Formal and Informal WhatsApp Groups in Maybank: A Study

The purpose of this project is to enhance learner’s ability to differentiate between formal and informal groups within an organization. The study discusses the description of formal and informal WhatsApp groups in Maybank. Maybank is a Malaysia based top rated bank. In Maybank formal communication WhatsApp group are concerned with official communication between the employees, staff members and share the information. In informal WhatsApp group employees message in an informal way for their own benefit, this type of communication helps in building up understanding among the employees.

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Organizational Behaviour
Maybank
Student Name

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Executive Summary
The use of social networking sites for communication is increasing day by day. With
the development of mobile technology, people are more addicted to smartphones. One of the
platforms is Whatsapp, it is the most adopted social networking site by everyone. The
purpose of this project is to enhance learner’s ability to differentiate between formal and
informal groups within an organization. The study discusses the description of formal and
informal WhatsApp groups in Maybank. Maybank is a Malaysia based top rated bank. In
Maybank formal communication WhatsApp group are concerned with official
communication between the employees, staff members and share the information. In informal
WhatsApp group employees message in an informal way for their own benefit, this type of
communication helps in building up understanding among the employees. Staff in the
organization is highly motivated to use this platform. Whatsapp offers a wide range of
opportunities to the employees in the organization. Through WhatsApp, we can share images,
information, discuss the task with staff, communicate with everyone at a time and can give
instructions. Moreover, WhatsApp leaders can manage their work as they can assign a task to
employees by doing message. They can control the problems regarding task on WhatsApp.
Employees can easily come up with their queries on WhatsApp. Therefore WhatsApp is a
medium which allows an individual to keep in touch with everyone and develops
understanding.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Vision.....................................................................................................................................3
Mission...................................................................................................................................3
Description of formal, informal and mixed WhatsApp groups in Maybank.............................3
Maybank formal WhatsApp groups.......................................................................................3
Maybank informal WhatsApp groups....................................................................................4
Maybank mixed WhatsApp group..........................................................................................5
Whatsapp Messenger group is used as a medium for discussion, communication, and giving
instruction...................................................................................................................................5
The leader uses WhatsApp messenger group in managing teamwork.......................................6
Recommendation........................................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Maybank is the Malaysian local universal bank located in Malaysia and Southeast
Asia. In 1960 in Kuala Lumpur Malaysian business industrialist ‘Khoo Tech Puat’ founded
Maybank (Zhang, Hu, Qu & Maybank, 2010). It is the leading bank of Malaysia as it rose
speedily. Maybank expanded its industry by opening offices in 20 countries and over 2000
branches. Maybank offers various types of banking services such as personal, corporate,
Islamic and business. The Group President and Chief Executive Officer of Maybank are
Datuk Abdul Farid Alias (Kamaruddin & Mohd, 2013). In order to enlarge the business to all
over the world in future, Maybank has started its alteration programme to support and expand
its management in financial service groups in July 2010. Maybank has 10001+employees in
its organization. Employees focus on increasing and developing strong leadership team for
improving skill to recruit the right talent, creating a good performance culture, providing
opportunities to grow and develop for work and personally (Abd-Kadir, Selamat & Idros,
2010).
Vision
To become the leading financial services source in Asia by committed employees,
creative people by adding value and allocating commodities (Tan, Chew & Hamid, 2017).
Mission
Improve Financial services by:-
 Help customers with easy access to financing.
 Terms & conditions and prices should be fair.
 Taking advice from customers to fulfill their needs and wants.
 To become the heart of the public (Yu, Beard & Byrne, 2010).
Description of formal, informal and mixed WhatsApp groups in Maybank
Maybank formal WhatsApp groups
Formal communication on WhatsApp the flow of information is through the official
way approved by the company’s chain of command. Messages flow downward, upward or
horizontally in formal communication. Job instructions, performance appraisal of employees,
policy, and procedures are all downward communication. The upward communication

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contains important information to managers which subordinates are aware of and conveys the
message to top managers. Horizontal communication is concerned with managing the task,
solving queries of employees as well as sharing information to people in a team ( Bouhnik &
Deshen, 2014).
1. Permanent and Temporary Formal groups on WhatsApp.
2. Command WhatsApp group. For Ex. Department wise group, section group, team
leaders group, etc.
3. Functional groups on WhatsApp such as clerks, typists, etc. The functional group can
be divided into:-
(a) Team group: - The group on WhatsApp which specifies no particular role
to Maybank employees (Ling & Lai, 2016).
(b) Task group: - Whatsapp group which specifies a clear job title and task to
workers in Maybank.
(c) Technological group: - It is the group on WhatsApp which allow the work
of employees by the management.
4. The status WhatsApp group includes the members of the equal status in Maybank
(Bassens, Derudder & Witlox, 2010).
Maybank informal WhatsApp groups
Whatsapp group which are not formal they are called as informal groups. For Example, a
group of employees from different departments of Maybank has a group on WhatsApp. The
employees of such group are termed as an informal group. Through informal channels,
employees communicate in informal WhatsApp group. Informal communication is important
for employees in the organization as it helps to understand each other and their work and
support social relations. Informal communication is done without any rules and hierarchy on
WhatsApp (So, 2016). The following kinds of informal WhatsApp group of Maybank are:-
1. Friendship Group on WhatsApp: - Friendship groups are those groups where
friends are connected to each other in a group. These groups are naturally formed in
Maybank environment.
2. Interest WhatsApp groups: - Interest groups are made of individuals in Maybank
who are connected by the group on WhatsApp because of their personal work or
interest (Beynon-Davies, 2010).

