BANGKOK
BUSINESS BRIEF
Vol. No. 2, Issue No. 2
Mid-January/Mid-February 2013
Photo by West McGowan via Flickr under Creative Commons license.
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Ban or plan? By Dean Outerson
As use of social media networks has spread throughout the world, and in recent years here in Thailand, many companies have resorted to blocking the use of
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social media on their company networks. The argument for banning is that employees are spending more and more of their work hours monitoring and updating their social media accounts, and so the company is losing valuable productivity time. There are even studies that say that billions of dollars (or pounds or baht) in productivity time is lost to internet surfing (and to social media use in particular) each year.
complain about the frivolity of the social media. For many companies, especially B2B companies, it is also difficult to see how social media can be an effective marketing tool, when most of the engagement on social media seems to be B2C. So for many management teams, the question is, what is the point? Why allow staff access to platforms that don’t help the company and just waste company time?
Other reasons for banning social media and chat programs include the claim that widespread use of these sites and applications causes slow internet speeds, while many CEOs and executives
But as mobile devices have proliferated and almost become ubiquitous, and as more and more companies have started to embrace digital marketing, banning social media in the workplace is
becoming somewhat anomalous and difficult to manage. And for every study that laments the loss of productivity due to internet surfing or chatting, there is another study that shows the benefits of allowing staff members to spend time on social media and that it actually makes them more productive rather than less. For proponents of digital and social media use in business, the various options (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Path, etc.) represent tremendous opportunities to learn, to sell, and to engage with stakeholders and Story continues on Page 20