According to the British website myjobgroup.co.uk about 6% of workers use Facebook for more than an hour a day. This means that one eighth of their workday is spent unproductively. The website estimates that social media devices could be costing Britain up to 14 billion pounds. This is lack of productivity is staggering. In the current recession those fortunate enough to hold jobs should be working to the best of their ability. If they do not, I fear that the recession will last significantly longer. Macroeconomics proves that unproductive workers can help to cause a multiplier effect and driving the real gross domestic product of a country down. I believe that office bans of Facebook could help spur companies productivity and overall profitability. These increases in profitability would help to rebuild the foundations of the world's economy one step at a time.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Facebook in the Office, To Ban or Not To Ban?
Facebook can be a blessing or a curse depending on a number of factors. Certain industries such as the music or production industry thrive on networking forcing employees to create and maintain professional accounts. This is a productive example of Facebook use at work. However, corporations around the world are looking into the vast amount of lost productivity from Facebook and other social media devices. This underutilization of labor can be devastating to a nation's economy. Most of these unproductive workers are paid on salaries, preventing the desire to work to their fullest potential.
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I think everyone can agree that Facebook in the work place is a bad idea but I think the bigger problem is people's work ethic. There are almost infinite ways to slack off in an office environment. Not to mention the almost infinite amount of websites people could use besides Facebook to slack off. There are so many aspects to this argument that make this topic far more difficult to solve than it seems. I myself have worked in an office environment where the internet is monitored so the employees won't go on sites that are not work related. As you can imagine to many people this is offensive and doesn't sit well with a majority of the employees. Also there are many times where there isn't much work to be done and I literally sit and twiddle my thumbs because I can't go online. On the other hand if I'm a boss or a business owner the last thing I want my employees to be doing is messing around the internet while they're on the clock. Both sides are very clear to me and it is a very difficult decision. Each company needs to come up with a different plan for either not allowing the use of specific sites or a monitoring program. Efficiency is money in business but just the same unhappy employees are inefficient. I think what it really comes down to is an individuals work ethic which will always determine whether or not they're going to be good for a company.
ReplyDeleteThis topic is a controversy for many reasons. First of all, it has been proven that social media Web sites have helped businesses blossom, but there's a difference between sites like LinkedIn (strictly for business) and Facebook. Personally, I believe that Facebook at work is just a distraction and a waste of the business' money.
ReplyDeleteIf the average worker is using 1/8 of their day, that's one out of 8 people that the company could take off their payroll. Imagine how much a business could save by ensuring that each of their employees were utilizing his/her time effectively. The amount they are overpaying by could be used in research and development, sales tactics, or marketing schemes. Overall, it is wasting both the employee's and the employer's time.
I definitely agree that facebook should be banned in the work place to increase overall productivity. Businesses should monitor their computers and what websites are visited by their employees. If a certain employee is obviously wasting the companies time by going on facebook and other websites irrelevant to their work, they should consider firing them. If employees know that the computers are being monitored, I believe productivity would increase. At the same time, I believe that businesses are being somewhat biased when it comes to facebook because they often use it when hiring new employees. If facebook has an overall negative impact on the workplace, I believe that companies shouldn't use it when considering new employees.
ReplyDeleteI feel like monitoring in the workplace is alright for overall productivity, but monitoring outside the workplace is completely wrong. It goes beyond privacy laws and invades employees personal space. How does it this get regulated? The company has to have policies in place or it is wrong in every circumstance
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