How to Keep Employees from Wasting Time on Social Networks?

We're sure every company is familiar with the problem of their employees spending too much time on social networks. According to various studies, 10 to 25 percent of the time employees spend in the office is inefficient. Auditors have estimated that the losses of the national economy associated with employees’ lengthy chatting and scrolling through photos on social networks amount to more than $4 billion annually, and this number is only increasing. The worst part is that about a third of people admit that they don’t just spend a lot of time on social networks, but that they are actually addicted to them.

How do you get your employees out of this craze of checking Instagram and Facebook every 5 minutes – and actually help them spend time more effectively in the office? Here are the best ways.

1. Motivate your employees to work harder and better

An employee should earn not only their salary, but also bonuses for meeting certain KPIs. You can create a multistage bonus system, which is especially common in retail stores: for example, for sales worth $100k per month an employee receives an additional $1k bonus, for sales worth $250k they receive a $3k bonus, for sales worth $500k they get a $5k bonus. The numbers we’ve provided are purely examples; they may vary significantly depending on the industry, employee’s position and assigned targets.

However, all of your employees must understand that the better they do the job, the more money they will get. That way, it will be beneficial for them to work harder and not just sit around doing nothing all day long. To be committed, employees should be given a decent motivation that actually improves their financial situation. If the salary they receive is around $1k and then they get another $100 in bonuses, then believe us that there are simply no bonuses – the compensation is absurd.

2. Set the rules and monitor their execution

Explain to your employees that they are not allowed to use social networks within the office, with the exception of their lunch breaks. They should be aware that a violation of this rule will inevitably lead to their bonus being withdrawn. Of course, there are ways for employees to get around it – for example, they can visit social networking sites from their phone, but with the help of CCTV cameras or personal control, it’s pretty obvious when a means of communication is used for work purposes and when it’s used for entertainment.

How to control whether an employee accesses social networking sites if they are competent enough to clean up the history, cache and so on? That’s when special systems can help, like Kickidler employee monitoring software that automatically records prohibited activity.

3. Have a time management seminar

Practice shows that 90% of people don't know how to plan and properly organize their time. Help them, invite them to a time management class, pay for the services of a trainer who will clarify how to plan time efficiently. Of course, this won't help everybody, but at least part of your team will become more effective, and the expenses will pay off quickly.

4. Invite a therapist

Therapist can help people who are addicted to social networks and are afraid to admit it, or worse, know about the problem but can't solve it. The specialist will identify people who are suffering from this “disease” and help them get rid of it. And in some cases, they may even advise you to overlook the times a certain employee visits social networks if an employee actually is quite productive and social networks turn out to be important for them (for example, if they are using it for self-validation, comfort, distraction, shifting focus from work problems to something else).

5. Restrict technical access to social networks

It's the most straightforward and efficient way, but it's also the crudest one. Your techs can make sure that social networks are not accessible from any computer – either permanently or during particular time periods (e.g. 8 am to 8 pm, excluding lunch breaks). You can block URLs identified by IP, introduce content filtering. There are many ways to do this, it's almost impossible to get around them, and even if your employees manage to do that, you can always monitor everything using the employee monitoring tools.

Social networks shouldn't be detrimental to the company. If your employees spend not more than 10 minutes a day using them, for instance, to have a little chat with their loved ones or to simply relax after a stressful period of work, it's completely okay. But when social networks take up several hours a day, the company's efficiency and performance decrease significantly. For the company, this problem is crucial, and it must be resolved.

6. Use Kickidler's Autokick tool

In March 2020, we updated our software to include an important employee time tracking tool called Autokick. Autokick is the ideal solution to the problem of employees using social networks at work, with its Automatic notifications and Self-monitoring interface features. Automatic notifications allow you to quickly notify the employee and their supervisor that they are spending too much time on social networks during office hours. Plus program settings let you set up the amount of time spent on social networks that will be considered a violation. For example, an employee has been on social networks for 30 minutes a day or for 10 minutes within an hour. Self-monitoring interface allows an employee to see their own productivity, i.e. how much time they've spent on productive and unproductive sites and apps. This helps the employee become more self-organized through game theory.

Kickidler Employee Monitoring Software