The Positives and Negatives of Streaming in Your Office

Business owners realize that streaming in the office can be a significant hindrance to productivity, but the type of media that is being streamed can play a large role in whether or not the workplace is improved or affected adversely by it. How does your business approach streaming? Depending on its policies, you might want to alter the way that you approach this touchy subject.

To begin we're going to outline some situations where streaming may be reasonable in the workplace.

Reasonable Uses of Streaming
Not all streaming is negative for your organization’s productivity. In particular situations it can even be beneficial. For example: some employees are most productive when they are listening to music. In other situations, they may even need to drown out noise in the office, which can easily be done with their preferred tunes and a set of headphones. This keeps everyone happy for the most part, and it’s as easy as allowing employees access to an online application like Spotify and Pandora.

There also might be reason to watch a video during your standard workday. If it’s an important news article pertinent to your industry or workplace trends, then maybe it’s worth taking a look at it. Training videos, webinars, and other videos are in a similar boat, allowing you to learn something valuable through the experience. Nevertheless, it’s likely that you’ll be in a position where you need to stream something, whether you want to or not.

Unreasonable Uses for Streaming
Some employees have a tendency to stream video at all times, which essentially results in them not getting as much work done. They are becoming a liability to both their own work ethic and your organization’s mission. Streaming can also use up a lot of your bandwidth, which can create slowdown on your network for every other employee.

If you have employees who just won't stay off of streaming services like Youtube, Netflix, and Hulu, you can implement a content filter on a user basis. This can keep them focused on their work throughout the day by banning suspicious or wasteful sites. In fact, social media services and streaming websites can often be infested with malware and other threats, so it might not be a bad idea to consider banning those who are proving problematic.

Does your organization need a content filter? Macro Systems can help. To learn more, reach out to us at 703-359-9211.