Study points to workplace productivity loss due to social media

A study by TeamLease Services has found that around 32 per cent of the total time spent on social media during working hours was used for personal work, which pointed to a huge loss of official resources and productivity.

As a matter of fact 13 per cent of the total productivity was lost due to the indulgence with social media alone.

While social media might be the sought after employer branding and marketing tool, its unrestricted usage was negatively impacting employee productivity, according to TeamLease World of Work Report.

According to the study, in addition to the loss of productivity, the extensive usage of social media by employees had also resulted in an increase in loss of confidential information, defamation, misinformation and employee solicitation.

A detailed analysis of the nature of usage and time spent revealed Facebook was the most visited social media platform. Of the 62 per cent employees who accessed social media during working hours, nearly 83 per cent of them spent significant time browsing Facebook.

Kunal Sen, senior vice president, TeamLease Services said, ''Social media comes with its own inherent merits and demerits. In fact, indulgence in social media and the resultant slacking is a testimony of pastimes getting more interesting than work. Hence rather than blindly instituting rules, organisations should get to the root cause of the misuse and devise policies that make work more challenging and the work culture more aspirational.''

The report added, some employers had policies in place and some were leveraging social media to their benefit, but most were clueless about how the menace could be handled.

According to the report, the use of social media at the workplace and the resultant slackening had become rampant.