Impact Of Social Media On Organizations And Employees

Social Media and Organizations

Discuss About The International Journal Information Management.

Social media usage in organizations is increasing enormously. Most of the companies have created their social media pages for improving their social network salience and for the purpose of building effective relationships with the online public (Pfeffer, Zorbach & Carley, 2014). This medium is also useful to interact with a large number of audiences at one time. In this essay, impact of social media networks over organization and over employees will be discussed. Popular medium of social media network are Google Plus, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Before adaptation of any social media network, it is necessary for an organization to match its business objectives, vision and mission. This is because, social media plays effective role in terms of marketing and promotion and it has the capability to enhance customer base of the organization. Social media a broad concept and could be used in various aspects. In terms of business context, this platform is used to share information to its target demographic, for client handling purpose as well as to enhance its reachability to the stakeholders. Further, essay will focus over the different aspects of social media such as positive and negative impact of social media over organization and employees, opportunities and challenges linked with the social media in the context of employees and organization.

Social media plays vital role in various segments of an organization. One of those crucial sections is recruitment and selection procedure. This function is performed by Human Resource management and traditionally, they use to invite candidates through posting advertisements in newspaper, on notice board, etc. However, this function is being an easy task due to involvement of social media. With the help of social media platforms, HR managers could easily invite number of candidate for the vacant position and amongst those candidates, most suitable and talented candidates could easily be selected as per organizational requirements.  

While estimating the impact of the social media over business context, it has been observed that various studies have already been investigated to estimate the actual impact of social media networks on organizational performance. Thus, this essay will focus over social media’s effectiveness, various usages and its impact over organizational performance. Aim of social media platforms are promotion, branding, developing effective relations with consumers and with other stakeholders of the organization. Social media platforms are significant in terms of enhancing organizational performance along with attaining an effective position in the competitive market (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Marketing & promotion, real-time updates, and relationship building are some of the effective roles played by social media in business context. Social media networks affects organizational various areas such as marketing and promotion and with this objective, it is known as the most powerful medium of business practice. There is positive as well as negative impact of social media over performance of business enterprises. Social media leads to generate ample opportunities to market organizational products and services in an effective and desired manner. With the help of available social media networks, organization could also take feedbacks and reviews from its customers (Fan & Gordon, 2014). This helps the organization to make its products more efficient and effective through which customer satisfaction and reliability amongst them enhances. Apart from the marketing context, social media also affects other areas of organization such as it is an authentic and quick method of sharing information with the customers and other stakeholders of the organization. Social media affects the revenues and sales of the organisation because it leads to determine the taste of customers and value of their products in the market. Ultimately, organization becomes able to identify its image and position in the target market (Michaelidou, Siamagka & Christodoulides, 2011).

Social Media and Employees

Today, every company has its social media account or page on which they share information about company’s products. This source is also used for spreading awareness amongst the target audience in relevance with the promotional and discount offers. Along with this, this source also plays significant role in communication process. Customers could easily communicate with the company directly. Social media as a communication process has negative as well as positive impact over organizational performance because if negative comments are shared by the customers over social media platforms, it will influence other group of customers also but if customer will share positive comments over organizational social media account, it will help to develop reliability amongst the target demographics.  

Impact of social media over organization and its performance is intense. Major impacts social media over organizational context are cost reduction in terms of promotion and marketing and it leads to enhancement in customer relations and leads to improve information accessibility. While evaluating the impact of social media networks over business, it has been observed that there are mainly there categories such as usage of social media in promotional activities, usage of social media on building and maintaining customer relations and usage of social media in information search (Laroche, Habibi & Richard, 2013). Business enterprises see social media as consumer-generated media (CGM) but while evaluating the core role of social media, it has been found that it is not only used for communication purpose, its main role is to build interaction amongst the users. Young professionals prefer to use Facebook and LinkedIn and as per a study done, it has been evaluated that mostly people aged 26 to 45 generally use these platforms. With these outcomes, employers have adopted social media strategy under their recruitment and selection procedure. This has helped them to appoint talented, skilled, experienced and young candidates which are the primary requirement of any organization (DiStaso, McCorkindale & Wright, 2011). Organizational performance ultimately increases with the help of social media networks. It leads to build interaction amongst the employees and leads to build awareness amongst the users in relevance with the organizational products. With better and effective sources of promotional methods, organization could easily enhance its revenues and profitability. This leads to generate positive results for the organization along with acquirement of an effective position in the competitive and dynamic business environment (Ngai, Tao & Moon, 2015).

