New study suggests social networks don’t distract employees

Businesses shouldn’t stop their employees from spending time on social networking sites, with employers warned that such distractions may not necessarily have a significant impact on productivity.

The preliminary results of a three-year test conducted by security company MailGuard and the Swinburne University of Technology has found that most workers don’t spend any more than an hour on the internet for personal reasons, with a negligible effect on work.

However, the study – which has monitored about 50,000 workers – has found that about one fifth of employees spend up to two hours a day on the internet, including browsing on social networking sites such as Facebook.

MailGuard chief executive Craig McDonald says while the initial approach to this result is for employers to switch off social networking altogether, he warns there is a better approach that will win the loyalty of your employees.

“This type of activity has to be reviewed in such a way that you can determine whether social networking and internet browsing is having a significant influence on their job.”

“You might have an employee who is spending up to two hours a day on the internet looking at other material that isn’t related to work. But if they are there for 12 hours a day, you’re still getting nine or 10 hours’ work out of them, and that’s above average.”

McDonald says if an employer in this situation was to turn off social networking altogether, they might trigger an unintended consequence.

“As long as the job is getting done by the individual, then you should probably leave them alone. Don’t go and turn everything off, because that 12 hours may turn to eight hours, and you’ve lost some time there.”

“Look at where some of the gains can be had in your business without necessarily changing the culture altogether.”

However, McDonald does warn businesses they should look at amending their social networking policy if there is a large enough impact on productivity.

“Those we’ve seen in the study getting distracted are really giving it a good go, and they’re looking on the internet for two hours at a time out of an eight hour day. There’s not much work being carried out there.”

“Depending how big your company is, if you’ve got someone in a large enough role taking a quarter of their day away, you start to see some productivity impacts there.”

As a result, he recommends businesses start monitoring their own social networking and internet usage in the workplace, and compile reports about what’s happening in order to properly address productivity issues.

“It’s very important for businesses to start using reporting, and think about understanding all of this and how it affects their workplace specifically. If what an employee is doing is for work, then great, but there is a way to address productivity issues.”

“You need to know how to harness the good of this type of activity for your business, and not just turn everything off. You need to direct the activity that is occurring.”

One of the biggest changes McDonald has noticed is the transition from people using social networking to actually shop while at the workplace.

“People in the work environment are now spending more time shopping than just browsing social media, so the online purchasing market has increased.”