Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, is becoming more and more popular in our daily life. Through these platforms, people could easily create their own social network and keep track of the updates from their interested groups. Nevertheless, social media also creates some embarrassments or even problems for certain companies. A list of complaints from employers could be as follows:
- Confidential information was exposed and published on social media. The company might lose competitive advantages.
- It affects employee’s productivity.
- Unauthorized information was posted.
Some companies realized that their employees are addicting to social media and spending so much official working hours on that. As a consequence, most of companies are in a moral dilemma. The dilemma is how the companies deal with the situation: the social media websites should be blocked or not. They should be blocked because the social networks influence the productivity of the employees and the companies’ confidential information are exposed. They should not be blocked because the functionality of the social networks – investigating potential customers and potential business opportunities. In a word, is it morally permissible for the companies to block the social media websites when take into account the functionality and the side-effects of the social networks?
Companies are attempting to make internal policy on restricting use social media during their working time. Unfortunately, in most cases, the policy failed. They found that employees could use other approaches for instance office telephone to make connection with their social group members. It happened more often in the companies where employees’ working motivation is low.
To minimize this dilemma, companies should always see the bright side of social media. If company culture can motivate people work efficiently, employees will spend less time on social networking in their working time. If they lack motivation in their work and spend so much time not on their work, it is the employers’ responsibility to figure out the best solution. At the same time, companies should encourage their employees to make social contacts to facilitate their work and generate innovative ideas.
s138561
4 comments:
Yes, there needs to be social media governance at the corporate level.
But on the other hand, blocking employee access to social media apps is clearly not the best knee-jerk reaction, either. There's a helpful whitepaper on the subject. It's called “To Block or Not. Is that the question?”
http://bit.ly/9f8WOT
It has lots of insightful and useful information about identifying and controlling Enterprise 2.0 apps (Facebook, Twitter, Skype, SharePoint, etc.)
Share this with your IT Dept is you are blocked from social media at work, or if they are threatening to block.
The problem of distraction during working hours is not a new phenomenon; there is only a new source of distraction available to employees. The company can act against the behaviour of employees when they are using social media during work-time, especially when productivity decreases. The use of social media is visible so it not very hard for managers to forbid employees to use social media during work-time. During the breaks, they are permitted to use social media so blocking is not an answer to a possible decrease in productivity
A real problem is that it gets more easy to spread confidential company information. I think that policys fail because of the anonimity of the internet and the bad communication to employees about the dangers of spreading confidential information. Employees must know that it is immoral behaviour since it can hurt the company and therefore the employees.
U1236310
ANR 702653
I think blocking the social media websites in the companies could be a solution, since employees come to companies for work but not for spending time in the social media websites. The companies pay for the employees’ work, if the employees just spend less time on the work and even lead the confidential information of the companies to spread, in some levels, we can say that the employees are morally wrong. The employees have the responsibility to work efficient and keep the confidential information of the companies not to spread.
On the other hand, companies also have responsibility to motivate the employees to work efficient and let them know that is morally wrong to hurt the company by spreading the confidential information.
S177575
I am a Facebook user. I get great fun on this website. As this writer said, the website helps us create social network and meet new friends. Saying about using much time on this kind of websites, I think most of the companies avoid their employees surfing online when they are working. To avoid the social media dilemma is not only the responsibility for these media but also the company limitation and individual self-consciousness. Stop these social media is not a good way to solve the problem, but improve the time limitation for people online maybe is a way to improve the problem.
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