A Day in My Office Without Internet and New Social Media Technologies in My Workplace

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Introduction

The question that is often posed concerning the contemporary information technology oriented work environment is whether technology is critical in moulding communication and relations at the workplace. People have become used to technology to an extent that a rise in the level of addiction to new media is witnessed across different workplaces.

Can the modern work culture be sustainable without the new media? How do people cope in the workplace without the presence of the Internet considering the fact that the Internet is the main supportive technology on which the functioning of new media tools is based? These are some of the questions that people ask when it comes to analysis of the cultural and social impacts of new media in the modern workplace.

In this paper, it is argued that the Internet and new media tools have had immense effects on patterns of communication and relations at the workplace. This has interfered with social attributes of people due to the virtual nature of communication that is enhanced by new media.

This paper explores the impacts of new media technologies at the workplace. The paper focuses on a work scenario: a day without internet in an 8 hour work environment in an aviation industry in Singapore. The paper begins with an overview of the sociocultural impacts of new media in the workplace, followed by a discussion of the scenario based on research.

Overview of the social and cultural effects of the new social media in the workplace

According to Julia et al. (2012), development of web 2.0 technologies has made the use of online social media acceptable in different realms of life. New social media are not only embraced as a tool for communication by individuals, but it is also used to embrace communication by organizations.

Hearing and Ussery (2012a) observed that the orientation of the modern working environment has been immensely altered due to the introduction of the Internet and new media communication tools at the workplace. The Internet is now used as the main platform on which work is discharged, especially in busy working environments.

There are three attributes that can be attached to the role of the Internet and new media in the public work environment. The Internet has enhanced efficiency in the process of communication. Information is more accessible due to penetration of the Internet. Finally, the Internet has enhanced flexible work environments. Modern work environments are highly shaped by the Internet.

There is an array of new social media technologies that have been developed and have attained resounding numbers of subscribers. These include: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype, and YouTube among many others (Hearing & Ussery, 2012a).

According to García-Montes, Caballero-Muñoz and Perez-Alvarez (2006), emergence of new communication tools like mobile phones and other technologies that are supported on these tools have resulted in what can be termed as a postmodern mentality.

A continuous virtual space supported by new media tools is now opening contrary to the physical patterns of relations and the discharge of tasks at the workplace based on physical contact with people. Therefore, the roles that are played by people also keep shifting.

However, it is quite daunting to differentiate individual roles due to the social media platform where the level at which information flows is quite high. This makes it difficult for people to manage communication.

Employers have had to battle with a lot of issues with the emergence of the Internet and new social media tools in the modern work environment. Most of the issues revolve around changes in the communication patterns at the workplace.

This raises the question of whether new media can be considered to be a ‘right’ or a ‘privacy right’ in the work environment. This concern comes from the fact that a number of legal standoffs have already emerged about the widespread use of social media in the modern work environment (Poerio & Bain, 2012).

Absence of the internet and new social media in the workplace

As observed earlier, the Internet and the penetration of new media tools in the workplace is slowly converting people into virtual oriented objects. Employers have become so much used to the Internet and communication through social medial tools to an extent that the absence of the Internet in the workplace is viewed as a misfortune.

Contrary to the traditional working environment, the modern working environment has seen people glued to their computer and iPad screens even when they are not discharging work oriented tasks. There is a change in the establishment of physical ties at the workplace from the way it used to be in the traditional work environment where physical contact and communication were the order of the day.

Coping with personal challenges these days was easy because employees could easily confide in each other and encourage one another. This is the exact opposite when it comes to the modern work environment where people fear confiding in one another due to issues of privacy that emanate from the use of social media (García-Montes, Caballero-Muñoz & Perez-Alvarez, 2006).

According to Hearing and Ussery (2012b), the Internet and social media have created a vacuum in communication at the workplace as most people prefer not to share information because of the fear that the information may leak into social media and go public.

In the modern times, physical contact remains to be an option. This erodes the traditional view of the workplace as a secondary home where people could easily establish emotional ties.

Looking it from my perspective, the first thing I do every morning when I enter my office is to open the office computer and login to all the social sites that I have subscribed to before attending to any person or office task for that matter. If this is not addiction, then it is a sign of potential addiction.

This can be likened to the argument by Hearing and Ussery (2012b), who noted that the conduct and lives of people in the modern public work environment are largely based on digital records. The argument is based on the fact that most people interact through the social media.

Therefore, the Internet and social media tools have changed people in such a way that it is hard for people to establish bonds without the use of social media. The aviation industry is equated to a busy public work environment, thus the absence of the Internet can be a major problem for most systems are networked.

This ought to be considered as a general work challenge. However, absence of the Internet and inability to use the social media often change the moods of most of employees since most employees are addicted to social media.