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3. Reference Group: - A reference group is a unique kind of informal group. The
WhatsApp group where employees appraise themselves.
4. Cliques Group: - Includes co-workers, colleagues, and associates who are closely
connected to each other in Maybank.
 Vertical cliques: - WhatsApp group includes of employees working in the
same section with different ranks.
 Horizontal cliques: - WhatsApp group with employees of equal ranks working
in same or different departments.
 Mixed cliques: - Group that includes both vertical and horizontal cliques
(Klausen, 2015).
Maybank mixed WhatsApp group
Mixed WhatsApp group is a combination of the formal and informal group. It is
necessary to see that an organization all the communication flow informal manner. Most of
the messages flow along the informal way of communication in groups. Formal
communication channel allows employees to message for difficult and detailed problems, for
sharing official information and for exchanging data. Employees who use informal
communication channel are more satisfied with their work and job (Dorwal, Sachdev,
Gautam, Jain, Sharma, Tiwari & Raina, 2016).
Whatsapp Messenger group is used as a medium for discussion, communication, and
giving instruction
Mobile application WhatsApp messenger provides a huge platform for
communication, discussion and giving instructions. Whatsapp offers a wide range of
opportunities for the users (Ahmad, 2013). Whatsapp helps in education, sharing of
information, entertainment, etc. Whatsapp also gives the receiver the flexibility to accept or
reject messages received from the sender (Klausen, 2015). On WhatsApp, we can form a
group where a message can be reached to many individuals. Currently, the maximum
numbers of members we can add in the group are 256. Whatsapp is a medium that allows
individuals to keep in touch with family members, relatives, friends and office colleagues
moreover it is for enjoyment and gets in knowledge with the current news around the world.
Through what app we can share location with the individuals and get in contact. On
WhatsApp, we can do online business like selling clothes, accessories, etc. Whatsapp is a key
medium for building and maintaining social networks with staff in Maybank. Whatsapp

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messenger application is easy, quicker and less expensive communication through mobile
phones. It also creates a sense of responsibility and closeness with friends and relatives. It has
also established an emotional feeling for close ones. Whatsapp helped individuals in
Malaysia by allowing them to discuss and share information in their work, moreover permits
them to communicate with friends and relatives. The employees get information instantly on
the issue that is discussed in the group and the conversation can be build up using WhatsApp.
Therefore social networking sites like WhatsApp play a significant role in discussion,
communication and providing instructions (Bouhnik & Deshen, 2014).
The leader uses WhatsApp messenger group in managing teamwork
The leader is one who believes in his capability and uses it to manage and cope up
with his team members in WhatsApp group. He should know strengths and weakness of his
team a make policies and schemes on WhatsApp to increase team productivity. They can
attain more output level and objective in less time by working together on WhatsApp groups.
On WhatsApp group’s leaders can manage task and assign work in a smart manner with less
time consuming and without wasting energy to communicate with every individual (Ling &
Lai, 2016).
Communication
Through communication on WhatsApp leader can manage work easily because a team
cannot work without communication barrier. It is necessary to encourage WhatsApp
messenger for communication among individuals because it helps in understanding each
other which is important for better coordination (Sayan, 2016).
Meetings
On WhatsApp, we can communicate a message for meeting in office to everyone with
a single message. This can be useful for employees to ask a query and solve their issues
regarding the task. This will increase faith and respect for team members (Barhoumi, 2015).
Team Building Actions
A leader can organize games, events, dinners and some social gatherings to develop
team building through WhatsApp messenger. Most of the time people message for official

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discussions on WhatsApp, so to develop team understanding a leader can plan for these
options (Tiong & Anantharaman, 2011).
Assign Team Tasks
A leader can create another group of employees on WhatsApp to assign a particular
team task. This will help the leader to explain the task and queries of employees regarding
task in a particular period of time. To encourage employees a leader can provide
compensation or incentives (Ling & Lai, 2016).
Recommendation
Based on the study we would like to recommend that:-
 Strategies on how WhatsApp can be used into formal and informal channels of
communication with the Maybank organization so that employees meet the need for
formal and informal communication WhatsApp groups that are not satisfied by the
organization.
 It is necessary for leaders in Maybank to find encouragement for WhatsApp usage so
that such encouragement can lead to a platform for communication. It is also
suggested that adoption of WhatsApp messenger communication tool for Maybank
should come up with a training session for the staff of the organization to aware about
the responsible use of the medium to avoid the threat of information sharing.
 It is recommended that before Maybank implement the use of WhatsApp as a legal
communication medium, they should confirm that all the works of the organization
could access the information shared on WhatsApp so that no employees will miss out
the information shared.
 It is also recommended that a similar step can start in other business units and in other
organizations for evaluation purpose.
Conclusion
The task pointed at finding out how Maybank employees use WhatsApp for formal
and informal communication despite the fact that it is not official way of a communication
channel in Maybank. The goal is to determine that how the staff of different departments in
Maybank use WhatsApp as a communication channel. It is determined that WhatsApp is
immensely used in Maybank. Whatsapp has many specifications like the ability to share the

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message with several persons, portability, ability to send location, ability to send voice notes,
we can broadcast one message to many people. From the study, we find that leaders motivate
employees to use WhatsApp to communicate with each other. The information shared on
WhatsApp is more prompt and therefore the employees can act on it instantaneously. The
need to stay in touch with colleagues and staff increase the usage of WhatsApp. The users
mostly saw fit for the informal communication in the organization as they get to know each
other more. Hence, WhatsApp is a platform to communicate and make work easy in the
organization for the staff members.

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