Usage of Social Media in Workplace
A Conceptual Study
Dr.S.Kavitha
GRG School of Management Studies, Coimbatore, India [email protected], [email protected]
Abstract: Social media is widely being used by people all over the world. Advancements in IT and introduction of smart phones have increased the use of these social media tools. Social media play important role in the life of all human beings in creating relationship with others. These social media when used in work place may decrease the productivity of the employees. The man hours may be wasted in sending mails, chats, sharing pictures, videos etc., In order to overcome this problem, companies should design proper social media policy guidelines and properly circulate the same among the employees. This article explains the selected and widely used social media tools available. It highlights the pros and cons of using social media in the workplace. It also illustrates use of social media policy for companies for the effective use of social media in workplace with some examples.
Key words: Social Media Policy, Social Media Tools, Social Media Issues,Workplace
I. INTRODUCTION
Building the relationship among the people is the main requirement of any human being. People always wanted to stay connected, promoted and networked with each other. Today’s world is the world of Internet. Anything, everything in any field is possible due to the availability of internet. So building relationship using Internet is the latest trend in this area. In earlier days, human beings created the relationship using traditional methods like handshakes, sending stamped letters and also through word of mouth referrals but today’s relationship developed on social media web sites and apps like Face book, Linkedin and Google.
A. Social Media Definition: Media is used as an instrument by the people for communication. E.g., Newspaper or a Radio, In the same sense, social media could be social instrument of communication. In web 2.0 terms, it would be a website that does not just give us information and but interacts with us while giving information. So unlike other traditional channels like newspaper, TV, radio where we can not interact, but in social media we also have the ability to communicate so it can be considered as two-way street.
The dictionary definition of social media is that these are the Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking [1]. Various social media websites [2] have been pictured in figure-1 and their descriptions are given in table-1.
B. Social Media Websites
Fig 1. Scoial Media Websites
Source:http://d11sjosxu0rtpd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/social_media_strategy.jpg
TABLE 1.
LIST OF SOCIAL MEDIA WEBSITES Sno Social media/
Website
Logo About Description
1 Twitter
www.twitter.com [3]
Twitter is a social networking site, head quartered in San Francisco, USA, with a mission to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers
As per 31stMar 2015 statistics, twitter has 302 million monthly active users, 500 million tweets sent per day, 80 percent of active users on mobile and 33 languages supported. Twitters interface is easy to learn and use.
2 Facebook
www.facebook.co m [4]
Facebook is an online social networking service. Face book was launched on Feb 4, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. It is headquartered in Menlopark, California. Initially it was used only by Harvard students and from 2006 onwards anyone who is at least 13 years are allowed to become a registered user.
In this site, users can find friends, colleagues, relatives all floating around. Even though it mainly used for sharing photos, personal thoughts of individuals, sometimes users can also show their support by becoming fans for their favorite brands or organizations. As per 31stMarch 2015 statistics, it has about 1.44 million monthly active users, and available in 70 languages
3 LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com [5]
LinkedIn is the mainstream social media site that is actually geared towards business to meet customers, getting touch with vendors, recruiting new employees, keeping up with latest in business or
industry news. It is the worlds’ largest professional network with 300 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the globe.
1289739 followers.
4 XING
www.xing.com [6]
It is a social software platform.The largest business network in German-speaking countries already has 14 million members, It is used for enabling a small world network of professionals. It is used by people from over 200 countries.
It is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. Founded by Lars Hinsrichs in November 1, 2003, initially named as Open BC/Open Business Club and renamed as Xing in 2006.
5 Google I
www.plus.google.c om [7]
Best of Facebook and twitter combined into one site. Through this google has given a social site for users that everybody can use. It takes only few minutes to get set up the Google plus account. It is owned and incorporated by Google incorporation. It is launched in 2011.
Google + has the ability to post photos and status updates. This can be posted to the interest based community, Group different types of relationships into circles, Multi person instant messaging, Text and video chats called hangouts, Events location tagging, ability to edit and upload photos. 540 million monthly active users are there in Google +
6 Tumblr
www.tumblr.com [8]
Tumblr is micro blogging platform. It is a social networking website. It was founded by David Karp and Owned by Yahoo incorporation. Users can post multimedia and other content as short form blog. Company is head quartered in New York city.
As on June 2015, tumbler hosts over 238.8 million blogs. Tumblr lets to share anything, post text photos, quotes, links, music and videos from your browser. Themes can be customized as per the user requirements. Tumblr is available in 15 languages.
