Impact of Social Media on Employee Productivity

Running Head: EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY AND SOCIAL MEDIA 1
Impact of Social Media on Employee Productivity
Name
Institution

EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY AND SOCIAL MEDIA 2
1.0 Introduction
The rapid growth of technological developments and internet use has revolutionized the
modern business practices. The growth of social media has had immense effects on the growth
and development of business practices (Dreher, 2014). Many businesses or organizations have
shifted their focus on using social media to enhance the growth of their business strategies such
as marketing, brand promotion, customer engagements and also in conducting market research.
The development of effective social media usage strategies or policies contributes to the
increased organization and business growth or productivity (Huang, 2015). The rapid growth of
social media platforms has led to the formation of virtual communities who interact on a daily
basis and therefore has been found to have the significant impact on business growth. With
increased social media usage, organizational employees have been exposed to engage most of
their time in various social networking sites for both interactive social activities with their friends
and relatives as well as for business purposes as directed by their organization goals and
objectives (Miles & Mangold, 2014). Different research works have resulted in the findings that
there exists a healthy relationship between social media usage and organization productivity.
This study aims to develop a project proposal to investigate the impact of social media usage on
the performance of employees in organizations.
The organization of this project research proposal will comprise of different sections
which will helps us in developing the scope of our research problem statement. The first section
provides an introduction to the research proposal by highlighting the key issue under analysis.
The second section of the proposal provides detailed statement of our research proposal while the
third section will provide detailed research aim, objectives as well as research questions. The
fourth section provides a justification of the project proposal research statement while section

EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY AND SOCIAL MEDIA 3
five of the study will provide the research conceptual framework discussing the relevant
literature review and other ideas supporting our research project. Section six of the study will
provide a detailed analysis of the research methodology and the presentation of secondary data
while section seven will provide the organization of the research proposal, the proposed project
budget as well as the project schedule.
2.0 detailed analysis of the Research Statement Problem
Social media has gained a lot of significance in the modern corporate world with some
businesses using various social networking sites as direct channel of communication and
interactions with their customers, used as a marketing tool for the company brands awareness
and exposure (Leftheriotis & Giannakos, 2014). It is therefore undeniable that social media has
significantly impacted business growth in most organizations and effective utilization of the
various social media platforms can grant an organization or business a competitive advantage in
the various markets or industry. However, most research has established that employee
productivity or performance cannot be entirely be determined by their social media activity.
Different scholars have engaged in different studies to investigate the impact of social media on
business growth and development, in enhancing customer service provision, interaction and
brand promotion and marketing strategies (Ali-Hassan, 2015). The research findings found a
strong relationship between social media usage in organizations and organizational performance.
However, there has been limited research or literature gap in understanding the impact of social
media on employee performance. Therefore this study will provide or develop a research project
proposal to investigate the impact of social media on employee productivity.

EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY AND SOCIAL MEDIA 4
3.0 proposed research Aim, Objective and Research Questions
The aim of this study is to develop a research project proposal investigating the impact of
social media on employee productivity in an organization. The research also aims at identifying
the various social networking platforms used by various organizations or employees and their
impact on employee productivity (Kasemsap, 2016). The study also seeks to investigate the
relationship between social media usage and change in employee attitudes towards their work as
well as the social media factors contributing to positive or negative influence on employee
productivity in an organization.
For the development of a reliable, valid and relevant project proposal, this study will be
guided by various research objectives in enhancing our fact-finding and evaluation process. The
main aim of the study is to develop knowledge that will bridge the existing literature gap. The
research seeks to investigate the impact of social media usage on employee productivity. It is the
objective of the study to establish the social contributing factors that have enhanced employee
productivity in the various business organizations (Archer-Brown & Kietzmann, 2018). The
research will add to the understanding of the different policies adopted by organizations or
businesses to regulate social media usage at the workplace and the effectiveness of the systems
in enhancing the use of social media for employee productivity.
The following research questions will contribute to increased relevance and reliability of
our project. The research questions will also guide the researchers when collecting data from
various participants as well as during fact-finding and evaluation process after data collection.
RQ1. What is the impact of social media usage on organization employee productivity or
performance?