Lets face it, majority of the companies block social media sites, especially social networking sites in the offices. On the other hand, same companies want to publicize themselves / their products through the same social media. So what is the main reason for companies to avoid using their workforce as their social media publicity team and not leverage the extended networks of their employees?
Let us drill down on the reasons from the perspective of employers on blocking the social media sites. As they say, “With great power comes greater responsibility” and according to most of the companies, the responsibility part is more often than not ignored
1) Procrastination – This is by far the most important reason for companies to block all the social networking websites in the offices. When people start abusing instead of using the facility, the work planning suffers and the companies are not yet willing to pay you for chatting with 10 friends at the same time.
2) Perception Management – As you all may have observed “My boss / job sucks” is the favorite Facebook update / tweet of almost everyone is your friends list. And the real problem comes when people start expressing themselves a bit more than those three words. Well, companies can only stop the employees from ranting about their jobs during office hours, no one can go and stop people from using Facebook and twitter post office hours. But there has been cases where companies have tracked derogatory remarks about themselves posted by the employees and have given them a pink slip then and there by leaving a comment about their post!
Now comes the interesting part, “Why should companies allow employees a full access to social media“
1) Perception Management! – Oh yes i copy pasted this bullet point from above. Now how will you let people know that your company offers free beer and desserts every night? You can not publish a press release saying we gave a party to whole office for continuous 3 weekends! So let them publish on their Facebooks and Twitters “I love my job, free beers every night!”
2) Stress Buster - As i said before, everyone needs a break. Period. Nothing can be better than a 5 min chit chat with your closest friends or checking out your last vacation photographs on networking sites.
3) No Dumb and Dumber please – No company would like their employees to make a blank face when a client suddenly asks “It was nice meeting you, what is your Twitter handle, i would love to know more about you” and your employees making a Mr Bean face and asking, “Twitter? Handle? You mean handle of my bird cage?”
4) The Marketing Power - Suppose you have 1000 employees, and each of them has an average of 50 unique friends. Now by just opening Facebook and Twitter, you can let 50,000 social media users that your office hosted a Diwali party and gave a silver coin to each employee! Mind you, all of those 50,000 people are well educated, social networking site users who might be looking for a job change some or the other day!
So i think the Pros are more than the Cons, but definitely the Cons have a much higher stake! So by forming a proper Social Media Usage and Non-Disclosure policy, companies can create a Win-Win situation for themselves and their employees.
PS: Can someone pass the link of this article to my boss please?
Valuable info in here!
Very nice post……yes i completely agree with you. All employee should have social media access. Company should allow some time for this activity according to the work load.
Before supporting anything we should think from both side. Social media is the need of today’s generation because if you are not interacting on online then you are losing something. Digital marketing is a new concept and every company should look forward to adopt it.
Abhishek,
Cyberliability is one of the main reason why companies don’t allow Social Media use at work.
Cyberliability: As an employer, you could be held liable for the action of your employers in their internet communications to the same degrees as if they had written those communications on company letterhead.
Hi
Really good awesome article
Thanks for sharing