Technology Adoption and Innovation at Workplace: Case of Social Media and Employee Productivity

Abstract

The rapid rise of social media is bringing a change in how people communicate, and how organisations operate. Social networking allows people to communicate, share, collaborate. Social media websites have become instantly well-known across the world since last few years and have infiltrated our workplace. Most employees have started consuming social media through their personal mobiles or workstation devices.

Organisational competitiveness and success depend on top performing employees since these employees can generate reasonable value over time. They also help in building a competitive culture in the organisation, helping in driving the business. Thus, workplace productivity of employees defines success of any organisation. Employees are taking up social media at workplace as it is growing by leaps and bounds. Similarly, today’s organisations of all types are scouring for ways to immediately get the advantage of this upward trend, maintaining a greater transparency.

However, any type of growth brings along with it a set of debatable issues, and social media has a fair share of such issues for e.g.: data privacy and protection, fraud, phishing, secrecy, discrimination etc. Thus, companies must help build suitable frameworks at workplace to decide and monitor workplace consumption of social media. To sum up, companies should try to integrate social media at the workplace for benefit and wellbeing of employees.

This aim of this research paper is to discuss the relationship between use of social networking websites in workplace and employee productivity and examine benefits or limitations of using social networking websites at work.

Purpose

It is human nature to create thriving networks and communities which can contribute in creating and sharing knowledge. It is human instincts to create association or networks to shape networks for work and self-interests. Since the previous four five years, social networking sites have become a necessary component of our daily lives and thus, cannot be left unrecognised in the workplace.