Social Media Usage among Private and Public Organisations Inibadan.

Social Media Usage among Private and Public Organisations Inibadan.

Adedolapo AWONIYI & Moyosore BECKLEY
Department of Arts and Social Science Education, Lead City University

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2023.7682

Received: 16 May 2023; Revised: 03 June 2023; Accepted: 06 June 2023; Published: 10 July 2023

ABSTRACT

As prevail of mobile networking, social media became ubiquitous in either work or our personal life. Based on Media Synchronization Theory and transformational framework, the present study examined the use of social media among private and public secondary Organizations in Ibadan area of Oyo State. The study employed quantitative method for data collection involving questionnaire administration. Fifteen questions with Likert model and ten yes/no responses in a questionnaire were personally administered to 400 randomly selected students. The obtained data were analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS). The results revealed that, both in private and public organizations social media is used by workers to enjoy their leisure time, search for work related information, chat with co-workers, as a means of dissimilating information, share ideas among co-workers among others. This study will be of immense benefit to the Oyo State and Nigeria Administration as it has shown the potent advantage and disadvantage in the use of social media in our organizations and therefore the need to put in place measures to forestall its alluded negative effects becomes imperative.

Keywords: Social, Social Media, Usage, Private, Public, Organization.

INTRODUCTION

Social media are electronic tools that enable users to communicate and exchange information and facilitate interactions among different users (Song and Lee, 2016). Social media technologies revolutionized the way people communicate and interact socially within and outside of organizations in relation to the Internet, with considerable impact on people’s careers and lifestyles (Correa et al., 2010; Turban et al., 2011; Moqbel et al., 2013; Holl and et al., 2016). Social media allowed people to communicate or collaborate online through various platforms, weblogs, blogs, wikis, broadcasts, pictures, and videos (Broughton et al., 2009). Social media changed the ways of communication by enabling two-way communication between users rather than one-way. The social media use at work attracted numerous attentions (van Zoonen et al., 2014a;Van Zoonen et al., 2017). However, most of the researches were in a single perspective(Villanueva et al., 2008), and focused only on social media use (Trainor et al., 2014; Jianget al., 2016; Parveen et al., 2016; Drummond et al., 2017), or on social media use at the intensity (Charoensukmongkol, 2014), or on the frequency

(Bretschneideret al 2016) of social media use. Some scholars investigated social media use at work mainly on the relationship management (Tajudeen et al., 2018), information search and sharing (de Zubielqui et al., 2019), job satisfaction, andjob performance (Parveen et al., 2015).From the perspective of prior organizational behavior research, social media could be divided into two categories: personal social media and enterprise social media (Van Zoonenet al., 2017). This study emphases on personal social media than enterprise social media for the following reasons: First, there has been extensive research on the use of enterprise social media in the domain of information systems (IS)over the past decade (Leonardi et al., 2013;Leftheriotis and Giannakos, 2014; Huang et al., 2015; Parveen et al., 2015;Bretschneider and Parker, 2016; Hacker et al., 2017; Wehneret al., 2017; Archer-Brown and Kietzmann, 2018; Bulget al., 2018; Osch and Steinfield, 2018; de Zubielqui et al.,2019; Fu et al., 2019; Veeravalli and Vijayalakshmi, 2019;Tamengkel and Ruma was, 2020). Some studies discussed the impact of enterprise social media use in organizations, such as organizational rules, norms, and policies, organization type, and size (Bretschneider and Parker, 2016). The other studies investigated whether the use of enterprise social media inorganizations could facilitate internal knowledge management(Behringer et al., 2017; Kane, 2017; Bulgurcu et al., 2018),communication efficiency (Korzynski, 2014), cross-nation social networking (Van Osch et al, 2016)

The rise of social media as means to enhance connection among individuals is rapidly changing how both privately and publicly owned organisations operate and communicate. Organizations of all kinds are looking for ways to seize advantage in this emerging era marked by greater immediacy, interactivity and transparency. The new media is growing so fast that it makes it imperative for employees to embrace the medium in the workplace. Social networking is an online medium of interaction which let people build relations, share ideas, communicate information and bounding society in sentimental stream. People use social networks for catharsis of their human emotions and motives of social networking can be different from person to person like; people connect on LinkedIn for professional purpose, Facebook and MySpace for personal motive, Twitter for social networking, Personalized Blogs for personal thoughts and view point (Ehrlich, 2011). Organizations also use social networking sites for professional benefits like creating customer relationships (Ashraf & Javed, 2014).

