Should You Let Employees Use Social Media During Work Time?

For individuals, productivity is the difference between getting stuff done and finding yourself up against a deadline full of stress. But for employers it can be more serious. Poor productivity can eat into profits and even result in whole teams and departments making a loss.

There are whole swathes of ways to improve your productivity. But one of the most important things we can do is to eliminate the things that cause people to procrastinate.

The challenge there is that these things are not the same for everyone. So something that is a distraction for one person may not be for another.

Let’s look at social media as an example. Most of us use it. Almost 40% of the UK population logs into Instagram at least monthly and there are over 900 million Tiktok users globally. 

And while your staff members’ social media scrolling habits are unlikely to affect you outside of working hours, if they’re scrolling on the clock, could it harm productivity?

A fear of social media resulting in lower output is a core reason for many companies banning social media use in the workplace. It’s worth noting though, that under the laws of many countries, monitoring what employees do on their personal devices isn’t permitted. Having a policy that directs people not to use social media during their working hours is one way to go about limiting usage.

But should you?

Well, let’s look at the pros and cons.

Pros of Restricting Social Media Usage in the Workplace

The first pro is that this could help eliminate a major cause of procrastination. We’ve all done it – scrolled through social media and before we know it we’ve lost 10 minutes or 15 or maybe even more.

By restricting the use of social media in the workplace you reduce this risk. 

Another major plus of not allowing social media use in the workplace is reducing the possibility of your employees using social media as a platform for discrimination of bullying.

There’s also the issues of social media being a source of phishing links and other cyber security risks. When you don’t permit the use at work, you eliminate the risk of this affecting work computers and so forth.

Cons of Restricting Social Media in the Workplace

But restricting social media is not all perks for an employer. There are cons as well. 

First and foremost, a particularly strict social media policy might be something that puts off prospective employees. It also means your employees have fewer opportunities to promote you, as a business, throughout their day.

But ultimately, treating employees like the adults they are helps to breed a culture of trust. Overly restrictive policies in general can be negative for morale.

In addition, it’s very difficult to police. You can’t typically monitor the activity of your employees on their own personal devices, so there’s an element of trust anyway. And if you trust your employees then there’s an argument for simply trusting them to use social media sensibly.

Alternatives to a Ban

Why not encourage your employees to take regular breaks from their work (proven to help with productivity) and ask them to restrict their social media activity to said breaks instead of just blanket banning social media? Or talking with your team to ask their views on how to balance their freedom to check out in their Instas with the need to complete certain tasks in a given day.

Two way conversation is often much more effective than simply enforcing something.