Employees would
desire access to social networking sites at work places. Employers feel it as
an unnecessary distraction. How do we reconcile the two? In 2009, Nucleus Research estimated a loss of
1.5% to firms’ productivity thanks to online social networking usage. Similarly
in 2010, a British research firm estimated the loss to British firms at $2.2
billion per year. This implies a trade off happens between the firm’s decision
to allow employees to access social networking sites at work and the
productivity of the employees.
However a
contrary view too exists. Writing in Wired (February 2010; www.wired .com),
Brendan Koerner argues otherwise. He
feels they are essential to enhance creativity and stoke a creative mind. He
feels the studies that argue the loss of productivity ignore the impact of the creative
process. With the human body unstructured to maintain a constant focus on
assigned tasks, periodic breaks relieve the conscious minds of the pressure to
perform. This enables the mind to see issues through fresh eyes. Researchers
argue that people respond far effectively when they are distracted from a
problem temporarily. Regular breaks enhance problem-solving skills
significantly. The participatory
nature of Twitter and Facebook also makes them excellent tools for enhancing
creativity and information being circulated might just trigger off creative
solution that seem to vex the employees.
Let us examine this using the prism of leisure-work
trade-off. The supply of human talent is an outcome of the trade-off that
exists between work and leisure. Increased incomes result in sacrifice of
leisure in favor of work. However, at a certain stage, the marginal utility of
leisure is higher than the marginal utility earned by extra unit of income and
this leads the people to work less at higher wages. Economists call this
phenomenon backward bending labour supply curve. Rather than taking a macro picture, let us go
deep into microelements. When Koemer argues that periodic breaks refresh the
human mind, he is referring to a situation where in the marginal utility gained
by extra unit of work is less than the marginal utility gained by extra unit of
leisure at that moment of time. The continuous work would diminish the marginal
utility to a point where in a break from work would yield a greater
satisfaction. In absence of break, the
marginal productivity of the worker would decrease with passage of time thus
may yield lower productivity. How to reconcile the employer’s charge of
distraction? Allow social networking sites and maybe in exchange for social
networking sites, the employees may be required to spread the message of the
companies or increase the reach of the company across the social network.
Branding through Facebook or Twitter or Orkut would be an interesting option. Employees get leisure, the firm additional
resource to spread its reach. Google
allows employees to spend certain time working on their leisure pursuits and
some of these pursuits will result in additional revenue for the firm!! Orkut
is the obvious example.
After all they may not be mutually exclusive and access
to social networking may not involve a trade off with productivity after all!! It
may increase productivity
Source: Brendan
I. Koerner, “How Twitter and Facebook
Make Us More Productive” Wired, March
2010, www.wired.com
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