Balancing the employee motivation benefits and failings of social media

Date: 09/08/2010

Social media is undoubtedly becoming an integral part of many businesses' operations and the medium has a number of benefits for employee motivation.

A recent multi-national survey from Clearswift has shown that firms which ban social networking websites from the workplace outright could actually be damaging leadership and motivation.

The firm said that sites like Facebook and Twitter - as well as being effective marketing tools - are an integral part of most people's daily lives.
And, as more and more firms adopt social networking as a marketing tool, it looks like outright bans on workplace social media use are going to become impossible to police.

However, according to new research from MyJobGroup, social media use in the workplace can actually damage employee motivation.

According to the organisation, which polled 1,000 UK workers, the cost of lost time resulting from social networking use may be as high as £14 billion.

Lee Fayer, MyJobGroup's managing director, said: "Whilst we're certainly not kill-joys, people spending over an hour per day in work time on the likes of Facebook and Twitter are seriously hampering companies' efforts to boost productivity."

Written by Peter Chad

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