Social Networks in the Office, Research Proposal Example

Promoting the Setup of Social Networks in the Office: Which Level of Restriction of Social Networking That Employees Can Accept

Aims of the Research Topic

The research intends to investigate the level of social networking that managers should allow to prevail in the work place, in order not to affect the level of productivity of the employees at the work place. The research also aims at examining the impact of social networking at the workplace.

Problem Statement

The problem under examination in this research proposal is to determine what level of social networking that managers should allow to prevail in the workplace.

Research Questions

What is the impact of social networking on the performance of workers at the work place?

How long do workers take on social networking sites during working hours?

Does social networking affect the security of the organization?

Literature Review

Social networking is the event where individuals log into social sites that allow them to meet friends online and chat with them over the internet or through their phones. The most common social sites that individuals use currently are twitter and Facebook. Social networking has become a worrying concern for many businesses and organizations. Man managers have argued on whether the technology is helping businesses or hurting them. The most challenging aspect of social networking is the sites that individuals visit during working hours. For instance, some time back, most individuals visited pornographic sites, which posed a significant challenge to managers of businesses and organizations. However, research indicates that the dangers that social sites pose to the managers is more intense than that from pornographic sites. According to Hit wise, an organization that tracks individuals that use social networking sites across the world, the number of people visiting social network sites rose to 62% from the year 2008 to 2009. In addition, the report claims that more at least four out of five adults in the United States visit social sites at least once every month. Half of all the adults are clients of socials sites such as Facebook. For instance, Facebook currently has a total of more than 300million users. Most relates this to personal reasons and business reasons (Cross & Parker, 2004).

As a personal aspect, social networking helps an individual to achieve the most powerful human feeling of association with others to enhance a sense of belonging. Users of Facebook claim that it offers them consolation especially when they do not get adequate attention from the people around them.

As a commercial tool, social networking has become an asset to businesses. Currently, most businesses in the world have their pages on Face book, where they advertise most of their products and services. This has worked for most of the businesses in terms of reducing marketing and advertisement costs (Guerin, 2011).

On the contrary, social networking has its negative side. For instance, parents are now getting worried that their children may spend much of their time on such sites, which may affect their academic performances. Similarly, employers fear that it may affect the performance of workers if the workers use the technology for personal uses. The aim of this research is to examine to what extend that we should allow social networking at the workplace. Scholars argue that social networking should prevail, just enough to boost of the workers’ morale. In this argument, scholars argue that some employees get satisfaction from indulging in personal activities such as visiting social sites. However, the controversy of this argument is that workers should get satisfaction from their jobs and not from non-official activities such as visiting social sites. Thus, managers should only allow social networking to the level of allowing for a given degree of satisfaction and morale boosting in the employees (Greenleaf, 2010).

Business Benefits

Social networks are likely to have some form of business benefits if employees use the sites for business and not personal purposes. For instance, when employees spend some time on the social sites advertising the services and products that the company offers, the outcomes are likely to be positive to the company. Managers should allow social networking for purposes of developing communication channels between the company and its clients.

When social networking came into the working environment, many managers did not want to deal with it. All they wanted was to ban social networking at the work place. For instance, the United States government tried to prohibit alcohol in the early 1920s. What managers fail to understand is that the current workforce is individuals who have grown in the era of the internet and social networking. Therefore, social networking has become part of the young generation such that any attempt to ban the technology at the workplace will receive strong opposition. Thus, managers have no choice other than accepting the fact that social networks are there to stay. The only option that managers have at the moment is coming up with ways of regulating the use of the social sites at the workplace in order not to affect productivity (Guerin, 2011).

Scholars propose that managers should come up with a clear company philosophy that governs the use of social networks at the workplace. First, the company should define social networking. After defining the concept, the company should also state and make its opinion to the employees clear. The business should let the employees know its stand about social networking at the workplace. The social networking policy should also define whether employees should disclose their employment details on the social sites. Most social sites have a field that requires users to indicate their working places and career details. This might prove to be a security hazard to the organization. Thus, is it necessary that management make it clear on whether workers should disclose employment details on social sites.

Companies should also include a policy that regulates the comments that its employees update on social sites. This is because other companies can use such comments to the disadvantage of the company of such an employee.

The use of social networking creates numerous challenges for managers in terms of regulating risks to the reputation of individual employees and the organization. Managers often have a problem on the tradeoff between the benefits from allowing workers to use social sites and not using the sites. However, if the benefits exceed the shortcomings, management can embrace social networking in the workplace to a certain level. For example, if management succeeds in ensuring that employees strictly use social networks for purposes of marketing the organization’s products and services, management has all the justification to accept social networking at the workplace. However, when the use of social networks proves to be a security threat to the firm, management should consider totally abolishing the use of social networks among employees.

Methodology

Target Population

To collect the data necessary for the analysis of the research questions, I will collect data from four companies in USA. The firms must have a rich base of employees in terms of age and sex. The company must also be embracing social networking.

Sampling Technique

The mode of sample selection will be non-random because of convenience reasons.

Mode of Data Collection

In order to collect data for analysis of the research questions, I intend to use questionnaires. The questionnaires will be categorical. There will be a questionnaire for managers of the companies and other questionnaires for the employees.

The questionnaires will capture several aspects of the research proposal. First, the questionnaire will aim at capturing the employees view on whether management should allow for social networking during working hours.

The questionnaire will also capture data on the productivity of workers before the coming of social networking and after the technology came into the working environment. This will help in analyzing the impact of social networking on productivity.

Since the information is sensitive, we intend to send questionnaires to the select employees and managers by post. The select respondents will fill the questionnaires and send them back by post. This is one way of ensuring confidentiality in the data collection process.

The respondents will come from companies that are in different industries. For example, one company will come from the banking sector and another from the investment sector. This will help to diversify the response reliability.

Data Analysis

Since the data that I intend to collect will be more of descriptive than quantitative, I intend to use descriptive analysis. I will conduct a descriptive analysis of how many employees feel that social networking does not affect their performances at the workplace.

I will also find an average of hours that workers and managers feel is reasonable for employees to spend on social sites.

Descriptive analysis will satisfactorily answer the research questions of this research proposal.

References

Cross, L. R. & Parker, A. (2004). The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations. Havard: Harvard Business Press.

Greenleaf, C. (2010). Unwritten Rules of the Workplace. Chicago: Greenleaf Book Group.

Guerin, L. (2011). Smart Policies for Workplace Technologies: Email, Blogs, Cell Phones & More. New York: Nolo.