Agenda
In this paper, I have explored aspects of social media use in the workplace. Among some uses of social media in the workplace include: social media assists employees to develop professionally, find solutions to problems relating to their work, build strong relationships with coworkers, strengthen and build strong relationships with coworkers, makes it easier to find information and deliver information and also enables the celebration of achievements.
Introduction
Social media has had a great impact in the workplace through its many uses, such as advertising and improving professional collaboration among employees. Social media is a crucial tool for employees as it assists them in cooperating, exchanging information and ideas, and finding solutions to problems. Employees use social media platforms for various reasons; for instance, The Havard Business Review (2020) states that employees use LinkedIn and Twitter to interact with other employees, thus feeling more motivated and devising creative ideas in the workplace. However, when employees interact with people outside the organization, they tend to be less motivated. Therefore, employees who interact with people inside the organization share significant work experiences, while those who interact with people outside the organization tend to be unproductive. Among ways that social media can be used at the workplace includes: to improve communication and collaboration, as a crucial resource by employees, as a marketing strategy, to improve job performance and efficiency, highlight company values, encourage professional development, improve creativity, help organizations keep track of trends and celebrate organization and employee achievements.
In the use of social media for proper professional communication in the workplace, employees can use various platforms to communicate and collaborate effectively. Communication is very significant in the workplace, and in that notion, workplaces that fail to incorporate efficient communication techniques may experience the lack of overall efficiency. Social media helps in providing clear and compact communication. For instance, workplaces can take advantage of applications such as Workplace by Facebook, Slack, or Trello. Workplace by Facebook is a workplace messaging application that assists its users to create private or public groups. Professionals using this application can communicate almost immediately in a clear way. Workplace by Facebook also boosts collaboration skills to ensure that every employee aims towards a specific goal. Social media helps develop proper professional communication, fostering a sense of creativity and liberation, which are crucial for effective communication.
Social media in the workplace can also be used to perfect the company’s social media marketing strategies. Social media is a fundamental tool in an organization’s advertising strategy as it helps them boost their competitive edge by sharing relevant content across most social media channels. One advantage of using social media to advertise a product or a service is that it is quite affordable and improves a company’s ROI and is also one of the best methods to reach clients worldwide as there is a presence of three billion social media users online. Before using social media for marketing, the company should educate all its employees about marketing and take advantage of their employees’ social media knowledge, which can help understand a specific market and help a company acquire the type of branding they are searching for. By doing that, the company will improve its customer service, rationalize its social media marketing strategies, and also improve their employee practical intelligence. It is also crucial that companies view their employees as winners of their brands as they are more likely to engage with the latest social media updates, blog posts, and advertisements, which are significant as each employee has their social network and may help promote the company to others. Employees could also share their daily activities online and provide sneak peeks of new items or services by the brand, thus impacting how their customers view their brand.
Social media in the workplace also helps to improve job performance and efficiency. Social media platforms can help reduce workplace inefficiencies but only at a small percentage. Social media stresses efficient communication and knowledge, which results in efficient employee collaboration and companionship.
Also, in the workplace, when social media is properly used, it tends to offer significant relief from cumbersome workloads. Taking a mental break should not be considered distracting as it leads to better job performance, so taking physical and mental breaks is crucial for high productivity in the workplace.
Social media also assists in emphasizing company values as companies must develop a work environment that stresses on specific company values. Organizational values provide purpose and authority to work tasks and also unite employees in shared approaches. Organizational values can either be practiced through mission statements or practiced daily. The use of social media in the workplace provides a massive opportunity for companies to showcase their values. Furthermore, allowing employees to use social media at the workplace stresses the value of trust and also assists in improving communication. Applications such as Workplace by Face book can showcase a company’s value for dialogue at work and provide space to ensure each employee is heard.
A company embracing social media also helps in professional development as permitting employees to use social media helps in growing a professional community. An application such as Linkedln, for instance, provides people from all over the world an opportunity to network, engage, and grow their professions. For example, some professionals can receive advice and information on particular skills from workmates or previous employees. They can directly connect on Linkedln, browse job opportunities, and set up online curriculum vitae, all of which are significant for professional development; thus, organizations must champion this form of professional development. Such sites also help employees learn about their professions and other related information to work efficiently. Permitting employees to use social media implies that the organization is concerned about their skillset and professionalism.
