Management Communication Case Study: Social Media in Organizations

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MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION -
CASE STUDY
Assessment Task 3
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
1. The introduction of social media tools across an organisation and compare and contrast the
challenges posed by social media tools with the challenges posed by the traditional channels of
communication................................................................................................................................3
2. What impact might an individual employee's comments or behaviour on social media have on
an organisation's identity, image or reputation in the sense that broader and unintended audiences
might see it?.....................................................................................................................................5
3. What social media interaction should a company’s social media policy cover?.........................5
4. Communication plan....................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8
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To : Staff Member of Sunshine 100
From : Jane Wilson
Date : May 5, 2019.
Subject : Social media policy of Sunshine
Introduction
The impact of social media tools on the organisation's reputation and the image will be
discussed. Social media tools have been increasing in the last few years. It has a vast customer
reach, and companies started using in their marketing and promotional events. The impact of the
company's employees' positive and negative behaviour and comments on social media platforms
on the company's image will be shown in this report. The company should make some changes
in their social media policies so their social media behaviours will not impact that company's
image.
1. The introduction of social media tools across an organisation and compare and contrast
the challenges posed by social media tools with the challenges posed by the traditional
channels of communication.
Social Media tools have a massive reach in the world. It has the power to make things popular
and famous in just a day, and at the same time, it can ruin the image very quickly too. It should
be considered as one of the best ways to communicate with others. Organisation now started
using it for their marketing and customer services because of its increasing popularity among the
customers. Traditional methods are old communication methods such as face to face, letter,
emails etc. those methods have a limited reach to the people (Hasan et al., 2016). Both of these
methods have significant challenges. The following are the compare and contrast of the obstacles
by using both ways of communication:
Comparison
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Factors Social media tools Traditional communication
tools
 Purpose
 Quick

 It helps to interact
with customers.
 The reach of social
media makes it quick,
quickly spread news.
 It also helps to
communicate with
customers.
 Traditional methods
have their way to
quickly spread the
news around (Sia et
al., 2017).
Contrast
Factors Social media tools Traditional communication
tools
 Customer Reach
 Cost
 Threats
 Rumours
 Many people are
using social media, so
it has significantly
more customer reach
for its customers.
 These methods are
often less expensive
than other methods.
 Cyber attacks, online
reviews and other
things increased
threats for these
methods.
 Rumours are
widespread and
 These methods are not
accessible for
communication, so it
has fewer customers
reach.
 They are more
expensive in
comparison to others.
 There is no such kind
of threats in these
methods.
 Rumours are not that
much frequent and
less damage to the
company reputation.
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damage the reputation
of the company
quickly.
2. What impact might an individual employee's comments or behaviour on social media
have on an organisation's identity, image or reputation in the sense that broader and
unintended audiences might see it?
Customers are using social media not only to interact with family & friends, but it also helps
them to search for company products and services. Customers started reading reviews before
buying any products or services of any company. An employee of the company is the
representative faces of the company, their right actions or behaviours increased brand image, and
negative comments or behaviour damaged the reputation as well (El Ouirdi et al., 2015).
Negative feedback can easily ruin the brand's image quickly mainly if it's from any of the
company's employees. People trust those review and change their mind. It builds up a negative
image in the customer's head about the brand. One of Sunshine 100 employees posted a picture
with junk food, and it created a negative image of the company because the company is
promoting its fresh and healthy baby food products which no doubt created problem in the new
baby food line and for the company reputation.
Even candidates before joining any company started giving preferences to the comments and
reviews from the ex-employees and current employees about their working experiences in the
organisation. Overall, employees comments, reviews and behaviours made an impact on the
company (Verheyden & Mark, 2017).
3. What social media interaction should a company’s social media policy cover?
Sunshine 100 has no such social media policies, but Jane recently distributed an employee
handbook including social media policies for the employees. It included few things such as
Positive attitude towards their job role; they have to maintain courtesy, responsible posts, no
personal information about the company and be respectable for the copyrights (Holland et al.,
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2013). Jane tried to include most of the things in it but now in their social media policies
company can consist of a few more things which are the following:
 Limited access during working hours – It is not just the problem at Sunshine 100 but
these days employees often spends their hours on updating status and checking social
media tools. The company should limit their access to social media platforms during
working hours (Finocchario et al., 2012).
 Follow the code of conduct – Company has a code of conduct and employees have to be
aware of it before posting anything on their social media accounts. It should be a strict
rule for the employees.
 No posts for confidential information – the company should make it very clear to their
employees that no sensitive information would be leaked on social media through any of
their jobs or comments (Ivo et al., 2014).
4. Communication plan
1. Timing  17/05/2019
2. Audience  It will be effectively applied to every employee of the
company including part-timers also
3. Sender  Jane Wilson, Director of Social Media
4. Key Message Company has been made some changes in its social
media policy and request to all the employees to
follow it from today itself. Due to some recent
negative consequences, management decides to make
those changes, kindly follow all of them without any
delay. Those changes are the following:
 Limited access to social media during working hours.
 No personal information about the company.
 No confidential information would be a leak.
 Behaviours of an individual on social media will be
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observed.
 Code of conduct should be followed in employees’
posts on social media.
5. Desired outcomes  Responsible act from all the employees will be
required. Follow all the rules and regulations and code
of conduct of the company.
6. Medium  Communication using all methods will be allowed.
7. Materials  Good working behaviours with others at work and
follow all rules
8. Frequency  No personal information about the company can be
shared using prescribed communication methods. For
personal usage, employees will only allow to use it
during their lunch break at the workplace.
Conclusion
The employees are considered as a representative face of the company. The impact of their
reviews, comments and behaviours on social media tools about the company's products and
services has been discussed on the report. The importance of following social media policies at
the workplace and their impact on organisation and employees have been addressed in this
report.
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References
 El Ouirdi, Asma, El Ouirdi, Mariam, Segers, Jesse & Henderickx, Erik., 2015,
'Employees' use of social media technologies: a methodological and thematic review',
Behaviour & Information Technology, vol. 34, no. 5,
 Finocchario-Kessler, Sarah, Catley, Delwyn, Thomson, Domonique, Bradley-Ewing,
Andrea, Berkley-Patton, Jannette & Goggin, Kathy., 2012, 'Patient communication tools
to enhance ART adherence counselling in low and high resource settings', Patient
Education and Counseling, vol. 89, no. 1, pp. 163–170.
 Hansen, Jared M. & Levin, Michael A. 2016, 'The effect of apathetic motivation on
employees' intentions to use social media for businesses', Journal of Business Research,
vol. 69, no. 12, pp. 6058–6066.
 Holland, Peter, Cooper, Brian K. & Hecker, Rob., 2016, 'Use of social media at work: a
new form of employee voice?', The International Journal of Human Resource
Management, vol. 27, no. 21, pp. 2621–2634.
 Ivo Ivanovski & Dragan Gruevski, 2014, 'Usage of Virtual Communication Tools in
Business Communication and Negotiation – A Factor of Increased Efficiency', TEM
Journal, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 167–174,
 Sia, Choon & Hui, Chun., 2013, 'Computer-mediated communication and social
networking tools at work', Information Technology & People, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 172–
190,
 Verheyden, Mark., 2017, 'Social media and the promise of excellence in internal
communication', Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 11–25,
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