Peer Review

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Peer Review

The dot com era is here with us where everything is mostly done using the computer and in particularly the internet. The internet has a become a virtual communication tool where individuals are now spending most of their social life in. with the development of social sites such as Facebook and twitter, persons are now linking with old friends, establishing new friends and communicating ideas at he comfort of seat and computer. This trend has easily swept into the workplace forcing mangers to come up with policies that guide the employees on the use of such sites.

In the job market, employees are not in any way discouraged from joining social networking sites. This however is a silent rule as the companies do not also advocate for the joining of such. What is mostly discouraged is the indulgence in the habit at the expense of the company’s job schedule. The company discourages engaging in social networking sites during working hours as some employees abuse the privilege by failing to complete their tasks or engaging in constructive activities. On the issue of having personal online information, the company fails to have a well defined policy on the issue. This is mainly because the policy would infringe on the individual rights of the employees.

However, the company expects all the employees to conduct themselves with decorum within and without the institution. This means that any information on an employee deemed as inappropriate may be acted upon. Such cases include where the information of the employee is deemed as a threat to the integrity of the company. For instance, there are situations where inappropriate videos of certain employees have been uploaded into the internet. During such incidents, the company has summarily terminated the employees’ employment. The main argument is that the employee is the face of the company, if the employee’s image is tarnished, then it follows that the image of the company will also be tarnished (Baumgartner, and Morris, 2010).

On the use of blogs, podcasts, and vodcasts the company highly advocates the use of such for communication purposes. The company is of the view that if such media is utilized in right manner, it would go a long way in facilitating the mission statement and the business objectives. The podcasts and vodcasts have become extremely essential in facilitating meetings among the higher ups. In the past, all communication was done through meetings or the customary memos. This leads to a lot of time wasted since the communication entailed face to face communication among the professionals. This comes as disadvantage whenever a significant member was away (Ahn, Yong-Yeol, Han, Kwak, Moon, & Jeong, 2007).

The company therefore utilizes these new technological facilities to enhance its communication procedures. The company goes further to create internal social media and active blogging. This is however restricted to the higher ups and this is solely used for company purposes. By using vodcast, communication is done in real time and face to face. Feedback is also received immediately without necessarily having to meet in the same place geographically. The company staff is highly encouraged to keep blogs where they can communicate their ideas. Such blogs are identified as information banks where information relevant to decision making processes can be retrieved. The social site also goes a long way in creating a healthy working environment.

With this in mind, the digital communication media is here to stay. It is not healthy to work against the trend, but quite essential to embrace the technology and utilize it in meeting the company’s goals and objectives. Relevant policies have to be however, enacted to guide the users on the most efficient and beneficial ways of utilizing such media.

References

Ahn, Yong-Yeol, Han, S., Kwak, H., Moon, S., & Jeong, H. (2007). Analysis of topological characteristics of huge online social networking services. WWW ’07: Proceedings of the 16th international conference on World Wide Web. (pp. 835-844).New York, NY, USA (conference paper)

Baumgartner, J. C., & Morris, J. S. (2010). MyFaceTube Politics Social Networking Web Sites and Political Engagement of Young Adults. Social Science Computer Review, 28, 1, 14-34.