Social media affecting workplace productivity: Report

According to TeamLease World of Work Report, an average of 2.35 hours is spent accessing social media at work every day and 13 per cent of the total productivity is lost owing to the social media indulgence alone.

The unrestricted usage of social media is having a negative impact on workplace productivity, as employees spend more than 32 per cent of their time on social media every day for personal work, says a study.

According to TeamLease World of Work Report, an average of 2.35 hours is spent accessing social media at work every day and 13 per cent of the total productivity is lost owing to the social media indulgence alone.

“Indulgence in social media and the resultant slacking is a testimony of pastimes getting more interesting than work.

Hence rather than blindly instituting rules, organisations should get to the root cause of the misuse and devise policies that make work more challenging and the work culture more aspirational,” Kunal Sen, Senior Vice President, TeamLease Services said.

As per the study, apart from loss of productivity, the extensive usage of social media by employees has also resulted in an increase in loss of confidential information, defamation, misinformation and employee solicitation.

According to the report, Facebook is the most visited social media platform. Out of the 62 per cent employees who accessed social media during working hours, nearly 83 per cent of them spend significant time browsing Facebook.

The report noted that the use of social media at workplace and resultant slackening has become very rampant. Some employers have policies in place, and some are leveraging social media to their benefit, but most are clueless about how the menace could be handled, it said.

The ‘Social Media at Workplace’ is the third in TeamLease survey series and was administered on HR managers across sectors. Read more.