Social media also helps organizations track recent trends as social media is but another form of record keeping. Organizations can use social media to keep up with their employees and determine their high performing products or services. Through social media, an organization can analyze data through Key Performance Indexes (KPIs), also known as the key performance indexes.
Social media is also an efficient tool for celebrating the organization and the employees’ achievements. In the workplace, it is crucial to celebrate success as it fosters stronger collaboration among employees. An organization can celebrate their achievements by promoting a blog post series. They acknowledge various employees every month or year and outline their role together with interesting facts about them. This can be carried out through applications such as Slack. Consistent acknowledgment of employees assists them to feel empowered and trusted. By celebrating them, the company can convey they possess a special place in the organization. The use of social media in the workplace also helps encourage creativity and innovation in various fields as both are crucial elements for growing a business or establishing new chances for growth. For instance, permitting an employee a chance to use Pinterest and YouTube means offering them access to many innovative ideas, which hence fosters crucial innovation and calls for creativity in the company. However, some companies still hold that social media still leads to unproductivity as applications such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can be very distracting and should only be used at home. This speculation is true, although it is also important to keep in mind the many advantages social media has in the workplace, mostly in improving the environment an organization provides to its employees.
By coming up with social media policies in the workplace, the company admits that social media is a resource in the work environment. Employees will appreciate coherent policies and will also make sure social media is used in the right ways. Social media policies explain the way a company and its employees should behave on social media platforms. They also help protect an organization’s online reputation, and employees promote the organization through their online networks. Social media policies stress on some basic behavior to avoid major problems in the future. Companies such as Home Depot have had their social media fails, and such occurrences are perfect examples of why a company needs social media policies. Organizations must come up with organization policies as they help achieve three central things, i.e., they help to directly set expectations to limit confusion, protect the organization’s reputation, and increase employee support. Social media policies are not meant to discourage the use of social media by employees. Instead, they push employees to get more involved with social media under direct policies to avoid confusion regarding what’s allowed and what’s not allowed; therefore, employees feel free to participate. For instance, major companies such as Dell Global and Coca-cola have social media policies. Dell Global has six simplified social media policies: protecting information, transparency, and disclosure, following the law, being responsible, being nice, having fun and connecting, and social media account ownership. These policies are direct but not solid, thus need more explanation.
On the other hand, Coca cola’s social media policies address three different groups of employees, including an online community, company and agency associates, and company online spokespeople. Some of the policies include: addressing the company and agency associates. Coca-Cola states that they should let experts respond to negative posts unless they happen to be approved, online spokespeople. For the online spokespeople, coca-cola reminds them that their local posts have a worldwide impact and that they should have a global worldview when responding to questions as the way they answer questions may be acceptable in one country but unacceptable another.
Social media has grown massively and undergone many changes making it almost unavoidable in the workplace today. Instead of policing employees on how to use social media, organizations should push employees to use social media productively by stipulating ways by which social media can work well for employees and the organization in on social media instead of other distractions online. In this paper, I have explored aspects of social media use in the workplace. Among some uses of social media in the workplace include: social media assists employees to develop professionally, find solutions to problems relating to their work, build strong relationships with coworkers, strengthen and build strong relationships with coworkers, it also makes it easier to find information and deliver information and also enables the celebration of achievements. Some organizations, however, state that social media leads to unproductivity in the workplace, which is true. A study by Manyika (2013) through the McKinsey Global Institute it was found that 72% of organizations admitted failing to use social media productively and suggest that if organizations were to implement the use of social media in the workplace employee productivity could also improve by 20-25% because social media is affordable and easy to implement and also a method to increase a company’s productivity positively.
References
Kleinbaum, A. M., & Tushman, M. L. (2008). Managing corporate social networks. Harvard business review, 86(7), 8-14.
Manyika, J., Chui, M., Bughin, J., Dobbs, R., Bisson, P., & Marrs, A. (2013). McKinsey Global Institute. Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy.