(c) Can Stock Photo / kbuntu
If you are an HR manager and there were times that passing near the office of your employees you have seen them not working but spending time on social media, you most probably are now thinking about blocking the social media. Well, this seems to be a smart decision at the beginning, however before doing onto it you really must discuss whether it is the right one or not.
Let us start from the fact that social media plays such a huge role in today’s lives that in reality blocking it or restricting to enter to Facebook or Instagram would be really a huge shock for your employees. In reality, even some of the jobs are connected with the Facebook and people are taking so many ideas and motivation from social media sites like Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter etc. That is why before making that decision, you should discuss these points:
Is the social media affecting the quality of the work?
Okay, let’s say you have once seen the employee using social media and updating the info etc. But you have got to be sure whether that affects the quality of the job that the employee is doing. You can become more careful to that, however not be strict enough as a strong boss would do. Just follow, set up a project which will ask the employee on what he/ she has been working on that day. Follow up to see whether your employee is doing a better job whenever you are around and whenever he/ she is not using the social media, or the result is the same? Follow the answers to see if the changes are huge and you will understand whether the social media really has an effect on the quality of the job or not.
Take into account the benefits as well
Make sure you are not forgetting about the benefits the social media may have. We all know that working 8 hours in a row is somehow impossible. The brain needs to stop for a while and have a rest. These are the times when the employees are using the social media and trying to have a rest. It is important to mention that when having a rest brain is being ready to start the work with more energy, which means the productivity is becoming more. In this case social media doesn’t disturb, on the contrary helps to fight the tiring day and being able to continue with it. Besides, the social media is now a good opportunity for finding new clients and/ or advertising and promoting your company. By banning it at the office space you are also banning the probable promotion of your company.
Take into account:
If you still decide to block the social media at your company, you should take into account that it will be still available on the smartphones of your employees. This means, social media is so alive and present in our lives nowadays that you can’t really have any force against it. In most of the cases your employees will find the way to using social media and having a rest. In this case you will become the one who will both not reach the wanted result (as your employees will still find a way to using Facebook or updating Instagram) and they will start not loving you that much (who, after all loves restrictions)?
The possible pros for banning the social media
We all know that there are two sides of each and every question, right? This question is not an exception. As we have already talked about that, social media may help the productivity and help the employee have a rest, however we are talking about the normal amount of time spent in social media. In case the employee is spending there some hours, that probably won’t help. Which means the social media here is not just boosting the productivity, but disturbs the job. Another pro for banning the social media may be the leaking of the confidential information of the company through social media. This can be another case you can find important the social media to be banned for. Another reason can be the possible viruses that can come from the social media. However, this doesn’t seem to be as important as others, as viruses can come from any website and at any time.
Final note
Banning social media can have both advantages and disadvantages, however before going on and making a decision you can also think about your relationships with the employees. If you have pretty friendly relationships, you can at first try with just telling them that they are spending way much time in FB or Insta, and you would ask them to lessen that time. You can go to discussion and solve this problem through conversation. This will help you keep your relationship in a friendly level and also reach the result that you wanted to have. After all, it is not always about blocking and just restricting, it is also about the relationships and understanding.
If you are now more convinced what you are going to do, we are happy that we could somehow help you. This is one of the most discussed questions of the 21st century, so in case you are struggling with it, you can just go through the list of things we have discussed above, and hopefully you will have the answers to your questions. Good luck with that.
