Executive Pay: The Curious Case of Carlos Ghosn’s Arrest
February 12, 2025
No understanding of Six Sigma is complete without truly understanding where it came from – Motorola. The backdrop of the story shows how Six Sigma implementations changed the way Multi-National Corporations conducted operations worldwide. It started in 1981. Motorola like most American companies was reeling under the threat of Japanese competition. Recovering from World War-2, […]
The Kano Analysis is a simple looking tool that has grave implications of the field of quality management. It has brought about a paradigm shift in the way quality is viewed by organizations worldwide. The Kano analysis brought about this change from changing the measurement of quality from one-dimensional to two dimensional. One Dimensional v/s […]
Chinese firms were seldom thought of being anything apart from copies of their western counterparts. The snobbish inhabitants of Silicon Valley never thought that these companies would amount to much. However, the reality has become very different. China today has about 25% of the world’s unicorns i.e. tech startups with a valuation greater than $1 […]
Elections to the central government are due in India in 2019. This is the reason why all political parties have suddenly become very concerned about the economic welfare of the poor people in the country. This is the reason why different political parties are proposing different measures in order to tackle this poverty. One of […]
Urbanization and its Problems for Corporates The world is increasingly being urbanized and this has implications for the corporate sector and the managerial class. To start with, with more and more companies being located in urban areas, the corporate sector has to deal with the problems associated with urbanization like lack of access to basic […]
The 21st century is also known as the information age. The biggest companies in the world today sell nothing but information. Consider the case of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, etc. that have billions of dollars in market capitalization. Every company, big or small, now has a social media department. The job of the people in these departments is to manage the image of the company on social media. The workers in such jobs are required to spend part of their day on these social networking sites doing productive work.
However, for the vast majority of the workforce in the world, social media is a distraction. It might seem to be a minor and harmless one at first. However, that is not the case. The Economist magazine has researched in this regard. They estimate that logging onto social media costs the US economy a mindboggling 650 billion dollars. When statistics were converted to a per worker basis, the number came to $4500! Hence, every worker in the United States is annually wasting $4500 of their employer’s money loitering around on social media. The problem is apparently much bigger than it appears to be at first glance. In this article, we will have a closer look at how these digital distractions wreak havoc on worker productivity.
The straightforward solution to this is to remove the ambiguity about social media use from the workplace. Companies need to formulate, publish and communicate policies that specifically explain if social media can be used in the workplace and if so for how long.
These policies will vary widely depending upon the nature of the job. For instance, manufacturing jobs need higher attention to detail. Hence it is dangerous to allow even bare minimal use of social media. The same cannot be said of service-related jobs.
If users are working at a back office, they could be allowed to take a break to visit these websites. However, the time spent on these websites must be included in their leisure hours and not the work hours. The problem arises when workers can spend a large amount of time online without accounting for it.
The ideal way to implement this would be to block these websites on the company network and have one or two shared workstations where these websites are active. Hence, when users log into this workstation the time spent there will be recorded. Also, when social media is not readily available at the user’s fingertips, the usage tends to drop sharply.
Apart from such deadlines, companies should ensure that the task given to the worker fills their working hours completely. They can conduct time and motion studies to estimate the amount of time required for a job. Hence, if a worker can complete the tasks faster, they should be rewarded with leisure time which may include social media usage. Companies should accept social media as an integral part of life in the 21st century. They only need to manage its interference with work.
Lastly, it is important for the companies to ensure that they honor privacy laws while enforcing their policies. Companies do have the right to stop workers from accessing certain websites. However, they do not have the right to collect personal information about the worker without their consent.
To sum it up, social media has become a workplace menace. Companies need to adapt quickly by formulating policies that regulate its usage. In the absence of such regulations, workplace productivity is likely to be hit further.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *