Surprise: Social Networking Increases Efficiency But Don’t Expect Facebook Ban to be Lifted

A new study released today by AT&T proves that social networking at the workplace actually happens to increase efficiency of employees instead of distracting them as we usually think about it - depending on the tools used and the purposes. The study has been carried out for AT&T by Dynamic Markets in five European countries (Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands) and involved interrogation of more than 2,500 people.

65% of people said that the companies they work for use social networking as part of their working process. But it is important to note that companies adopting social networking tools are very choosy when it comes to what exactly they want their employees to use. In fact, the top three positions among the tools used in the companies are held by tools developed and controlled by the company itself: companies’ own collaboration sites on intranets (mentioned by 39% of respondents), internal forums within the company (20%), and company-produced video material shared on intranets (16%). LinkedIn, Facebook and other online third-party social networks only make their appearance on the 4^th position with 15% of people reporting use of them while external collaboration sites are on the fifth position with 11%.

But the most important and promising result of the study is that out of the surveyed people 65% said that social networking made them or their colleagues more efficient. What’s more, 46% mentioned that social networking could be a great source of ideas and creativity. Yet we have to remember that when speaking of social networking tools they were thinking mainly about the tools actually adopted by the companies as a part of working culture and often existing as a part of the company’s infrastructure.

It is also worth mentioning that the number of people having their concerns about use of social networks at workplace is also significant enough with 49% of people telling that social networks can be a distraction to employees and 45% afraid of leaks of company’s confidential information via use of such tools by employees.

So for those of you actually expecting encouragement from your employer to use Facebook and other social networks there’s a huge limitation here: the conclusion of the survey is only valid for certain social networking tools (mainly those created and owned by the employer) and only if social networking actually comes as a part of the workflow and is related to your job function. And of course if you spend your whole day chatting to your friends on Facebook about last weekend’s party, this will hardly help with your efficiency at work.

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