American Public University
Social media has been an essential part of our lives, and even it is possible to claim that many of people are addicted to it. It is an addiction that we see a regular in life. The statistics indicate that online messaging, sharing, and other similar activities are very popular in many countries, and these activities are taking most of our times. Many of people carry this addiction to their meetings, their relations, and their workplaces. At first sight, it seems like social media might make workers inefficient at work. Some studies analyze how the use of social media in the workplace influence employees' performance. The results indicate that answer is not so simple (Herlle & Astray-Caneda, 2016).
Social media is a socially accepted way of communicating and interacting nowadays like speaking. Cell phones were considered as odd in the workplaces at the beginning. Social media have passed this phase, and now people can access to social media on their mobile devices and even on their electronic watches. Subsequently, we can assume that many people use social media at work. The central question for businesses is to allow or not to allow. For making the decision, we need to see pros and cons of the use of social media at work (Herlle & Astray-Caneda, 2016).
Social media has positive and negative influences on performance at work. Workers become friends at social media sites, and they collect information about each other consciously or unconsciously; social media might be a good information source for workers, and they can reflect this information to their works; social media might be a cheap and efficient way of training and education; social media might be a way of interaction with clients and workers have to use social media to reach their customers. On the other side, social media creates openness to businesses, and that might cause some undesired and unexpected external influences on business, workers might spend a long time on social media and that might cause inefficient use of time, social media shares might demotivation or conflicts between employees, and giving false information about business through social media messages of workers (Thomas & Akdere, 2013).
The influences of use of social media by workers at work might affect business, relationship between employees, and clients. Therefore, it is possible to classify the impacts of the use of social media on business depending on the affected party.
Considering that many of workers use social media at the workplace, each worker has two personalities: personality in real life and character in online life. Most of the people can be relatively freer, and that might cause a difference between a character in real life and online life. Taking workers are aware of each other's their online life and offline life into account; the relations between workers become relatively more complex nowadays, and it might influence business positively or negatively. For instance, if employees share their creative ideas online, and they criticize each other positively, it might create a positive impact on business. On the other side, if sharing ideas online causes a conflict in the workplace, it might create a negative effect (Tissington & Senior, 2013).
Secondly, use of social media by workers might give an impression to the third parties including potential clients about the company. Some companies prevent social media sharing about the company by their employees and only manager, or responsible public relation specialist can do sharing. However, some businesses prefer allowing its employees to use social media freely at work and share information about business. Therefore, social media creates a relation between workers, business, and potential clients.
Thirdly, many of clients follow social media accounts of employees for various reasons: they might be friends, a worker might be an important public figure, or client is interested in some professionals working for this company. There might be many other reasons. It is not for sure that client will get insight information on a business through following social media accounts of workers; however, it is possible. Some of the clients gather all possible information about a product and the company producing this product before purchasing it. The social media interactions between customers play a significant role in the process of decision-making. In some cases, we can observe that workers' social media messages influence potential clients positively or negatively. For instance, Starbucks is an outstanding example of this. Some current workers in Starbucks share some photos from coffee shops of the company, and that causes some negative influences on business. On the other side, the social media messages of Google workers create a positive effect on people.
Allowing or not allowing is a simple strategic decision and it is not that simple to manage the relation between social media and workers. A successful organization should be able to maintain this relationship and it might require a complex organizational structure and a set of rules for use of social media. Managing use of social media in the workplace by workers might assist business for increasing motivation and determination of employees, increasing the attraction of business among workers, and improve efficiency of employees and even profitability of business.
Consequently, the question about the use of social media has to be developed by responsible managers in the workplace rather than questioning it by irritating workers depending on characteristics of business and organization. Developing some strategies for use of social media by getting views of workers might help the company to develop the most suitable set of rules for use of social media in the workplace. Strategic thinking requires transforming undesired conditions in business into the desired state or at least to a neutral position. Use of social media by workers is considered harmful by many people; however, it might be a decisive factor for business if it can be managed (Tissington & Senior, 2013).
References
Herlle, M. & Astray-Caneda, V. (2016). The Impact of Social Media in the Workplace. Digitalcommons.fiu.edu. Retrieved 23 August 2016, from http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1205&context=sferc
Thomas, K. & Akdere, M. (2013). Social Media as Collaborative Media in Workplace Learning. Human Resource Development Review, 12(3), 329-344. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1534484312472331
Tissington, P. & Senior, C. (2013). Use of social media to enable medical teams to work virtually (and better). The Lancet, 381(9876), e11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(13)60935-6
