To Filter or not to Filter YouTube Videos

A large percentage of employees in any organization use the internet for personal use during office hours. Their internet usage is mostly spread between YouTube, social media platforms and news sites. Of these, YouTube is by far the largest consumer of bandwidth.

YouTube is one of the largest online search engines on the internet – in fact it is second only to Google. Every day, over 5 billion videos are watched on the platform. What does this mean for an organization? Where should you draw the line when it comes to restricting YouTube content?

Why do you need to filter YouTube videos?

There are several ways in which operational workflow is disrupted due to a significant proportion of your employees spending time watching videos on YouTube. Especially with the newer generation of digital natives stepping into the workforce, the ramifications of unmoderated YouTube access are more pronounced. As a company, this could even result in the need to hire additional personnel to compensate for the loss of productivity. Here are a few ways in which unchecked YouTube access can harm your organization.

Reduction in efficiency

It is estimated that employees spend, on an average, one hour of their 9-5 workday browsing the internet. YouTube accounts for a considerable chunk of that time. If your company has around 20 employees, that amounts to a staggering 20 hours a day wasted on employees’ personal entertainment. On a weekly basis, that is 100 hours you can’t get back. If your organization is bigger, the problem scales as well.

While it can be argued that access to business-related YouTube channels can allow your employees to access solutions in a few minutes, YouTube is seen more like a leisurely and entertainment based “break”. Installing YouTube filter software can help to allow employees to access only whitelisted channels related to your business.

Load on internet bandwidth

The world is moving towards faster connectivity, and businesses which are faster to respond to their customers can deliver greater customer satisfaction. But the same high-speed internet is used by your employees use to browse YouTube too. This often amounts to several gigabytes of data, exhausting your internet bandwidth every month. Not only does this slow down your work communications, but assuming that you are billed on a monthly basis, imagine how much money can be saved by your company by reducing data consumption. Filtering YouTube videos can go a long way in reducing this burden.

Access to inappropriate content

YouTube comes with its fair share of shady content – pornography, religious extremism, and racial intolerance to name a few. Unmoderated access to a site with a large volume of such content can seriously dent the reputation of your organization. It can create moral conflicts between your employees on sexual harassment, religious or racial discrimination grounds. An office is no place to permit such activities.

The solution? A YouTube filter software!

With all this being said, it is crucial for companies to take a step towards controlling YouTube access on their networks. Akku from CloudNow Technologies comes with a highly effective YouTube Filtering feature which gives you control over what channels can be accessed by your employees and what cannot. Do contact us to know more.
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