Slashdot Mirror
Study: People That Think Social Media Helps Their Work Are Probably Wrong
RichDiesal writes: "In an upcoming special issue of Social Science Computer Review, researchers set out to understand how people actually use social media while at work and how it affects their job performance. By polling workers across 17 industries, they identified 8 broad ways that people use social media that they believe help their work, and 9 broad ways that people use social media that they believe harm their work. Although the harmful social media behaviors were related to decreased job performance, the beneficial social media behaviors were unrelated to job performance. In short, wasting time on social media hurts you, but trying to use social media to improve your work probably doesn't actually help."
Don't worry Ninja cat will distract them.
My first thought here was "well.. duh!"
Maybe I'm biased not doing a lot of this stuff, but I just can't see any sort of job where social media helps except for jobs that are involved with social media (marketing, customer interactions, etc).
Next up, will they have the study showing that Slashdot usage is detrimental to work performance?
(at least I was sure usenet was a net positive because it was often the only place to get to get real answers to tough questions, which really has no replacement today)
I RTFA but I don't see what they're counting as social media? Are we including things like IM and EMail or collaborative development products like web based agile?
Or did they just count Facebook, Twitter and Instagram?
No, Faceplanting/Facistbooking isn't doing work- unless that IS your work.
Ladies and Gentlemen we have a new front runner for this year's Ig Nobel prize awards --El
Thats because they are doing it wrong, what they need is the Oculus Rift VR FB experience.
It's any social media use at all while at work. One of the dimensions of "good" behaviors was participating in an online work community. Presumably, most people would not think that using Facebook would help their job performance, so they would not report that as "good".
Some "good" example survey items linked in the article:
I request help from people on social media when I am having trouble solving a problem at work.
I communicate with existing customers or clients via social media.
When someone posts something negative about our organization or its employees on social media, I try to do something about it.
Social media doesn't do diddly squat for 98% of the world at work.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
What if your job is to 'engage the userbase' on social media?
Twitter is pretty invaluable when it comes to real-time "is my ISP/*aaS down or is it just me?" situations. I don't actively sit there and tweet, but it has plenty of uses that enhance my reaction time to issues.
If you use it right. Pickup a ton of industry info for what I am doing, connect with people who are in the same space. Easy connect with people interested in things I am doing.
Facebook is a waste of time simply because Facebook neuters your ability to reach people if you don't pay - but so far Twitter is pretty decent.
. . . and get back to work.
It will depend on your reason or intention of using social media. If you use social media as part of your work such as posting about your company's update then it can help. On the hand, if your reason of using social media is to chat to your friends while working then it is not helpful.
In agreement here with comments above re: how it really depends on industry and intent. Previously having studied med sci before stumbling upon a linux kernel and plunging balls deep into the shell so to speak, I know enough about experimental design and stat manipulation to know that conclusions like these in Psychology can be dubious enough let alone Sociology studies like this one... making a questionnaire with a lie scale (if they even used one), and then throwing in some self reported data of time management on social media doesn't prove shit. Perfect example on how social media increased my work productivity: On the news channel in the background I've been hearing about this big deal called the Heartbleed bug over and over again... it's big news now apparently and they're telling me that it's a very big deal, throwing big percentages around and all.. Because of my using social media I found out about this cve, checked systems and patched affected centos 6 servers 48hrs ago. Now I actually have nothing better to do with my time than type this shite to strangers.
In my limited experience the people who say it helps their work seem to be looking for an excuse to play games on Facebook most of the working day.
As for HR types scouring Facebook for some reason not to hire people or some reason to lay people off - kill it with fire!!!
LInkedIn in particular is highly useful if you are in a sales role. Essentially it is a form of self updating client book. It's accuracy is only so-so and it is definitely not exhaustive but without it the job would be much much more difficult.
IMHO There are three ways in which social media can help you in your job:
1) finding a job/boosting your career by contacts: unrelated to job performance.
2) Finding a solution to an already known problem (e.g. stackexchange) and retruning the favour there *iff you really have to say something* (otherwise it will annoy others and damage your reputation). Use it wisely to learn (and dont copy&paste too much).
3) Reflecting on your own mindset by (semi)-anonymously posting on the internet, and listening to the thoughts of others, without the pressure to loose your face if you are not right, or asking questions which you would not ask in public.
But having 1million friends and likes of facebook is not getting your problem solved unless your are an SEO sheep.
If you are trying to do any "networking", which everyone seems to agree is oh-so-necessary these days, from the comfort of your office chair and you yourself have nothing valuable to offer so you have to fall back to easily accessible means like open groups or open profiles on social media then the only people you will meet are others like you who have nothing to offer but who are also trying to claw their way up some social ladder.
Pretty much any form of networking that will actually give you valuable access to influential people is going to be a lot harder to get and will somehow be limited. These people can choose and they don't talk to or share their influence with "nobodies" who got nothing equally valuable to offer but try to get their foot in the proverbial door by stalking on facebook or xing.
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." - Mark Twain
I work as a consultant delivering large projects for our clients, which is essentially a knowledge economy. We do thousands of projects a year.. someones done that same project with a client in the same industry before? How do we know? How do we get in touch with that person and speak to them on the phone? Do we spam the entire company mailing list?
Nope, we just on our organisation's Enterprise Social Network. Jive, Yammer, Chatter, etc... they are all new ways of doing business and sharing information.