Do employees really want social media at work?

It’s a simple reality of business today: organizations are under intense pressure to use social media to connect with employees.

A Fast Company.com opinion piece last year noted that worldwide, companies can unlock up to $1.3 trillion in value through social media’s enhanced organizational communication and new employee collaboration.

Likewise, evidence suggests employees are demanding access to social media in the office. In discussing a recent survey that found a third of employees spend an hour or more a day on social media at work, one commenter observed “Everyone, including you and me, is using Facebook and Twitter more and more at work.”

Yet for all of the benefits of social media, there is still much to be learned in terms of how employees use this technology.

Indeed, an emerging body of scholarly research is shedding light on the effects of social technology on the employee-organization relationship.

I just completed a study of a 300-employee U.S. company for my dissertation. Several noteworthy findings from my study:

• Social media use causes subtle workplace tension. While the organization in my study uses some social media (such as blogs) for organizational communication, employees are frustrated when they see their peers spending too much time on Facebook and Twitter at work.
• Employees want a break from technology. A 2010 eMarketer study found that the average consumer spends 11 hours per day with media (a figure that’s surely increased). My study supports this. A certain degree of technology fatigue occurs with constant exposure to digital media, and this exposure starts when we clock into work each day.
• User-generated content (UGC) production was virtually non-existent at this small organization. Employees are updating existing work documents and collaborating face-to-face, yet the amount of employee-created content was minimal. The employee content success stories tend to be from larger companies; we need to better manage expectations for UGC at work when it comes to small to mid-sized firms.

No study is perfect and my dissertation had its limitations. Still, these findings point the way for future studies.

The Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication is providing funding for a follow-up study this summer.

I’m interviewing 15 to 20 employees at a large Northeast U.S. company in the coming weeks to understand employee preferences for internal communication channels. I want to explore which organizational messages and types of organizational communication are best served by specific channels (social media, newsletters, emails, etc.).

I hope to report back soon with initial results from this second study.

With so much attention being placed on social media in the workplace, it is up to researchers to continue investigating the ways in which technology is changing organizational culture and behavior from the employee’s vantage point.