Social media, a waste of company time?

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As social media makes its way into the workplace, executives are weighing the potential risks and benefits. Approximately half (51 percent) of chief financial officers (CFOs) interviewed recently for an Accountemps survey said their greatest concern is that employees are wasting time during business hours using sites such as Facebook and Twitter. CFOs also expressed worries their staff may behave unprofessionally or post inappropriate information online. However, three in 10 financial executives (28 percent) said using these sites can improve customer service.
The survey was developed by Accountemps, a staffing services firm specializing in accounting and finance. It was conducted by an independent research firm and is based on interviews with responses from more than 1,400 CFOs from a stratified random sample of U.S. companies with 20 or more employees.
CFOs were asked, “What is your greatest concern for your company regarding employees using social media?” Their responses:

• Wasting time at work (51 percent);
• Behaving unprofessionally (18 percent);
  
• Posting financial/confidential company information (11 percent);
• Posting negative comments about company (10 percent); and
• No concerns (10 percent).

CFOs were then asked, “What is the greatest benefit to your company of employees using social media?” Their responses:

• Provide better customer service (28 percent);
• Enhance company’s reputation (22 percent);
• Expand networks of available contacts (20 percent);
• Secure new business (18 percent); and
• No benefits (10 percent).

“Many companies are still evaluating the risks and rewards of allowing employees to access social media websites at work,” said Max Messmer, chairman of Accountemps. “Firms with concerns about employees wasting time online while at the office can encourage appropriate online activity by developing and establishing a set of consistent guidelines.”
Messmer also pointed out, “More executives are seeing value in employees using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter for business purposes like promoting a product or service or connecting with target audiences. Employees in customer-facing roles, for example, can leverage these networks to communicate directly with customers and quickly address service issues as they arise.”

Internship: How students perceive it.

Every CPUT student’s dream is to do their internships in one of South Africa’s leading companies and be permanently hired after they are done with their internships. This result in students not being aware of what these so-called in-service programs are actually about, this is also one of the reasons that those who manage to fulfill this dream struggle to maintain it. 

This dream clearly outlines that students do the training for the “benefits” it offers such as money and good passing marks. In–service training programs are designed to equip students with skills and knowledge in their field of expertise, internships are a hands on approach where students actually gets to experience what really awaits them in the industry. Hence the institution is named as “Technikon and totally differs from universities because it is more practical than them. 

Suzanne, who is a mentor in the department of co-operative learning and held classes whereby she invites potential employees to come to the school and do presentations as to what type of inter ns they are currently looking for in their companies and organizations. 

She has confirmed that a lot of students tends to go to the corporate world because they want to make quick bucks or purely get good marks so that they can be able to graduate at the end of the year, this attitude makes it difficult for them to put up with the pressure that the industry will throws at them. 

“I have had students whom their employers will call in my office and report lot of problems they got from the students, its either absenteeism, negative attitudes they portray or simply laziness, they immediately want to jump into big tasks and undermines the small tasks given to them”, students has also laid their own complaints saying that they are not being treated professionally, they are given tasks that are not related to their careers such as making tea for the big bosses, making photocopies, faxes and typing” said Suzanne

Both these complains needs to be taken into a lot of consideration as they are the barrier between the students and the employer. 

It seems students are not aware of the fact that they are competing with other scholars out there and that if they continue with this kind of behavior they will have a bad reputation in the industry which can lead in them not being able to specialize in their professions. Students need to do a research and know more about the company

According to Garrick Donavan of Leap Communications, the following are the traits that employers look for in their interns:

• Communication – students should be enthusiastic, and be willing to communicate with every member of the company, most importantly they should ask questions frequently because that shows us that they are willing to learn and are interested in the company
• Act professional – you need to act, dress and talk in a professional manner
• Be proactive – Do not wait for someone to assign you to work, if you finish a task, create a new one
• Strong interpersonal skills
• Ability to multi – task
• Taking constructive criticism well into consideration
• Punctuality

The other reason for students to struggle to find internships could be because of the courses that they choose which might have rare job opportunities. This has been witnessed by  a third year Entrepreneurship student who has been struggling since the beginning of this year to find an internship, desperate as she was, as time was against her she wanted any job that she could possibly find, regardless of whether it is not on her specialized field. 

http://lccc.wy.edu/workforce/internships

CPUT Campus Clinic poor service (Cape Town)

Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Our campus clinic seems to be on every student’s lips recently, following numerous incidents of many students experiencing a very bad and poor service delivery. Lots of students complain about the ignorance of nurses, in fact, the clinic staff as a whole, rudeness and long break hours.

