How can US businesses recoup $650 billion in lost productivity a year due to social media in the workplace?
A Miami-based e-commerce company, 1saleaday.com, got so fed up with its workers wasting away precious minutes on social media that in 2011 it banned and blocked sites like Facebook and Twitter.
After worker morale plummeted, management decided in November to introduce a social network just for employees, a Twitter clone called Yammer, and found that productivity and mood improved.
“Instead of trying to suppress their addiction, we tried to channel it,” said Eli Federman, a spokesman for 1saleaday. “It actually increased productivity by creating an environment where people collaborate on various projects using the site.”
The company’s story highlights how businesses with lots of young, computer-bound employees are trying to figure out how to keep the attention of people who are paid $14 an hour for mind-numbing data-entry jobs. It also shows a growing divide among American workers, between social media haves and have-nots.
The split breaks along the level of competition for skilled, creative hires. Companies searching for the best and brightest won’t be so uncool as to ban social media, but businesses that just need nimble, youthful fingers for keyboards have the upper hand and can wring out more labor by banning social media.
Huge, a DUMBO-based online advertising company where workers can bring their dogs, bikes and skateboards to the office, doesn’t impose restrictions on its employees’ use of Facebook.
“In general, the only rule is, ‘Think about what you’re doing, don’t share confidential information, etc.,’” said Sam Weston, a spokesman for Huge. “But the question isn’t so much the medium, it’s the people. Do you have people who are responsible and smart and who care enough about what they’re doing to be engaged in the workplace, or not?”
At one Wall Street firm, however, management doesn’t have the same outlook. One employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the firewall at the office, which prohibits social media and even Gmail, is reminiscent of “Stalinist Russia.”
“I think a reasonable, little five-minute break to check in with the world is fine,” the employee said.
Alexis Ohanian, a founder of startups including the popular link site Reddit, said competition for skilled workers discourages tech companies from doing anything draconian.
“Employers hiring tech talent already have to intensely compete for talent, so something like a ‘no social media’ policy is a deal-breaker for most of those folks,” Ohanian said.
“I’m a very pro-social media employer: If you get your work done, go ahead and look at some cat photos (then share them because your increased clout will pay dividends for me later, when you promote projects we’re working on),” he added.