Facebook: Does It Hinder Productivity?

*A Facebook user

By ROMMY IMAH

In the Beginning

When in February 4, 2004, 19-year old Mark Zuckerberg, a second year Psychology undergraduate of Harvard University launched Facebook, unarguably, the world’s current hottest social media network, little did he know that he was inaugurating a platform that will within a very short time, become one of the biggest websites in the world. Today, Facebook is reported to be hosting over 664 million users globally and is visited by over 400 million people monthly. Africa with about 27.4 million subscribers, contributes about 2.6 per cent of this figure.

Coming at a time MySpace was the king of all social media, the young Mark Zuckerberg had through his previous engagements and works, exhibited some passion for virtual social interaction. He had previously created a Campus-based social networking site called CourseMatch, which allowed people studying then at Harvard to see who else was taking courses similar to theirs. It was from CourseMatch that Zuckerberg graduated to Facemash, another platform that allowed students to rank fellow students based on their looks.

Zuckerberg perhaps, didn’t know that what would become of Facebook was test run in Facemash. Facemash worked by placing pictures of two students side by side, at which point the user would choose which one was more attractive than the other. Reports had it that the initial launch of the site made use of the private photos taken for internal use by nine Greek Houses from around Harvard, which Zuckerberg obtained by hacking into the encrypted portions of the University’s student database.

Forwarded around various campus email lists, from which it gathered some fairly serious attention, within four hours of going online, Facemash had received some 450 visitors, who viewed more than 22,000 pictures between them. Unfortunately the experiment didn’t last long, as Facemash was shut down by the University’s authorities after only a few days on the ground that it breached the school’s security measures, as well as for Zuckerberg’s casual violation of people’s personal privacy. 

Originally launched as an online year book of sorts for the staff and students of Harvard, within which people would maintain control over their own pages, in just a day over 1200 students had signed up to secure their place on the Facebook site. By the end of the first month, more than half of all undergraduates studying at Harvard had made pages for themselves. It wasn’t long before Zuckerberg extended the invitation to join the site to students at other universities in Boston, then the rest of the Ivy League, and soon any US university that wanted to get involved was welcome to come on board.

In August 2005, the site converted into simply Facebook.com, when Zuckerberg purchased the domain name for a staggering US$200,000. In September of the same year, the site began to expand to incorporate US high schools, and one month later, it crossed the Atlantic to arrive at universities around the UK.

In September of 2006 Facebook opened its doors to anyone who wanted to register an account, moving firmly into position to become the social media giant it has become today. The site does not charge to register, instead it makes money by selling space for onsite advertisements as well as through a share of the profits from Facebook credits.

Said to worth something in the region of US$11 billion, Facebook is unarguably the most visited social networking site in English speaking countries, and has achieved total market dominance in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam as well the African continent.

Enemy of Productivity?

It is true that a social networking platform like Facebook has immensely promoted social interaction and re-united lost friends, school mates and work colleagues but whether this platform has helped or hampered productivity, has remained the bone of contention in many quarters. This is in spite of the fact that this social media tool has eaten deep into the fabrics of students and work employees (especially young employees), and has seen them got immersed in the platform for personal and business purposes.

About two years ago, the world media reported that Indian firms were losing productivity because office staff spend too long on social networking sites according to a survey by India’s Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham). It said workers use Orkut, Facebook, Myspace and Linkedin for ‘romancing’ and other purposes.

Indian office employees questioned in the survey, which cut across 4,000 corporate employees spent on average an hour a day on sites like Facebook, leading to a loss in productivity of nearly 12.5%.

“Close to 12.5% of productivity of human resource in corporate sector is misappropriated each day since a vast majority of them while away their time accessing social networking sites during the office hours,” according to the findings of Assocham’s Social Development Foundation survey.

In September 2009, Portsmouth City Council in southern England banned staff from accessing Facebook on its computers after it was revealed they spent on average 400 hours on the site a month. The move was expected to stop the ‘waste of public cash’.

