If you are on Facebook, there’s a good chance that you’ve logged on to your account while you were on the clock. About 15 minutes per day seems to be the average according to a recent study by Nucleus Research.
Although we have all read endless diatribes about lost productivity and the need to block social networking sites – even this survey equates time spent on Facebook to about 1.5% of total lost productivity – Rachel King of BusinessWeek offers up a unique perspective on all this.
King asks us to consider “a correlation between employee use of social networking sites and the ever-shrinking lunch break.”
99.9% of the time, you will find me at my desk during my lunch “break” and yes, I admit, if I have a yogurt in my hands, I just might stray to a quick diversion or two on the web while I quickly recharge.
With downsizing and increased workloads, the fact that the average lunch break is now seven minutes less than last reported five years ago is no surprise. Are we seeing a transfer from physical lunch breaks to virtual ones? But more importantly, is this really having an impact on productivity?
Since 2000 the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future has conducted a survey on changes in work performance and productivity due to work Internet access. eMarketer offered up this table to demonstrate trends in the seven-year span:
The numbers are pretty consistent with the majority believing that productivity has improved “a lot” or “somewhat.”
Enabling employees to be productive is key to success. So is keeping a team engaged.
The School notes, “Internet use is growing and evolving as an instrument for personal engagement.” Completely blocking social networking sites, as many organizations feel they must do to remain productive, may not be the way to go. Taking advantage of the wide ranging ways that these sites can keep your employees engaged with your organization – and their world – can work to your organization’s advantage now more than ever.
