Pew Research Center calculated that 77% of employees view the tape at work. They spend 1.5 hours a day there. This is 7.5 hours a week, more than 30 hours a month, and 390 hours wasted a year! And that doesn’t include other distractions such as work colleagues, tea breaks and personal calls.
There are many organizations that want to restrict social networks, but do not know where to start. If you have one of them, these are proven ways to spend your working time more efficiently.
In-house policy
Your company is a family. And each family has its own rules: do not swear, respect your elders, return home before 22:00, etc. It is the same in business. Each team member should understand all the conditions of social networks usage during working hours and be ready to be responsible for their violation. To be sure, fix the rules on paper.
Motivation
If an employee sits on the phone during the day, he either has no work or does not know how to manage time. In the first option, you should encourage the staff to work at maximum. You can develop a multilevel system of motivation. Believe me, if the employee has the opportunity to earn more, he will reduce the time on the social network.
Training on time management principles
Even the second option, when an employee is not able to manage his own time, can be easily solved through training. Invite staff to a webinar on time management, where the trainer will explain how to properly use this resource and manage priorities.
Restricted access
This is one of the most popular and strictest methods of personnel control. A system administrator can restrict social networks so that pages will not open on any computer. After that, Facebook and other sites will no longer harm the company, but it will significantly reduce staff motivation. And also, by doing this, you will encourage employees to look for alternatives – they will use phones or tablets to enter the pages.
Time limiting applications on the social network
Most companies do not know how much time their employees spend in social networks. To solve this problem, you will need tools that record employee activity on your computer. Reports are updated every 5 minutes and show the list of sites used, time worked and productivity level.
A company usually employs specialists from different fields and it is not reasonable to limit social networks for everyone. Because for a marketer it is one of the working tools, and for an accountant and programmer it is a waste of time. In Monitask resources have different productivity for employees of different departments. The program records what the employee opens and assigns the appropriate productivity category. Therefore, you can adjust the productivity of sites based on your job duties.
You will also be able to set up 24-hour monitoring if the staff is working in shifts or to disable site recording during the lunch break.
To ban or not to ban … that’s the question
Or maybe it’s not as scary as the harm’s tiny? When it comes to the dosed use of social networks, which you can control with the tracker and point in the right direction. Sometimes, 5 minutes on Facebook is enough to reboot.
Studies have shown that 82% of employees believe that social networks can improve working relationships. Such informal communication brings employees closer together. However, they stimulate a person to open a chat room immediately. They are distracted and as soon as they enter the flow state again, a new message will arrive.
Therefore, employers are afraid that social networks kill productivity. And in some ways they are right. If a person scrolls the tape for 70% of the time, instead of performing the duties – it will not go unpunished. Another thing is if an employee came in for 10 minutes to write a message to his child or spouse. In this case, the strict time limit in social networks can kill the motivation and desire to work.
Understand that social networks at work will not go anywhere. As long as there are people who use them for professional purposes, there will also be those who just wipe their pants. If you don’t want your employees to waste their time, keep your balance. Use time management programs, teach employees how to manage their own time, and carefully limit social networks. Set out your policy so that everyone understands what is expected of them. This is the first step to direct these unproductive activities for the benefit of your employees and your company.