Social media is creating a drastic change at workplaces, and organizations are increasingly interested in adaption of it for their business processes. The aim of social media usage at workplace may differ but ultimate objective is to build social networks and sharing of vital information. Social media is not only targeting young generation,bit’s tempting and hitting all age groups and generations. The way to use and respond to social media is not a good thing, nor a bad thing, it’s just a different thing. Using and connecting to social media is part and parcel of everyone’s life. Nowadays people never ask for mail addresses or mobile numbers instead of that people ask each other for their social network IDs for carrying on long term contacts.

REASONS WHY ORGANIZATION USES SOCIAL MEDIA

• Brand awareness and image

One of the reasons organisations engage on social media is to establish brand awareness as well as create a sustainable image for the organisation. Engaging on social media platforms like LinkedIn, twitter, Google+, Facebook and even sponsoring blogs enables companies to connect with customers. This connection also enhances brand name by providing consumer education and positioning; providing information about the organisation’s community involvement which includes informing consumers of philanthropic efforts, and providing updates on locations including weather-related closings and changes in hours that impacts customer’s use of its services (Chapman and Cutler, 2014).

According to Chapman and Cutler (2014), a survey was conducted in the US which found out that retail and consumer goods businesses are the most active on social media with sites like Facebook listing Coco-Cola, YouTube, MTV, Disney, Red Bull, Converse, PlayStation, Oreo, Starbucks and Wal-Mart having most fans. Social media can play an important role in differentiating brands and making them more relevant to consumers. Consumers believe that the most credible spokesperson that a company can have is them and thus organisations are tapping into this kind of people. This had led organsiations into opening accounts on social media to be able to interact with their customers giving them an opportunity to contribute in their work leading to brand affinity providing immense opportunity to create brand impressions.     

• Marketing

Product marketing, promotion and driving customers to the company’s website are benefits of corporate participation in social media (Chapman & Cutler, 2014). According to Camhi (2013), organisations have started to use targeted adverts and leveraging the data tools that Facebook and other social networks provide to market their products. Research indicates that Starbucks one of Facebook’s top ten reports $261 million in product spending by Facebook fans compared to $162 for non-Facebook fans showing the effect of social media presence. Social media being interactive it is also easy for companies to gather information on the public’s perception of their products and services. This information can also be used to deliver customized messaging, promotions and online behavioural advertising (Chapman and Cutler, 2014).

Through the information organisations and companies get from their customers on social media, they can create better and more innovative products and services that reflect the wishes of their customers. organisations can also run targeted marketing campaigns reducing on their overall marketing costs. Due to the larger reach of social media compared to traditional channels, customer awareness of new features and products can be increased considerably (Capgemni, 2014).

• Customer service

Addressing customer concerns and demonstrating excellent customer service is another way that banks are using social media. This allows banks and their clients to communicate directly away from the call centre environment to address specific issues as they come in. These sites also enable banks to send a message to multiple customers at a go on any changes in their products and services (Chapman and Cutler, 2014). Ryan (2014) indicated that, social media sites could also be used as an engagement place for banks and their customers than to just broadcast bank messages. It helps organisations to understand what their customers want and to be able to get feedback on their services.

organisations are also able to derive customer insights by leveraging customer data on social media. This information helps organisations to derive a holistic view of their customers by linking internal and external data and advicing their clients on their new services and products (Capgemni, 2014).

• Internal engagement

As organisations holistically embrace social media, they will need to strengthen internal collaboration and engagement to facilitate seamless information flow amongst its employees and processes. Leveraging social media offers organisations inexpensive opportunity to dispense with traditional silos that can impede internal collaboration and staff engagement (Capgemni, 2014). Through the feedback from customers on social media, employees can share information such as best practices, boosting both workforce collaboration and knowledge dissemination (Cognizant, 2014).

Cost reduction is also a major contributor of social media pertaining to service, sales, and marketing. For instance, organisations can use social media as a low-cost channel to distribute messages, host conversations, provide customer service, identify dissatisfied customers and address their complaints immediately due to the internal collaboration that the organisation has established. This issue can be handled by multiple departments at the same time if it requires more than one to handle. Organisations now leverage on Twitter for customer service where wide variety of their employees help their customers solve issues. This has revealed to be very effective with the feedback showing that customers are contented with the help they receive from their twitter account which is faster than traditional customer service. This drives customer service costs and advertising cost down with the page taking up the work of creating brand impressions across consumers’ social graphs, allowing other consumers to see the value of the channel for a variety of goals.

