Table of Contents
Purpose
The reason that I choose this title is because the title is quite interesting for me. I feel that social networking is become very important and useful in our daily life especially in communication. Social networking is also a useful tool for a company in the workplace, but there are many companies get loss because of the social networking. Therefore, I have some idea to share about the effect of social networking in the workplace.
Introduction
Nowadays, social networking is becoming a part and parcel in our daily life. What is social networking? Social networking is the use of dedicated websites and applications to find people with similar interests to one’s own or to interact with other users. People normally use social networking to stay connected and keep communication with family, friends, clients and colleagues. There are some famous social networking sites that people always use such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Many companies already jump into the world of social networking. Social networking is become as an important tool in communication in the workplace. However, it also can cause several negative effects in the workplace if not use correctly. It depends on how the company in handle these problems.
Body
Social networking brings many positive effects in the workplace. Firstly, it can advance efficiency in work. Social networking can help company to train the employees by using online training. Nowadays, there are various online training sessions that talk about variety regard of the workplace. There is also numerous training available on the technical fundamental in online. It can help company to save many costs in training the employees. Many companies spend plenty of money in training the employees in general.
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Company need to spend the cost in hiring professional, cost in transport and cost in meals. But now, there is another way to train the employees which is online training using social networking. This way of training is more cost-effective in training employees. Besides that, it can also help company to save a lot of time in training the employees because online training has a flexible time to use it. Company can use these money and time in other part such as improve their technology machine and produce more product. The company will become more efficient in working because of the professional of employees and higher technology. In addition, many networks like LinkedIn and Facebook helps employees manage to connect with different kind of professionals and successful businessmen or entrepreneurs.
Some employees don’t have any idea what work ethics even mean. Therefore, by learning from them, it can help all the newbie in the business world to know all the terms and work ethics of the company. At the same time, others employees can improve their knowledge in works and improve their work ethics. Many companies had close down due to the lack of cooperation among employees. Hence, social networking can help in spreading consciousness about work ethics. On the whole, using social networking in workplace can advance efficiency in work at last will gives a benefit to a company.
Social networking can also help to increase the better communication and awareness in the workplace. Employees can use social networking to interact and communicate with their colleagues. This can help them to build a better relationship between each other. A stronger relationship among employees leads to more cohesion and productive work teams. Social networking is a very easy way to encourage communication between employees. This is because social networking is accessible almost anywhere. Employees may able to interact and communicate between each other even when not at work. The ability to interact and communicate outside of work will help enhance employee morale and engagement. This can increasingly promote team unity. As the work team becomes more and more closely united, this will improve the team’s work spirit and ability to work.
On the other hand, the employees can always stay connected by using social networking no matter what geographic district they are, it can lead to faster communication and increase awareness among teams. The employees can keep a long contact even they’re already left the office or in the condition that they cannot get a meet. They can discuss the projects in a long time, it makes them to work when it’s most facilitated. It’s also easier for employees to network and build relationships with the people who can influence their career. Moreover, social networking can also strengthen the communication between employees with the upper management. The communication between employees with their superior is very important as it increases the free flow of communication from one person to another.
The employees can easier to communicate with the upper management because normally the upper management is rarely appearing in the company. They can report the progress of their work to the upper management anytime through social networking. Evidently, the connectivity portion of social networking can lead to a better communication and awareness in the workplace.
Although social networking brings a lot of positive affects in workplace, at the same time, it also having some negative affects if the unrestricted usage of social networking happening in workplace. The obvious negative effects of social networking in workplace is will cause the company loss productivity. According to a study by Nucleus Research, a company that allows its employees to use Facebook in the workplace loses 1.5% of its productivity. The employees will easy to get distraction if they use the social networking as a source of entertainment rather than a tool for communication in work. It will cause the employees shift their focus from the important thing and deprived their attention in working on critical task.
There are many employees that always use the social networking for their personal use during the working time especially at the workplace. They compulsively use social networking to check Twitter or Facebook for photos, status updates, or chat with friends and family members, instead of performing their work-related tasks. This already cause the employees consume a lot of precious time. Even employees also will use social networking to access for business related activity, but the distraction for the employees will cause their effect on productivity higher than the positives. In brief, using social networking in excessive will cause the company loss productivity in the organization which can affecting the business.
Furthermore, the negative affect of the social networking in the workplace is will cause misunderstanding to occur. Although social networking can be a tremendous help in employees’ communication in the workplace, but it also has its defects. The employees are becoming less and less aware of how to communicate properly with others. So, it will lead the misunderstanding between employees, customer and upper management to occur in the workplace. If the people cannot understand the news post or any new updates by a company in the social networking, a lot of misunderstanding can be created. For example, a company introduce a new product in the network.
While there is much information that has been uploaded by the company, but a customer is hard to know about the detail’s information of the product. This is because the customer only sees the product through the picture, they cannot touch and feel the product, so they will feel they cannot fully understand the product clearly. By this, customer will not willing to buy a product. In addition, lack of communicating skill will cause miscommunication between the employees and their customers especially when they use social networking as their communicating platform. This is because they can’t have face to face communication so the words, they use in their conversation with customers on social networking are quite important. It carries all the information that they want to transmit to their customers so it can’t have any mistake otherwise the company will suffer from a big loss.
On the other hand, competitors or protestors will post some misleading information about the product and service which can cause a company loss for the business. The customers will be misled by this misleading information and lead to a decrease in their trust to that company. At the same time, the misunderstanding also will happen between employees and colleagues. An employee who have a bad mood may post and update some annoying message that about their colleagues in social networking and their co-workers might see the message. They will conscious that the message is written or aimed about them. This will become a big problem between them and influence their teamwork in the next group project. As consequence, using social networking in workplace for communication must be wisely use otherwise can lead to a big misunderstanding problem.
Conclusion
In the conclusion, social networking can be a twofold edged sword in the workplace. This mean that it can be a very helpful tool for a company but at the same time, it also exposing their shortcomings. Hence, it is very important that social networking use in the proper way. The company must be very careful when monitoring the usage of the social networking in the workplace. They have to state a new guideline and rules in using social networking so that can avoid the infraction of employees happen. They need to restrictions their employees that social networking used only for work related to purposes other than personal benefit when in the workplace. If social networking is used to the most maximum potential, it will help for the general development of the company.