Reduce marketing and promotion costs

Advantages of Social Media over Organization

Enhance revenues and sales

Enhance traffic on organizational website

Great customer engagement

Opportunity for customer feedback

Enhances opportunities to access global markets (Hajli, 2014).

It leads to improve organizational behaviour because impact of social networking sites inspires people to communicate and share precious thoughts in relevance with uplifting organizational image.

Social media leads encourage employees to share their views and insights in order to resolve the issues and generate new ideas (Treem & Leonardi, 2013).

Ineffective social media strategies with unclear goals and objective may lead to generate negative outcomes for the organization

Requirement of additional resources in terms of managing online presence

Social media leads to daily monitoring (Heller Baird & Parasnis, 2011).

Lack of safety measures may lead to generate risk of inappropriate or unwanted behaviour over website. This will lead to generate negative outcomes for the organization.

Possibility of fraud, launching spam and virus increases because hackers could easily post negative reviews over websites of organization (Culnan, McHugh & Zubillaga, 2010).

Competitor could easily affect organizational performance in the market using social media networks as these tools spreads information at lightning fast speed.

Customers could also post negative reviews and comments over organizational products and services and this leads to affect organizational image (Xiang & Gretzel, 2010).

Social media platforms affects privacy of its users and users’ information could be used in negative manner. For example: if a company wants to share some sort of information to a group of customers over social media platform then they will not be able to do so because all the followers of organization will be able to see the information shared by the organization. Thus, social media platforms affects the privacy of its users as well as of organization which results social media platforms are not for useful for maintaining privacy.

Social media tools empower individual employees and compresses corporate hierarchy at all levels and provide a direct path to decision-makers and executors.

With the help of social networking sites, employees would be able to align their activities as per organizational goals and objectives (Macnamara  & Zerfass, 2012).

It is a great source of information sharing through which employees could be able to correlate its objectives along with organizational objectives.

Effective communication from top level to bottom level (Segerberg & Bennett, 2011).

Enhances the capability of organization with generation of innovative ideas.

It leads to enhance moral and engagement because it is quite easy to exchange images, videos, and rest content with social media platforms which is effective enough to boost up employees’ engagement and morale (Bradley & McDonald, 2011).

Disadvantages of Social Media over Organization

Social media sometimes becomes a major point of distraction. This is because if employees will use social media as a source of entertainment rather as a tool for communication, it will lead to reduce productivity (Leonardi, Huysman & Steinfield, 2013).

It also distracts employees’ attention to irrelevant content which will ultimately affect organizational productivity in negative manner.

Reduced productivity and a lack of focus can lead to produce poorer-quality products and services and too with higher operating costs (Jussila, Kärkkäinen & Aramo-Immonen, 2014).

Internal communication tools are developed with the purpose of sharing information amongst the employees. Misuse of this platform will lead to grapevine and construction of small groups in the workplace which will productivity of the organization (Shirky, 2011). 

Thus, employees should take care while sharing content over internal communication tools of organization because irrelevant and unethical sharing of content may lead to suspension or termination of employees.

Social media platforms are also useful in internal communication system especially for that company who holds subsidiaries under its name. For example: Zara’s management team decided to launch additional promotional offers with regards to enhance its customer base and to enhance its market share. In relation to this, rather sharing information to various branches of Zara in various countries, top management will share the information to their social media account through which every branch as well as customers could be able to gain information regarding the coming promotional offer.   

Social media platform is cost effective because no huge cost is required to open a social media account for the organization. On the other hand, this technique is quite effective in terms of gaining positive results such as enhancing its customer base, spreading awareness amongst the target audience, etc. With the help social media platforms, organization could easily develop its significant position in the target market along with attaining desired goals and objectives.

Consistency of usage of social media platforms by employees and employers is not much high. These are generally used by employees and employers for sharing information amongst the target audience, checking proper functionality as well as for evaluating the impact over organizational performance. It is also used for resolving customer’s queries, resolving internal issues of organization. Apart from this, social media have brought employers and employees together. Certain form of cohesion is being developed amongst them due to constant interaction with regards to various activities of organization.