• Recruitment

According to Kluemper and Rosen (2009), social networks are playing a role in recruiting of new employees. Traditionally employers relied on advertisements done on news papers to recruit but recently there is a shift where employers are using their existing employees to recruit potential job applicants through their social media accounts or using their own social media accounts. Existing employees are seen to be better placed to be able to identify suitable people for different openings and even able to convince the candidates to accept working in a particular firm for example when it is a matter of getting them from another company (Ollington, Gibb, and Harcourt, 2013). In the online environment, social media set up by organizations are playing the part formerly dominated by the employees doing the referring but their electronic networks may yet supplant the employee’s more personal networks of friends and acquaintances (Vicknair, Elkersh, Yancey, and Budden, 2010).Recruiters are seen as intermediaries in firms and between organizations that are searching for new staff. Workers seeking new opportunities, career or other work opportunities get to benefit through the recruiters as well (Buechler, 2010; Marchal et al., 2007). The recruiter occupies space between the job seekers and employers within their own networks or across networks such as LinkedIn. This is possible through the dissemination of information about jobs in these networks (Gladwell, c2000). Ollington, Gibb, and Harcourt (2013) states that recruiters are well positioned to reach out to more job seekers if they have access to more actors across networks which makes it easy for them to attract applicants for any vacancy.

In this recruitment process banks are not left behind with most their hiring being through social media. 93% of all recruiters use LinkedIn to find candidates, 89% hiring through the network. 54% of recruiters use Twitter to find candidates which has increased from 45% in 2010 (Emolument, 2013). Companies have also argued that networking sites provide a cost effective way of advertising jobs and reaching a bigger pool of job seekers thus the increase in social media use (Alison, 2012).

SOCIAL MEDIA USE

Social media could be used for either social or work-related purposes in enterprises (Gonzalez et al., 2013). Social media such as WeChat was widely used for work-related purposes in Chinese enterprises (Zhang et al., 2018). In Taiwan, Apps such as Line or Facebook Messenger are common to be used in the work place. Based on the UGT, Liang et al. (2020) conceptualized the employee’ needs of using social media into two dimensions: work-oriented and social-oriented. Their study confirmed that employees would use social media for social-related or work-related purposes. The use of social-related motives promoted employee job satisfaction, while the use of work-related motives increased employee productivity.

Specifically, social-oriented usage of social media was defined as the use of social media to establish new social relationships like making new friends, to identify individuals with common interests, and to maintain contact with existing friends and customers. Work-oriented usage of social media was defined as using social media to discuss work with colleagues, or to share document and file information within the organization. Since the UGT provides a link between usage choices and their outcomes(Liang et al., 2020), UGT could be considered as a framework for understanding the relationship between motivation and productivity in the media use (Stafford et al., 2004; Ali-Hassanet al., 2015).

Research Questions 4

What is the purpose for which social media is used?

Table 4.12: Frequency Distribution of Respondents view on the purpose for which social media is used in the private sectors in Ibadan

Table 4.12 presented the findings on the purposes at which workers in private organisations in Ibadan made used of social media. The findings revealed that 92% of the respondents strongly agreed that they made use of social media to enjoy their leisure time, while 8% of the respondents disagreed. All the respondents strongly agreed that they made use of social media to search for work related information. 91% respondents strongly agreed that they made use of social media to chat with their co-workers, while 9% respondents disagreed. 89% respondents strongly agreed that social media can be used as a means of dissimilating information in their organisation, while 11% respondents disagreed. 89% respondents strongly agreed that they made used of social media to share ideas among their friends at work, while 11% respondents disagreed. The findings also showed that 52% of the respondents agreed that they made use of social media to make new friends at their workplace, while 48% respondents disagreed. 76% respondents strongly agreed that they made use of social media whenever they were bored at work, while 24% of respondents disagreed. 87% respondents strongly agreed that social media was the major source of getting over work day stress, while 13% respondents disagreed.

