More and More companies are struggling with social media use by employees. Companies are banning social media at work, the question is- will this help your business at all?

Cisco did a study on employees and their social media use and it was found out that employees use social media to do personal things on company time.  So companies are wary about letting their employees use social media in the workplace.  Will people use social media only for work?  Should the employee spend so much time on social networks?  Should the company ban all social networks so that employees can get more work done in the office? The question is -will banning social media bring productivity back to your business?  Will the benefits outweigh the negative effects of banning social media in your office? You have to think about your business and how it makes use of social media.  If you are not taking advantage of social media enough, then banning them may not be that productive at all.

The thing is well all know even before Facebook and YouTube became big, employees who didn’t really like to focus on work found time to waste time in the workplace.  There was the long break, the water cooler talk, computer games and all kinds of distractions that really prevent people from giving their 100 percent of attention to the work at hand. In most cases banning social media in the workplace is pretty useless.  If individuals cannot access facebook and other social networks in the office through the office computer, then they access the social networks using mobile devices such as phones.

People who are not very dedicated to work will find other ways to waste time.  It may not be social media, but it could still be other unproductive things.  It is a much more effective to have a social media policy instead, one that harnesses the power of social media and your workers’ online activities to benefit your business.  This way you are not struggling to prevent people from using social networks during office hours and instead are making the channels available to them so that they can use them for good.

Also, if you want your employees to really work hard, do not measure the time that they are working and instead measure the results. They could be effective even when they use social media every now and then.  People work differently from one another so employers must make sure that their policies bring out the best in all of their employees.  Some employees feel happier and are willing to work harder when they don’t feel they are being controlled.

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