Information shared through social media platforms has lightning fast speed. This is because; vast number of social media users exists. Impact over organizational performance could also be analysed immediately after sharing of information, thus, it has been recommended to the organization that before sharing information over social media platforms, every aspect should be considered and thoroughly analysed.

On one social media platforms are majorly used for spreading information amongst large number of people whereas sometimes, it is also used by managers for one-to-one communication. For example: WhatsApp is a social media messenger under which group could be created for sharing one information to a group of people whereas, it also provides an option to its users to communicate in one-to-one manner.

Social media platforms are used by organization to make customers, employees, stakeholders active, engaged and informed about the activities executed within the workplace. Apart from this, it is used for spreading information amongst target audience, for promotion purposes, social media techniques are also being used. Certain negative and positive impacts of social media over organization are as follows:

Positive:

Enhance revenues and sales

Enhance traffic on organizational website

Great customer engagement

Negative:

Ineffective social media strategies with unclear goals and objective may lead to generate negative outcomes for the organization

Effective and optimum utilisation of social media networks brings great opportunities for organizations but only if it is done with the help of effective planning. Online technologies have the potential to enhance brand effectiveness which ultimately enhances performance of the organization. Social media networks bring challenges as well as opportunities for organization (Yates & Paquette, 2011). Laptops, computers, tablets, smartphones and even internet enabled televisions are easily accessible from anywhere by its users. In order to perform this, fast connections have played vital role in terms of people’s way of work, socialising and shopping. Following are certain opportunities for businesses:

• Social media networks help business enterprises to directly approach its target and potential customers with effective marketing and promotional campaigns.
• Effective promotion and introduction of new products in the target market
• Building brand awareness and interaction amongst the customers.
• Personal touch with the potential as well as with existing customers (De Vries, Gensler & Leeflang, 2012).
• Generates various measures to enhance customer base as well as revenues and profitability.

Social media has been proven as cheap and effective source of marketing the organizational products and services with positive outcomes along with minimum investments. Apart from this, social media platforms could also be united into public relations (PR) strategies. This strategy focuses over making folks think and talk over organizational products and services in positive manner. With the help of social media platforms, two different customers could communicate with each other and this factor plays crucial role in terms of building organizational reliability amongst customers. While social media networks give organizations the chance to form brand awareness and customer loyalty, there are also threats in participating in a public conversation forum (Qualman, 2010).

• Goals to be achieved by using social media network
• Time devotion towards social media
• Effective platforms amongst the available options
• Efforts of organization to attain desired goals (Kim & Ko, 2012).

Recently, it has been considered that social media networks have been emerged as an effective technique in terms of marketing and promotion. It is considered as the most powerful tool of marketing strategies in various industries. Social media networks are responsible for enhancing organizational performance and it involves employees’ engagement at certain level. But when a company is operating through or with social media networks, it leads to build various effective measures for the organization in relation with keeping its clients’ information safe and secure (Lipsman, et. al., 2012). Following are certain challenges and opportunities faced by employees within workplace in relation with the social media networks:

• Distracts employees: Using social media networks or getting engaged in for much time will lead to reduce productivity of employees. Reduced productivity decreases employees’ efficiency and employees gets distracted from their work (Wang, Yu & Wei, 2012).
• Social networking sites are also known as distraction because if an employee will focus over these sites in the working hours, his efficiency will be affected in negative manner.
• Opportunities for employees are to avoid using social media sites during working hours
• Too much engagement in social media leads to reduce privacy in personal life (Aral, Dellarocas & Godes, 2013).

From the aforesaid discussion in relevance with the impact of social media networking sites over business enterprises and over employees, it can be concluded that engagement of social media platforms is huge in organizational context. Evaluation of arrangement of social media networks in business context leads to generate various positive as well as negative outcomes. In relation with the essay’s topic, certain aspects of social media have been discussed. Overview of the social media has been evaluated in the first part of the essay followed by the impact of social media in organizational context. Further, negative and positive impacts of social media have been covered with regards to the organization as well as employees. In the last, management of social media usage by employees and organization has also been evaluated. In addition to this, challenges and opportunities faced by the organization in the context of employees and organization have also been evaluated. The method through which organizations and employees manage usage of social media along with work has also been evaluated under this essay.

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