What Is Fraught with Internet Addiction in the Workplace - Research Paper Example

Social media in the work place It's a slow day at work and Janet is bored out of her mind, she decides to access one of her favorite blog website "Mysociallife.com". As she updates her status the humorous material she posts easily consumes her attention, meanwhile a client has been trying to contact her about very important business that may propel her career and company. Several attempts are made to contact Janet; unfortunately the client has dealt with this issue before and decides "enough is enough".

Few hours pass and Janet finally realizes her messages but by then it is too late and her boss is furious. Janet realizes her mistake could and likely end her career simply because of an internet blog. These situations are being depicted as this sentence is being written and it is getting out of hand in the work environment. While the internet is a positive tool for communication in the workplace, it can cause conflict and lack of productivity. These reasons have negative consequences for both employer and employee.

Privacy is fundamental for any company and its associates as individuals to function properly and maintain credible business relationships with the public. The internet has become a normal part of any business environment and since it is a format for communication, the workplace employee can use its resources to socialize on popular internet websites such as face book, twitter, YouTube etc. This behavior can cause a rupture of events such as security risk for a company if its employees use pirated softwares, download music files from the internet that are copyright protected, or watch porn on the company's computers.

In addition to that, many employees tend to illegally use a network or upload illegal material to the web server of the company (Overly). An employee violates the principles of privacy of a company if in the capacity of a salesman, he/she tends to develop professional relations and social networks with the customers on behalf of the employer. Likewise, an employee’s act of copy-pasting an article regarding his/her employer’s success in his profile on some social media website raises many concerns of privacy as the employer has to face the risk of copyright infringement liability (Cox and Rethman 19).

Irresponsible use of internet by the employees causes the employers to incur millions of dollars as corporate liability. The internet and its variety of web content create a lack of productivity for employees due to social media or fuel existing addictions like internet gambling. With its popularity on the rise, internet provides the employees with opportunities to gamble at the workplace. In many workplaces, employees are provided with unlimited supply to internet. Employees working in the corporate work culture own their own computers and use the internet without even raising any suspicion in the employers.

This ignorance affects the workers' productivity and efficiency at work (Griffiths). In addition to this issue there are the very common websites that decrease productivity in the workplace which causes people to waste a lot of time using the social networking websites. Gradually, people develop a habit to check their profiles on these websites several times in a day so that they can update their own status and comment on those of their friends, thus shifting their attention from work to these websites.

According to the statistics of the Nucleus Research, 77 per cent of the total of 237 corporate employees browse Facebook while they are at work, which causes a decline in productivity by 1.5 per cent in the companies that provide their workers with full access to Facebook. Negative behaviors of workers include viewing porn and online shopping. In addition to causing a loss of productivity, internet use causes companies to incur a lot of money due to the corporate liability (Naughton). This abusive behavior of excess web surfing usually continues until appropriate action is taken to discourage others in the workplace from engaging in it.

Although they are conscious of what their employer may do to discipline such behavior the pattern of irresponsibility continues. Some employees use internet to undermine others, which can have very bad implications on the work environment (Duffy et al.). Performance of an individual at the workplace is affected by the interaction and interpersonal relationship (Baron). Social undermining is understood as an attitude that with the passage of time, declines an individual's ability to develop and sustain good relationships with others, good reputation and success.

Social undermining may be intentional or unintentional, with the latter being more likely to occur at the social networking sites than the former. Colleagues might be embarrassed from being tagged in photos while it may not be originally intended by the tagger. Unintentional social undermining can have a serious impact on an employee’s relations with the peers at the workplace. Sexual harassment is another factor of internet negligence which creates a cause for concern in the work environment because certain employees decide it is ok to view inappropriate material on the internet with no regards to their fellow coworker.

It typically leaves a feeling of tension and hostility in the work environment and discrimination claims. Frustrated employees at the workplace tend to pass racial and discriminatory statements, and sometimes even sexually abuse the co-workers (“Jackson Lewis” 3). Particularly, at workplaces, where men and women work together, some employees might want to see porn on their computer as a signal of sexual invitation to the employee of the opposite gender. Movies based on sexual harassment commonly discuss a scene wherein a male employee is explaining some work-related matter with the female employee and suddenly, a pornographic website pops up as intended by the male employee.

Concluding, the internet is a great tool for companies to build better relationships with the consumer. It provides feedback on how to better serve the customer which initiates good reputation and self-growth for the company. However the internet can also be misused by a company's employee to compromise company privacy, work productivity and undermine a coworker. Works Cited: Baron R. A. “Interpersonal relations in organizations,” Individual differences. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 1996. pp. 334-370.

Cox, Jeffrey T. and Rethman, Kelly M. “Setting expectations: social networking at work.” 2011. Web. 5 Apr. 2012. . Duffy, M.K., Ganster, D.C., and Pagon, M. “Social Undermining in the Workplace.” The Academy of Management Journal. Vol. 45, Apr. 2002, pp. 331-351. Griffiths, M. D. Internet gambling in the workplace. In M. Anandarajan & C. Simmers (Eds.), Managing web usage in the workplace: A social, ethical and legal perspective (pp. 148-167). Hershey, PA: Idea Publishing. 2002. “Jackson Lewis: Serving the diverse needs of management.” 2010. Web. 5 Apr. 2012. . Naughten, K.

“CyberSlacking in the workplace.” Newsweek. Vol. 1. pp. 62–65. 1999. Overly, M. E-policy: how to develop computer, email, and internet guidelines to protect your company and its assets. New York: American Management Association. 1999. Print.