According to Julia et al. (2012), human beings are intrinsic in nature. Consequently, a single pattern of behaviour can hardly be attained from the social media platform. People are bound to develop different patterns of behaviour in social media. Most of the behaviours interfere with the main objectives of social media development, which include fostering speed, efficiency, and effectiveness in communication.

In their research, Julia et al. (2012) ascertained that the wide usage of new social media by employees at the workplace results in addiction. This, in turn, alters the work behaviour patterns and social contacts of the employees.

This justifies why a substantial number of employees are seen having conversations in the aviation industry when there is no Internet connection, which is contrary to other days when Internet connectivity is there.

By extension, it can be argued that new media results in undesirable patterns of communication by killing the aspect of physical attention and the spirit of togetherness that can only be attained through creation of physical ties. Physical ties at the workplace can hardly be created when there is no one-on-one communication among employees.

The SIA, just like many other organizations, does not have a social media policy that guides the use of social media in the company. This is why a substantial number of employees in the organization and many other organizations take advantage of social media by mostly using the Internet at the workplace to conduct social interactions through new media tools.

The relative success of new social media adoption in organizations is quite low, with most organizations struggling to strike a balance between social media usage for organizational purposes and social media usage for social reasons by employees.

As much as social media are deployed in organization for purposes of speeding up communication within organizations and between organizations and the public, there is a need for organization managers to also foster interpersonal communication at the physical level to avoid complete virtualization of people.

Complete virtualization of people results in addiction to social media. This denies people a chance to develop stronger ties within organizations. Strong physical ties are critical in solving personal problems.

According to Ployhart (2012), organizations adopt new social media to aid them in recruiting, advertising, branding, and many other functions without paying attention to the extended dangers of precedence levels of new media usage in organizations.

On the other hand, it has been realized that the culture of information safeguarding that was easily attained by organizations in the pre-social media era can no longer be sustained due to unguarded trends in information exchange that are facilitated by new social media tools.

This implies total erosion in patterns of communication. “German Workplaces Ban Social Media” (2011) reported on the decision of a number of firms in German to ban the use of social media in the workplace. The article reports minimal productivity and lack of privacy some of the reasons why firms are opting to ban the use of popular social media at the workplace.

The other critical thing is that social media usage in organizations can result in different social groupings in organizations. For example, absence of the Internet in SIA for the entire day saw employees who were over 50 years unaffected by absence of the Internet as they kept discharging tasks, while employees who were aged below 35 years seemed idle that day.

This implies that new social media usage is highly embraced by younger employees to an extent that younger employees are differentiated from baby boomers by examining the rate of addiction to new social media. In this case, transferability of skills, behaviours, and experience of older employees to younger employees becomes harder because of the space created between these two groups of employees by social media.

The space is reflected by the amount of time spent on social media, the new forms of language that develops on social media, the nature of content that is shared on social media, and the concepts of identity that are derived from the use of new media by the two groups of employees.

According to Cross and Parker (2004), social media enhances the creation of informal structures by individuals. This affects the individuals’ level of engagement with organizations. Social media addicts in organizations are only comfortable working when they are linked to informal structures.

Conclusion

New social media has been widely adopted in different organizations. However, it has been ascertained that most employees do not use new media tools for the intended purposes. It can be concluded that although new media has positive impacts on communication in organizations, it is quite hard for organizations to control the patterns of behaviour and impacts of new media on people.

This, in turn, impacts communication negatively by overlooking positive attributes of communication. New media reduce chances of development of physical relations in the workplace. This minimizes chances of creating strong and long lasting social ties among employees.

List of References

Cross, R. L., & Parker, A. 2004, The hidden power of social networks: Understanding how work really gets done in organizations, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.

García-Montes, J. M., Caballero-Muñoz, D., & Perez-Alvarez, M. 2006, ‘Changes in the self resulting from the use of mobile phones’, Media, Culture & Society, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 67-82.

German Workplaces Ban Social Media, 2011, Information Management Journal, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 15-15.

Hearing, G. A., & Ussery, B. C. 2012a, ‘The times they are a changing’: the impact of technology and social media on the public workplace, part I’, Florida Bar Journal, vol. 86, no. 3, pp. 35-39.

Hearing, G. A., & Ussery, B. C. 2012b, ‘The times they are a changing’: the impact of technology and social media on the public workplace, part II’, Florida Bar Journal, vol. 86, no. 4, pp. 20-24.

Julia, Y. L., Angelina, N. L., Khalil, S., & Julian, M. C. 2012, ‘Social media usage and work values: the example of Facebook in Taiwan’, Social Behaviour & Personality: An International Journal, vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 195-200.

Ployhart, R. 2012, Social media in the workplace: issues and strategic questions. Web.

Poerio, J., & Bain, L. E. 2012, Social media in the workplace: employer protections versus employee privacy’, International Law News, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 10-13.

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