Table 4.13: Frequency Distribution of Respondents view on the purpose for which social media is used in the public sectors in Ibadan

The results from the respondents in the public organisation in table 4.13 as (84%) of respondents strongly agreed that they made use of social media to enjoy their leisure time, while 16% respondents disagreed, 95% respondents strongly agreed that  they made use of social media to search for work related information while 5% respondents disagreed, 79% respondents strongly agreed that they made use of social media to chat with their co-workers while 21% respondents disagreed, 83% respondents strongly agreed that social media was use as a means to dissimilating information in their organisation while 17% respondents disagreed, 90% respondents strongly agreed that they made use of social media to share ideas among their friends at work while 10% respondents disagreed.

This implied that in both private and public organisations under study, the majority of the respondents made used of social media for various purposes such as to enjoy their leisure time, to search for work related information,  to chat with their co-workers, to get over work day stress, and to share ideas among their friends at work. This finding is also corroborated with the study by Cognizant 2014 that through social media employee in the banks can share information such as best practices which can boost both workplace and collaboration and knowledge dissemination. Also, Murphy (2010) reviewed that the social media technologies and mobile computing devices will facilitate and encourage knowledge sharing between groups in the workplace.

Summary

The general objective of this research was to investigate the influence of social media usage on workplace productivity in Ibadan with the focus on two public organisations and two private organisations in Ibadan of Oyo State. The study therefore aimed to achieve the following specific objectives:

i. to determine the frequency of the usage of social media in the workplace in Ibadan;

ii. to examine the types of social media used in the workplaces in Ibadan

iii. to ascertain the demographic profile of those using the social media in the workplaces in Ibadan

iv. to establish the purpose for which social media is used in the workplaces in Ibadan

v. to investigate the organisational policy on the use of the social media vi. to examine the effects of social media usage on employees work performance in their various workplace.

The significance of the study as well as the scope of the study was explicitly stated in the context of this study. Relevant literatures were reviewed and discussed conceptually and empirically. The study adopted descriptive research design with the population under study being employees at Ibadan North Local Government, Oyo State, Federal Ministry of Employment and Labour, Oyo State, SUMAL plc and University Press plc. Simple random sampling technique was used to determine the sample size of 50 employees from each organisation. The collection of the primary data was done using self-structured questionnaire. Two hundred questionnaires were administered on the respondents and the results of the findings were analysed and presented through the use of descriptive statistics such as frequency and table for respondents’ bio-data and in answering of research questions generated.

The study findings indicated that majority of the respondents accessed and made used of social media sites daily and most of them accessed it at different level of time during the working hours. These respondents made used of social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Email. In the selected organisations it was found that both male and female were users of social media and they were young adults and were educated even up to higher institution. The study also found out that in both private and public organisations, the majority of the respondents made used social media for various purposes such as to enjoy their leisure time, to search for work related information, to chat with their co-workers, to get over work day stress, and to share ideas among their friends at work. The findings from the study revealed that there was disparity in the formulation of organisation policies in the usage of social media in both private and public organisations. This was due the fact that private owned organisation would obviously attached strong policies to curb the undue uses of social media in the workplace to maximize productivity. The study also found out that the use of social media mostly generated positive effects (enhance the performance of an employee, affect worker level of productivity, encourages interaction among employees) and negative effects (underperformance of employees, and employee suspension or dismissal) on workers productivity and performance in Ibadan of Oyo state.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES

This study was restricted to four organisations (two publics and two privates) in Ibadan, Oyo State. It is suggested that additional studies on the effect of social media on employee productivity across states of the federation should be conducted. Further studies on the effect of unrestricted social media use on employee productivity needs to be carried out. Finally, further studies need to be undertaken on the efficacy of the use of social media policies as well as disciplinary action to deter the use of social media during working hours.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Social media is one strategy that can be used by organisations (public and private) to continue to be relevant in this knowledge economy. Social media will enhance customer service, internal engagements with staff and recruitment of new staff. It is therefore recommended that there is need for the continuous use of social media to enhance and improve workplace productivity.

Employees continue to access social media during working hours and on personal devices shows that organisation policy on social media usage has not entirely effective. It is therefore recommended that both public and private organisations should establish and also review existing policies that will restrict undue access to social media during working hours.

It is also important for organizations to take cognizance of the impact of social media on workers performance. Positive effects of social media engagement include strengthening of weak ties, innovations, improved employee relations, and interconnectedness. Organisations especially private owned organisations cannot ignore the benefits that come with increased social media usage for both the organization as well as the employees.

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