpose: first, it will curb the urge of social networking in the employees while they are at the workplace; second, it will lead to a better knowledge management and make the organization more learning oriented.

It is vital to strike a balance between allowing useful social networking to take place while restricting loss of man-hours. That can be done by permitting a restricted access to the sites, educating and training the staff about the security issues for the organization, and laying down proper security and usage policy for accessing the social networking sites.

Himanshu is a chemical engineer but more than chemistry, he has a passion for adventure. A cool guy who has a “funda” of his own for everything that exists, ranging from why he wears such short shorts (probably because they are called shorts!) to why a thrill is so thrilling. He has a significant amount of work experience with Bechtel Corporation. He is also known as The Balli with the dazzling smile. Basically a cool guy from IIFT Delhi who smartly agreed to write for Techtonix.