Social media in the workplace

¶ … risks exposed to organizations by the social media use. While attempting this essay, I analyze that social media use can provide advantages to an organization, but its advantages can also be turned into risks if an appropriate social-networking policy in compliance to the law, is not maintained within the organization. With this essay, I planned to accomplish that organizations must realize the importance of a social-networking policy. I hope that the reader understands that an effective social-networking policy can derive positive benefits from the social media use. By completing this assignment, I learned that everything in this world does have some positive and negative aspects, like, the risks and benefits of social media use. Yes, I experienced a new understanding about the social media use. Before completing the research, I used to consider that social media use must be promoted within the organizations as it only provides benefits to the organizations, but after completing my research, I analyzed that an organization can also be exposed to numerous risks if it lacks an appropriate social-networking policy. During the research, I encountered difficulties in finding the appropriate relevant data as most of the scholars only revealed the positive aspects of social media use, only few of them addressed the negative effects. I enjoyed a lot of things about this assignment, like, exposure to various different social networking sites, besides, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, like, Glassdoor.com, which is a job seeker and an employee feedback forum site. The reason I selected this topic was that it was of the critical and current issue faced by the organizations today and also I faced numerous issues within this aspect in my workplace. I would like you to know that this essay not only emphasize the negative effects of social media use regardless of its positive effects, it do encourages the benefits provided by the social media use, but only if there is an effective social-networking policy maintained within the organization.

The Social Media in the Workplace

Introduction and Claim

A variety of electronic communications is included by social media which are most commonly networking sites, like, LinkedIn and Facebook. All forms of blogs are also covered with it, like, personal newsletters, diaries, online journals, Wikis, and Twitter. Under the umbrella term of social media, viewing websites and video posting are also included, like, YouTube.

Unintended consequences in the workplace are created by the emergence of social media due to its extensive use as a tool for communication. These unintended consequences are hard to be ignored by the employers within the workplace. In many respects, the long-term employers due to the nature of the core business are more vulnerable to the negative impacts of social media are invulnerable to these unintended consequences.

The way people share information and connect with each other is revolutionized by social media. The way in which the interactions are taken place is changed due to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media. However the organizations are struggling to respond towards it. The use of social media by customers and employees can affect the organization directly, and this must be realized by the companies that are putting efforts to avoid social media. Personnel, financial and legal risks are exposed to an organization if it cannot manage the impacts of social media effectively.

For an organization, it is mandatory to maintain a policy that restrain employees related to social media sites and in the context of work-related communications and govern the use of social media at work (Lynn, 2011, pp. 93). The threats and risks of social media abuse and use must be minimized by the policy. The social media policy must be specific to the culture and facility of the organization. In order to limit the personal use of social-media networks, a sound social-networking policy is required to be established by firms.

Background

More than five hundred million users have access to Facebook since it graduated from its college roots. Whereas, connecting job seekers and employers to each other was the purpose of LinkedIn, but now it has more than seventy five million members, its scope has got broadened. On Twitter, tweeting is the main thing to do by everybody. More than twenty five percent of employees were revealed to change the settings of their computers in their workplace circumventing the policies of employee communication, in accordance to a recent Cisco study (Lyncheski & Et.al, 2010, pp. 32).

Almost 1 and a half of all employees under the age of thirty and at the age of thirty, on employer time, have visited social media sites for meaningless interactive digital games for more than an hour per day, in accordance to Cisco, which is one of the leading network providers of the United States. Almost one third of them claimed that they were granted permission to do so, whereas, a policy governing social media usage and access was acquired by five employers only, in accordance to the information compiled by Cisco. Beyond any reasonable expectations, the use of new media is going to increase, and in comparison, any time soon the employees' access to social media will not going to wane.

Body

Support for Claim

Fifty one percent of chief financial officers were interviewed in a recent study which was conducted by Accountemps. During business hours, the waste of time by employees through navigating sites for personal use, like, Twitter and Facebook. They also expressed that the use of social media by employees might result in unprofessional behavior of the employees as they might leak confidential information of the company which can pose great risks for their firms.