Should Your Employees Text on the Job?

As a business owner, you need to address the issue of texting in your SOPs.

Some companies want employees to send out up-to-the-minute texts about the company on social media during the workday. Other company execs feel that texting is either unnecessary or distracts their employees from concentrating on work.

What should your stance be on this growing trend? The answer is it depends.

What Business Are You In?

Timely texts from employees on the inside can be a boon to business, depending on what business you're in.

If your goal is to get outsiders engaged in your business happenings, there's no doubt that texting is an effective way to accomplish that.

Just look at reality shows.

Followers of judges Blake Shelton, Adam Levine and the others on "The Voice" love to get live, behind the scenes insight from their favorite celebrities. It's such a popular medium that the show posts some Tweets live on the bottom of the screen. "Dancing with the Stars" is another entertainment business that actively advocates employee texting.

But if your business doesn't rely on daily customer engagement, texting on the job is likely not helpful or even worse.

Could it Be Dangerous?

Obviously, there are some occupations where texting on the job would not be advised.

As the following article looks at, these are occupations that require a high level of concentration, or where people's lives depend on focus.

Texting while flying?, driving a big rig, or operating heavy machinery in a factory would be examples of times when sending out texts would not be advisable.

Of course, if you're not the primary pilot, driver or machine operator, you could take pictures and send out Tweets of the other person as they go about their business.

Is It Worth It?

There's always someone in every organization who either takes advantage of the situation and who takes a yard when you gave an inch.

If you decide to allow texting during the workday, it's likely you'll have at least one person who feels it's their duty to give a blow by blow account of everything going on at work.

Unfortunately, this may include things you don't necessarily want to be known outside the company.

Because when you give a blanket approval to text, it becomes very difficult or impossible to control what people text.

The question you have to ask: "Is it worth it?" How much pushback would you get if you just decided on a no-texting rule?

Weigh the pros and cons of allowing texting and having the inner workings of your business completely transparent, versus dealing with those who really want to be able to text during the workday.

Remember that ultimately, the decision should be based on whether texting would help your business succeed; not whether it makes your employees happy.

Don't let outside pressure be your determining factor.

There are plenty of social media outlets around to help boost your business if you decided against texting.