One of the things we’ve heard a lot about in recent times has been the need for organisations to have a social media policy in place for their employees. Understandably, companies don’t want their workers spending all their (supposedly) working day on the likes of Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. They don’t want their employees to write or share something on social media that reflects badly on the company’s brand or reputation or that could leave it vulnerable to security threats.
So you can understand why vendors and partners have been keen to ram home the message that social media usage needs to be regulated and controlled in some shape or form. The bad news, according to recent work by Pew Research, is that most workers are ignoring the policies.
A survey of full-time and part-time workers in the US found 77% of them used social media at work irrespective of whether their company had a policy in place (51%) or not (45%). It also found that the two top reasons why workers ever used social media at work were to take a mental break from the job (34%) and to connect with friends and family (27%). Work-related tasks were further down the rankings with 24% using social media to make or support professional connections, 20% to get information to help solve problems at work, 12% to ask work-related questions of people outside the organisation and a similar number to ask questions of people inside it.
However, the research also found that those with social media policies were less likely to use social media to take a break at work (30%) compared to those in businesses (40%) with no policy. A mere 20% used social media to keep connected to family and friends while at work compared to 35% of employees in companies without a policy.
But the constraints imposed on workers by such policies also led to a reluctance to use social media for a constructive purpose to get information that could be helpful to their job. Only 16% did so compared to 25% in companies without a policy. Those are still very small numbers, suggesting that people don’t consider social media to be a useful avenue for finding information that can help them in their jobs.
Break time
The research found workers were limited in the way they used social media for work-related purposes with 19% solely using Facebook, 14% only using LinkedIn, 5% using different social media platforms and 9% using social media tools provided by their employer.
Those that used social media platforms did find them useful, however, for things such as networking, finding new job opportunities, staying in touch with others in the same field, connecting with experts, getting to know their co-workers on a personal level or finding information to do their job.
A slight majority (56%) agreed that social media platforms distracted from the work they needed to do but a similar number (54%) viewed social media breaks as a good way for them to recharge their batteries at work. Overall, 56% viewed social media as a means to help their job performance, with only 22% seeing it as harmful.
The research also suggested workers should take more care of their own social media profiles not just in terms of how they reflect on them with outsiders but also with their co-workers. As many as 17% of those surveyed said they used social media to build or strengthen their relationships with co-workers, with a similar percentage using it to learn about someone they worked with. However, 16% said the information they found on social media had “lowered their professional opinion of a colleague”. The numbers were higher in the 18-29 age group (29%), possibly because they’re bigger users of social media than their older counterparts.
In any case, much of the discussion around whether companies need a social media policy could be moot given the most astonishing part of the research which was that 25% of workers never used the internet for work-related tasks, 17% “hardly ever” used it and 21% used it “sometimes”. Only 37% used the internet “frequently”. Unless those 37% are on social media for an inordinate amount of time, it’s easy to see why companies might not view a social media policy as a priority.
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