7 Pinterest
www.pinterest.co m [9]
Popular with women and do it yourself crowd, allows the users to share pictures, creative thoughts before and after the pictures of projects. These pictures can be easily saved, shared and pinned by others. Pinterest is a place to discover ideas for all your projects and interests. Pinterest is founded by Ben Silbermann on March 2010.
Visual discovery tools that can be used to find ideas for all your projects and interests. It is a web and mobile application company, which operates the photo sharing web sites.
8 Youtube
www.youtube.com [10]
Youtube is a video sharing service. It is the world’s second largest search engine. Through you tube users have the ability to comment on what they see. It allows the billions of people to discover, watch and share originally created videos.
9 Instagram www.instagram.co m [11]
Using Instagram we can capture and share worlds moments, free and simple ways to share life and keep up with other people. Instagram provides the facility of online mobile photo, video sharing and social networking services that enables users to take pictures, videos and share them on variety of social networking platforms.
It is available in 25 languages. Initial release is on 0ct 6th2010. The name is coined from the words Instant Camera and telegram – Instagram. On April 12, 2012 face book acquired Instagram. As per Dec 2014 statistics, Instagram has more than 300 million users
10 Whatsapp
www.whatsapp.co m [12]
Whatsapp messenger is a cross platform mobile messaging app. It allows the users to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS.
WhatsApp Messenger is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia and yes, those phones can all message each other! Because WhatsApp Messenger uses the same internet data plan that you use for email and web browsing, there is no cost to message and stay in touch with your friends.
It is an instant messaging app for Smart phones that operate under a subscription business model. In Jan 2015, Whatsapp was the most globally popular messaging app with more than 600 million active users. In apr 2015, Whatsapp reached 800 million active users. Whatsapp was founded by Jan Koum and Brian Acton on 2009 head quartered in Mountain view, California. In Feb 19, 2014 it was acquired by Facebook.
11 Myspace
www.myspace.co m [13]
Myspace is a social networking service. It mainly based on strong music emphasis. Myspace was launched by Chris Dewolfe and Tom Anderson in July 2003. Myspace is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California, It is available in 14 languages.
Myspace is a place where people come to connect, discover and share. This site gives access to 53 million tracks and videos. Each month Myspace is visited by 50 million users.
Source: Internet & websites
II. OBJECTIVES & METHODOLOGY
This conceptual study aims to identify the pros and cons of using social media in work place. It also aims to identify the guidelines for formulating an effective social media policy. The study mainly depends on secondary data. The pros and cons, company’s social media policies, guidelines are collected from company’s web sites and publications.
III. USING SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE WORKPLACE
least one person who is trusted should be appointed. He should also respond to all client queries, concerns and feedback posted on the profile page.
IV. PROS IN HAVING SOCIAL MEDIA IN WORK PLACE
According to Kristin Swain [14], The main benefit of social media usage in the workplace is that social media can be used as a public relations tool. The transparency can be measured through blogs, posts, pictures and makes and company easier to relate to even average consumers. Companies can utilize social media tools to gather mailing list from the database, sale and special offer information distribution to them and showcasing product pictures and post positive media reviews. It is a very inexpensive free way to promote business to wide audience. According to Rachelle [15], use of social media provides variety of benefits like productivity increase, collaboration, retention and intelligence.
According to Amy Dagliano [16], use of social media helps to empower employees – they can set up an internal social media platform can decrease the corporate hierarchy. So, social media can be used as an effective tool to increase employee engagement. She also quotes that recent studies shown that, social media interaction during workday helps to boost productivity and retention. The resources the employees utilize in social media, the knowledge they share and connections they make socially all these will support and compliment the work the employees are delivering. One more important benefits of social media is employees have the ability to analyze the internal trends of the company with current analytics technology. Using this technology employee skills sets can be consolidated to find potential leaders. According to Berkshire [17], use of social media in work place boost morale. Human beings always require some mental breaks. Whenever the people require break, they can send out few tweets on Twitter. Majority of the employers believe that mental breaks can boost morale of the employees and help employees focus better. Social media also increases the recruitment efforts, companies can find right persons for their organizations. It acts as the medium for interacting with potential employees. By posting (or tweeting) a job description on an interactive site, the job market is opened up to thousands of people based on different online connections in social media.
Social media also helps to solve work problems/questions. People can post their questions on interactive sites and can get more number of solutions of the problem from different people. Working experience in social media is considered as knowledge in the present environment. Companies can make use of the skills of employees on the social media, to create a whole new level of marketing strategy that can be helpful for the companies to improve their business.
social networking is good for all. It also looses the control it may prove perilous. Author has recommended some of important suggestions based on review of literature and those tips will help the users to avoid the risk involved in social networks.
