It was nearly 80 degrees in the New York Metro earlier this week, and found myself in the office drooling over the sunshine and rainbows outside my window. This use to be my favorite way to waste time while at work, school, or any other time I had to be stuck inside a building on a sunny day. Thankfully I can now pretend to enjoy staying in doors on nice days by filling my day with Social Media (#FTW). Since my work requires me to be on social media all day, every day, I often forget about the millions of workers who are banned from logging in to the sites I love while at work because some claim it will make them lazy.
"The Bermuda Triangle of Productivity" as depicted by this super cool chick, basically sums up how a few million drones in the workforce procrastinate during the workday. Although it makes a good laugh, this little sketch speaks volumes about how many see social media, especially corporate America. It's fun to laugh and pretend social media is a waste of time, but all kidding aside, I don't think it truly takes away from productivity in the workplace. People will find a million reasons to procrastinate from doing work they hate; blaming social media for being counterproductive is uncool. I joke around by saying I waste my day away on Social Media often because we all know in reality doing that is what funds my habits, and occasionally pays my bills.
I wonder if there are any of the stuffy, high collared, tie wearing, "serious" business folk that still think their subordinates are always doing their work since they blocked normal Internet usage. I pray that those employees are secretly finding loopholes to access these sites, and escape the florescent -light hell that is the office. I really hope they have found some secret access, so that my brothers and sisters across the globe can get a little digital salvation from the daily grind.
I'm not a sociologist, clearly, but I'd like to think that if you allow your employees access to social media during the workday the world would be a better place. Maybe you could allow a certain amount of time per week on these sites, I'd bet overall morale, and even productivity might improve. Some companies are smart enough to create Facebook groups that allow workers to communicate and share ideas during the day. Creating these groups encourages not only productivity, but also a better atmosphere. People tend to work better with people they like, and forcing them to interact on social networking sites allows once non-friends to become friends by interlacing their lives digitally. How can you not see that social media is a positive force in the workplace?
Now some might see this as an opportunity for people to slack off and spend a minute or two more on the site, but I have a plan to monitor the slackers. Since updates are within seconds, you can penalize people who don't seem to respond to the group fast enough. You could make the punishment something cruel like, push-ups, or make them run around the parking lot, or stand in front of a Nerf Gun firing squad. If you open up social media to your workplace, and the punishment program doesn't work and productivity goes down, just fire the lazy people.
'Cause we are living in a digital world and I'm a social media girl.XB
Veronica Guzik is an internet marketing guru at fishbat.com.