John Agno in his Leadership Blog once asked: “How much work can ‘hyper-socializing’ employees really accomplish if they are holding multiple conversations with others via text-messaging or obsessively checking social networking sites?”

He replied by saying: “They can accomplish a great deal in today’s 24/7 virtual environment.  The Gen Xs and Ys have a gift for multitasking because they have integrated technology into their lives and now have the ability to remain connected to each other and thus serve themselves and their employers well.”

Jeffrey Zaslow, a columnist with the Wall Street Journal wrote in November 5, 2009 that:  “Because so many people in their teens and early 20s are in this constant whir of socializing- accessible to each other every minute of the day via cell phone, instant messaging and social-networking Web sites, there are a host of new questions that need to be addressed in schools, in the workplace and at home.”

Critics of the Facebook freaks contend that these ‘hyper-socializers’ are serial time-wasters, that the bonds between them are shallow, and that their face-to-face interpersonal skills are poor. And this is why many employers and schools have taken the step to ban social media for personal use, citing either some research showing it negatively affects productivity, or relying on the older managers’ personal perspectives and preferences.

It is pretty evident that young workers spend more time than the old ones facebooking via their mobile devices, PCs or entertaining themselves online. In fact, in a 2008 survey conducted for Salary.com, it was discovered that 53% of those under age 24 said this was their primary ‘time wasting’ activity while at work, compared to just 34% for those between ages 41 and 65.

Yet, about two years ago, a Delhi-based research outfit, Nucleus came up with a report that social networking sites, which are being touted as the next big thing by industry pundits, are impacting the office work culture with majority of the corporate houses world over losing an average of 1.5% of total office output due to this.

Titled “Facebook: Measuring the cost to business of social networking,” the report stated that of the 237 randomly selected office workers asked about their Facebook use, 77% had a Facebook account out of which nearly 61% access their Facebook account during working hours at an average of 15 minutes each day; and 87% accessed their site for personal reasons. The report concluded that companies who allowed employees to access their Facebook site during work hours could expect to see total office productivity decline by an average of only 1.5%.

In the past, when today’s older workers were in their 20s, they might have taken a break on the job to call friends and make after-work plans. In those earlier eras, companies discouraged non-business-related calls, and someone who made personal calls all day risked being fired. It was impossible to envision the constant back-and-forth texting that defines interactions among young people today.

There are strong fears that as Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, blogs and social networking sites make further incursions into the business world, the line between work life and private life may soon disappear completely. This is because life at and out of work are no longer separate as they once were. They are being mingled by employers and employees alike.

Employers issuing laptops, Blackberries and mobile phones to their employees, are making time traditionally regarded as “out of work”-evenings, weekends, and holidays, into work time. Equally, employees posting videos on MySpace or editing a section on Facebook at work are bringing aspects of their private lives into the office.

When the Internet emerged newly, questions were asked about its impact on the employer-employee relationship. It was argued then and now in some places, that not everyone in the company needs an email address or should have access to the Internet. But today, employers of labour have not only seen the benefits in the Internet but have encouraged its use in their companies.

A 2010 study by Network Box showed that 6.8 percent of all the URLs accessed by businesses go to Facebook and 10 percent of Internet bandwidth goes to Youtube. The study analyzed 13 billion URLs accessed by businesses and studied business bandwidths to find results, and found Facebook and Youtube leading other companies like Google and Yahoo.
Simon Heron, Internet security analyst for Network Box, said: “The figures show that IT managers are right to be concerned about the amount of social network use at work. There are two real concerns here: firstly, that employee will be downloading applications from social networks and putting security at risk; and secondly, the amount of corporate bandwidth that appears to be used for non-corporate activity.”

From the above, it is evident that concerns are being expressed by employers of labour over the growing spate of non-productivity resulting from employees’ unguarded frequent access to social network platforms like Facebook. In fact, there were reports recently that a lot of businesses are clamping down on the use of social networks at the work place.  