There has been an ongoing complaint about the clinic to what seems to be bad service provided by the staff, ignorance of the student’s documents such as losing their folders or simply staff lacking professionalism. According to the interview I conducted by going around asking student from all faculties who have made use of the clinic about their experiences while visiting the clinic. 68% of the students complained about the issue whereby one have to tell the receptionist what they came to the clinic for, (their health troubles) before being assisted/ referred to the health practitioner. Students feel that this issue is very private as it should be between them and the nurse or doctor they consulting, not a third part.

18% of the students complained about the issue of bad service, stating that the clinic lacks good service and mentioned the issue of long tea and lunch breaks taken by these nurses or they would simply be chatting to each other while students are waiting to be helped. The last 14% complained about the ignorance/ rudeness and attitude these health practitioners have. When I went to the clinic to ask the nurses side of the story, they refused to comment saying whatever students had choice but to take the matter to the Judicial Office who promised to oversee the matter.

The MTN Blackberry Absolute

It seems like MTN has shot themselves in the foot when they implemented the so – called Blackberry Absolute. According to the absolute, there will no longer be Blackberry Internet Services; this means that blackberry subscribers will instead purchase data bundles worth 200MB.

This caused a lot of anger to Blackberry users, some said that the 200MB is very little and won’t last a month. For me personally, I did not see much difference between BIS and Absolute. I felt like the BB Absolute won’t have much impact as long it would last a month just like BIS.

To my surprise! I was robbed of 10 days of internet; it expired 10 days before the actual expiring date. I was angry, “angry’ is an understatement, I was so furious and disappointed beyond measures. Today I am a statistic; I fall under thousands of MTN loyal users who became a victim of this BB Absolute. I witnessed my friends  leaving this network faster than MTN could say ‘Absolute’ people were Gatvol, chain messages began to escalate, one after another, claiming that if we do not leave this “greedy’ network, other networks may think BB Absolute is the right way to go and start implementing it. According to an article I read on twitter, MTN lost about 11000 users and counting since it started to implement this plan. http://smarturl.it/MTNUsers

Social Media - An addictive drug

 

It is high time we come to terms with the fact that social media is taking over and dominating in people's lives, just this afternoon I came across on a very powerful article on Times Live via twitter on how social media is dominating and that we put so much effort and time in social networks instead of something more valuable such as academics or corporate.

Research conducted in the University of Kwazulu Natal shows that a number of students graduating with cum Laude decreases every year and this year stood at 4% out of the 86% graduates. This is not only frustrating but shows lack of stability and how social media has become a drug overnight. A drug where one ‘get hooked on it and then it consumes you, gives you reason to return to it and eventually makes you dysfunctional as you struggle to meet deadlines or even have imagined "insomnia" caused by the desire to chat and follow friends in the world of social media’. Times Live

 sowetanlive.co.za/youthtube/2013/04/26/social-media-hampering-success-of-young-people …

The article further elaborates that ‘The obsession with social media has the potential to widen the divide between people who have general knowledge versus those with particular knowledge (specialists). Young people in tertiary institutions and those newly graduated to the workplace are facing the danger of not accumulating general knowledge because they are consumed by social media and thus cannot achieve excellent results worthy of cum laude or suma cum laude status’.

TweetDeck vs HootSuite

Similarities and differences between TweetDeck and HootSuite

 

TweetDeck Vs HootSuite

 

TweetDeck is an Integration with other social networking services such as Facebook LinkedIn, space etc.,However, in 2012 TweetDeck reveted to only supporting Twitter and Facebook, ending support for LinkedIn, and MySpae. 

HootSuite makes it very easy to drill into your followers and the people you are following to see who the influencers are in your Twitter network. With HootSuite one can do photo tweets, files (including video) too. For someone who posts a lot of links to interesting material, the “schedule tweet” option is valuable to aid people in not flooding their social media streams with a bunch of links at once and instead being able to spread them out during the day.

 

HootSuite feature advantages:

• ability to schedule tweets
• updates faster
• provides robust statistics
• allows for the incorporation of additional social networks
• allows more multiple accounts to be controlled by multiple users

TweetDeck feature advantages:

• photo tweeting
• Twitter interface
• user feature

For me personally, I would prefer to use the TweetDeck because I don’t post photos very often, so this is not of huge importance to me., but I believe that as social media person, HootSuite come in very hand because of the fact that I can post content to my twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn streams all at once (or choose who sees what) all from one place makes it easy and functional and for the fact that I can also post to my blog straight from HootSuite which is very convenient

 

http://www.how-to-blog.tv/microblogging/hootsuite-or-tweetdeck/