From the above listed pros it can be understood that social media has positive affects in improving the productivity, empowering the employees, boosting the morale of employees. So the usage of social media in work place can be encouraged.
V. CONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE WORKPLACE
According to Kristin Swain [19], the usage of social media in the workplace can create negative impacts as listed below.
Distraction – If the employees are accessing the online media during working hours, that may lead to lose of valuable work time in un productive activities like playing different games, chatting with friends and sometimes updating their profiles.
Malware – Other important downside of social media usage in the workplace is the attack of the corporate network by the malware. There are more number of Malware software that can easily intrude the company’s network and damage the same. This type of malwares can also invite hackers who may crash the network, corrupt the files. This is a very serious problem that has to be properly viewed and corrected.
VI. SAFEGUARDING THE COMPANY AGAINST THE SOCIAL MEDIA ISSUES
Whether companies like it or not, social media is a part of employee’s lives. It is also part of company’s business. So instead of completely banning social media from workplace, companies should begin to educate the staff on appropriate use of social media. Company should try to create a team of knowledgeable employees by educating them on proper use of social media tools. Creating a concise social media policy gives everyone clear expectations and boundaries to work in.
In order to protect company data from the malware, corporate should use firewalls to protect against the intrusion of malware. The malware has to be regularly scanned by technical support teams of the companies. The network has to be protected with tight security that applies to other proprietary business information.
VII. GUIDELINES FOR FRAMING GOOD SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY
Today social media policies form a part of an employee’s code of ethics. It clearly informs the employees on not to post any offensive comments about the organization in which they are working, the employees of that organization, clients/customers and other associates. Due to the proliferation of social networks and digital evolution, online reputation needs to be given serious attention. On the other side employers are sensing there is a need to educate employees on how to use the social media platforms effectively.
Sudhir Narasimhan [21], the consulting editor has given six guidelines for companies while framing their social media policy. He lists the following guidelines
1. Keep it simple
2. Involve all key stakeholders 3. Identify Spokepersons 4. Define Sharable information 5. Define Boundaries
6. Training Employees
Nancy R Jones [22], in her article on “Framing social media policy for your small business” listed the do’s and don’ts when framing the social media policy. She has listed about seven do’s and four don’ts. The do’s are like – make employee understand rules before they start, make sure employees use only platform the company has assigned, inform your employees to act responsibly, tell them to be courteous and polite to customer/followers, let them stay on the topic, ensure that they do not promise anything to follower without an approval from your side.
VIII. EXAMPLES OF COMPANY’S SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY
A. Dell’s Social Media Policy
Dell’s global policy on social media [23] was effective from 15thAugust 2011. This policy encourages the
employees to share and connect with people at the same time is stresses on protecting the confidential information of Dell. It advice the employees to double check the message before passing anything on net. It also insists that employee should disclose their identity as Dell’s Employees when they talk about dell in social media. It also advises the employees, to engage rightly on social media conversations. The policy finally concludes that social media account is the property of Dell and once the employee leaves the organization, the rights on the account rest with company and not with the employee.So the social media policy of Dell is clearly defined and shared among all its employees.
B. Capgemini India Private Limited
Capgemini [24] has formulated guidelines for all employees who take part in conversations in social media. It insists that if employees are not sure about some content they should not share the same on the social media. Whenever a individual opinion is expressed people should give a disclaimer that the opinion is their personal view and does not express the group view. It is compulsory that employee should have online behavior in consistent with code of business ethics of Capgemini.
IX. CONCLUSION
REFERENCES [1] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/social-media
[2] http://d11sjosxu0rtpd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/social_media_strategy.jpg
[3] www.twitter.com
[4] www.facebook.com
[5] www.linkedin.com
[6] www.xing.com
[7] www.plus.google.com
[8] www.tumblr.com
[9] www.pinterest.com
[10] www.youtube.com
[11] www.instagram.com
[12] www.whatsapp.com
[13] www.myspace.com
[14] http. //work.chron.com
[15] http://hrcloud.com/the-benefits-of-social-media-networking-at-work/
[16] http://www.egroupengage.com/blog/the-pros-and-cons-of-social-media-in-the-workplace
[17] http://www.berkshireassociates.com/resources/white-papers/general-hr/social-media-and-the-workplace%E2%80%94to-be-or-not-to-be.aspx
[18] https://www.academia.edu/619443/Pros_and_Cons_of_Social_Networking [19] http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/925-social-policy.html [20] http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/social-media.hm
[21] http://www.cxotoday.com/story/essentials-of-an-effective-social-media-policy/ [22] http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/925-social-policy.html