If indeed Facebook constitutes 7 times out of 100, the site visited by an employee at an average business then, employers of labour should be concerned.  The study didn’t look at time spent, but Facebook is the site on the web with the highest time spent per user, and surely this means that users may be browsing and stalking during extended breaks during their work day.  Maybe soon people will begin to clamour for Facebook breaks in addition to lunch breaks as part of an employee’s workday.

The world is yet to recover from the global economic recession that brought her to her knees since 2008. The least any company can do in these tough times and in the face of constricting bottom lines, is to watch its employees bask in personal pleasure at the expense of their employers who desire nothing short of profit.

This is why Rebecca Wettemann, Nucleus Research vice president (Research) warned that “if your company is facing tight margins and low profitability, as many are now, then how can you accept any work distractions that drain your overall productivity? While it won’t make you popular, restricting Facebook can reclaim lost productivity. If your profitability is say two per cent, this could be the difference between staying open or closing shop”

What should be done?

Research has shown that social interaction is very useful for facilitating knowledge transfer and innovation in organizations and businesses. Online communities like Facebook have been proven to be effective instruments for communication. It allows you to search long lost friends, relatives or acquaintances you haven’t been in touch with for a long while. Indeed, Facebook aids in strengthening bonds and bridging gaps brought by distance and lack of time.

Also, Facebook users are given the platform to meet new groups and friends, which they can interact with and actually know what their likes and dislikes are. In addition, it enables the users to access each other’s profiles to find out interesting facts that they can use when they interact. In fact, some marriages have resulted from online social interaction. Ever since it was publicly launched in 2006, a lot of people have continued to go crazy about this new fad called Facebook. Individuals from all over the world create their Facebook accounts and use it to socialize with other people to beat time and distance constraints. 

Besides, it is a general knowledge that Facebook has become the largest online money-making platform after Google since it became a huge attraction for businesses, having the potentials of exposing them to their target markets. Facebook allows companies to advertise their products in the social media platform. These advertisements provide greater revenue to these companies. Mostly, the advertisements that are published on the website are targeting the majority of Facebook users, which is composed mostly of students and the young.

Glenn K. Garnes, a blogger suggests that companies should consider educating their employees on how to use Facebook, and social media generally to enhance not hinder their work performance. It’s not the tool but how people are using it that affects productivity.

According to him, “one way to do this is to determine how Facebook will be used in the business and then allow only employees who enhance the company’s mission through Facebook to access it. Providing incentives to employees who successfully increase productivity through Facebook is another approach.”

But even with all the benefits derivable from Facebook, it is a popular opinion that companies should begin to evaluate their Facebook policy and the cost to organisation in allowing access to Facebook, as blocking the site may actually result to gain in productivity.

To some people however, this looks Herculean. Like Zaslow argued earlier, the modern generation has a knack for multitasking, and because they’ve integrated technology into their lives, their ability to remain connected to each other will serve them and their employers well. Besides, given their vast network of online acquaintances, they could easily discover people who can become true friends or valued business colleagues.

Yet, a new study published by Scientists at Australia’s University of Melbourne found that taking time to visit websites of personal interest, including news sites and YouTube, provided workers a mental break that ultimately increased their ability to concentrate and was correlated with a 9% increase in total productivity.

“People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t,” said Dr Brent Coker, from the Melbourne Department of Management and Marketing.

The way forward is that companies need to understand the cost in productivity from accessing social media sites. Although industry pundits may tout Web 2.0 and social networking as the next big thing, when asked to actually identify business uses for Facebook, but few employees could point to a true business reason. In some cases a specific business benefit may outweigh the general productivity loss.

Experts however argue that, in order to properly manage the negative effects of Facebooking in the work place, managers must monitor productivity based on concrete, measurable goals rather than focus on the time spent doing the work. After all, if one is delivering results, why should his manager care if he spends a few minutes a day catching up with friends on Facebook?