Drawbacks of Social Media for Employees

Over the last few years, the drawbacks of social networking at work have increased. While there are several pitfalls, it has been estimated by Phillips (2007) that almost £130 million productivity loss because of workers who occupy their time on social media such as facebook. Additionally, he indicates that 3.5 million employees use facebook habitually at work. He explains another downside is the dissatisfaction of employees from the monitoring staff because vitak et al (2012) describe that a worker’s social media account should allow limited access to only a few trusted co-workers. Phillips (2007) points out that “bullying and harassing” is also common among employees at work. According to Vitak et al (2012), for some employees, it has become difficult to differentiate between professional and personal lives. Moreover, they highlight that many workers face ‘context collapse’ due to sharing personal information with work colleagues. The researchers concur that lives of employees at work become grouped together, especially “Facebook friends.” Therefore, Phillips (2007) emphasises that there should be code of conduct policy to tackle above mentioned drawbacks. He also states that monitoring staff should communicate clearly with employees about widespread polices. Furthermore, she suggests that a facebook ban should be mandatory for all staff. It has been observed that educating employees should be compulsory for the implementation of social networks from a business and personal perspective (Phillips, 2007). Therefore, it could be said that the pitfalls of social media at work could be decreased among employees after the implementation of code and conduct polices.