Impact of Social Media on Organizational Performance and Employees

This essay examines the increasing use of social media in organizations, focusing on its impact on both the organization itself and its employees. It explores the benefits, such as enhanced marketing, customer engagement, and cost reduction, while also addressing the drawbacks, including potential distractions, privacy concerns, and the need for careful management. The essay highlights how social media influences recruitment, internal communication, and overall organizational performance. It discusses the advantages for employees, such as improved communication and access to information, and the disadvantages, such as potential for distraction and misuse. The analysis covers various aspects of social media's influence, from marketing and promotion to customer relations and information sharing, emphasizing the need for strategic implementation to maximize benefits and mitigate risks. The essay concludes by underscoring the importance of understanding social media's multifaceted impact for effective organizational management.

Running Head: Managing people and organization
Managing People and Organization

Managing People and Organization 1
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

Managing People and Organization 2
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).
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

Managing People and Organization 3
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).
Advantages of social media over organization are:
Reduce marketing and promotion costs
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).

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Disadvantages of social over organization are:
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.
Advantages of social media over employees are:
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).

Managing People and Organization 5
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 employees are:
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

Managing People and Organization 6
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

Managing People and Organization 7
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
Requirement of additional resources in terms of managing online presence.
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.

Managing People and Organization 8
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).
Some of the primary challenges of social media to business enterprises are:
 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

Managing People and Organization 9
 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.

Managing People and Organization 10
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