Ever since the advent of social media networks, employers have been trying to devise ways to prevent employees from using the sites in the workplace. Employers see the sites as a huge drain of the staff’s time and believe they are one of the biggest killers of productivity. It is true that a lot of time is spent on the websites instead of performing work duties, and some employees spend far too much time checking posts. However, new research has now been released suggesting social media site usage may not actually be that bad. In fact, there could even be major benefits for employers.

Do you Ban Social Media Site Use at Work? You Could be Causing More Harm than Good!

A new study conducted by Warwick Business School shows that banning the use of social media access in the workplace is more likely to kill productivity than allowing staff access. Any employer believing the opposite is true needs to have a rethink. Some downtime in the workplace is a good thing.

Employees cannot work for 4 hours straight without a break and be expected to be as productive at the end of that 4-hour stretch as they were at the start. Taking a few minutes here and there to check Facebook can mean employees’ productivity actually increases.

Warwick Business School’s Professor of Information Systems, Joe Nandhakumar, ran the investigative study. He believes that some workers are better at organizing their workflow if social media site access is allowed. Knowledge workers in particular can perform better at work if access is provided.

Rather than social media being a distraction, Nandhakumar believes the opposite to be the case. Employers just need to find the positives and not concentrate on the negatives. He has also pointed out that the use of social media may be a new issue for employers to deal with, but they have faced a similar situation in the past with the use of email. That was thought to be a huge drain of time, yet evidence suggests that not to be the case. Take it back even further, and the use of the telephone was believed to be a killer of productivity. In actual fact, social media, email and the telephone make workers more productive, and allow them to achieve much more during their working day.

Social media use has been shown to increase productivity

If employers believe that employees should be spending 100% of their working day dealing with working matters, they will naturally see social media use as a drain on productivity. However, employees are not necessarily goofing off when they access Facebook. Many check the sites intermittently while performing work duties. The younger generation especially is particularly skilled at multi-tasking, and can keep an eye on Twitter, update Facebook, send emails and answer the phone at the same time.

These workers are able to cope with highly varied workloads, and banning social media use may actually kill productivity. Without some entertainment provided by Facebook, workers become bored, less productive, and less willing to work hard for their employers. Taking a short break from work can actually help to increase mental focus when they are working.

Studies have shown that it is not possible for people to concentrate for more than an hour at a time. Others suggest 45 minutes is more realistic, or even 20 minutes depending on which study you read. What is clear is concentration drops off after time, and simply taking 5 minutes an hour to check Twitter will actually have a positive effect. Workers will also be more creative and efficient. Clear benefits in certain industries.

Market research firm Ipsos was contracted by Microsoft to conduct a study into social media usage in the workplace. The study showed that 46% of workers felt that they were more productive if they took a few minutes off to check Facebook. There were some surprising differences between workers from different countries. Workers in India for example, found they were much more productive at work if their employers allowed some social media time. 71% of respondents from the Indian subcontinent agreed they were more productive if allowed access to Facebook, Twitter and other popular social media websites

The best approach? Use common sense!

There will always be workers who are overactive on social media websites and spend more time on those sites than they do working. Clearly these employees must be advised that the time they spend on the sites is unacceptable. However, not all workers will abuse the good nature of an employer.

How can social media site use be managed? There are some technical solutions that are highly beneficial in this regard, not just for curbing social media use, but also preventing personal Internet use from becoming problematic.

By installing a web filter – such as SpamTitan – the use of social media websites can be blocked entirely. A better tactic is to block access to the sites at specific times of the day. By doing this an employer can be more relaxed about usage of the sites, yet still ensure that employees are controlled. An example would be to block use of the sites during busy times, or in the mornings and directly after lunchtime.

The management can decide on an acceptable level and then configure the web filter accordingly. Controls can even be defined by employee or department. The marketing department and other groups of individuals who need to be creative could be set different limits than other workers in the business.

Data entry staff may need a break every few hours. Providing some access could therefore improve the level of work that is achieved each day. With a configurable web filter, employers can easily experiment and find the right balance. This may take a little time, but if it results in improvements to productivity and efficiency, this will be of great benefit to the organization.