Introduction
The primary reason for conducting this original research is a vast number of concerns about the negative impacts of social media on labor productivity. Therefore, by collecting data via surveys of 278 staff members from different companies in Harare, the authors try to examine the relationship between employee efficiency and usage of various communication apps, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype, and WhatsApp (Wushe & Shenje, 2019). To be more precise, since researchers have different opinions regarding the positivity and negativity of social media’s influences on workers, this article evaluates the effect of networking on organizations and employees.
Distraction-Conflict Theory
The article reviews distraction-conflict theory to understand its possible implementation in the research stage of the study. Therefore, “competing activities or environmental stimuli” at the workplace are considered to trigger behavioral, psychological, and social types of distraction and confusion (Wushe & Shenje, 2019, p. 2). In other words, when an employee constantly receives social media application notifications, one is more likely to neglect to fulfill their primary responsibilities. Overall, the theory is further employed by Wushe and Shenje (2019) to examine social media as a distractor from a worker’s main tasks at the workplace. Furthermore, a decrease in mental attention is a crucial disadvantage of networking usage during working hours.
Findings
Overall, social media is an efficient way of communication between a worker and a client, and some applications are helpful for employees to seek modern trends that assist them in their interaction with customers. Therefore, many companies even develop applications specifically to cater to the needs of employees in communication at the workplace and photo-sharing. However, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Skype, and LinkedIn tend to decrease employees’ performance.
Conclusion
Apparently, the use of social networks by staff members during working hours is typically counterproductive. According to Wushe and Shenje (2019), “time spent and frequency of visits to social media during working hours can have a negative effect on employee productivity” (p. 9). Out of the five social networks explored in the article, only LinkedIn showed a significant positive relationship with employee productivity (Wushe & Shenje, 2019). Thus, it is recommended that employers manage the use of social networks during working hours.
Reference
Wushe, T., & Shenje, J. (2019). The relationship between social media usage in the workplace and employee productivity in the public sector: Case study of government departments in Harare. Journal of Human Resource Management, 1–10.