Social media has profoundly changed the way the world thinks and how organisations think, especially surrounding advertising and recruitment (The Economist, 2014). Furthermore, organisations have had to adapt to social media remarkably fast (Barnes, 2008), as social media enables customers to easily communicate with an organisation to keep up to date on its news, to make complaints and enquiries …show more content…
Organisations have an increasing amount of social media applications available to them and researchers have pursued to create a typology of these social media applications. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) argue that social media is an internet based application that allow and create the ability to exchange user-generated content, they also provided six types of social media applications including, social networking sites, content communities, blogs, and collaborative projects, as well as virtual social and game worlds. These types are distinguished from one another by their degree of social presence. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) have also argued that the use of social media enables self-disclosure of personal …show more content…
For a smaller organisation, this can be hugely beneficial as they try to evolve and develop. Within larger organisations, when employees use social media effectively it can ease communication, as many sites have various systems so that employees can engage in conversations and discussions despite geographical and physical boundaries (McKinsey Global Institute, 2012). This can then increase morale and improve motivation, and engagement (Vrontis and Thrassou, 2013). Such examples would be that of HR systems, which can contain comprehensive professional and personal information about employees and customers, which can be immediately updated whenever a change takes place. However, 51% of workers in America believe that using social media at work hurts productivity, (Warner, 2016). A recent study specifically assessed the use of social network sites for personal use during working hours. It showed that use of social media during working hours can impair performance at work and also harm the well-being of organisations. The overall finding of the study was that this type of distraction has a negative effect on self-reported work performance (The Economic Times, 2014). However, it has been noted that in professions such as Healthcare it helped to encourage effective communication among healthcare staff (Peate, 2015). Evidence has also highlighted that