INTRODUCTION

Achievement of organizational objectives is the utmost concern of every organization regardless of its nature, extension, and capital. An organization is undoubtedly a group of people working toward a common goal. It would be hard to gain its basic goals with no proper, effective, and efficacious utilization or working of the two important aspects of an organization namely the management and workforce or employees. Though the management is the driver of an organization, with no doubt employees are the back born of any kind of organization. Given employees of an organization are most active and efficient, the organization could circumvent any imminent threat, it could gain a good market and ultimately could achieve its organizational objectives. A workforce consisting of healthy employees in good working conditions is pertinent to foster steady production, minimize risks of accidents/injuries, and curtail health care premiums. On the other hand, an inefficient or unhealthy work force would cause grievous negative impacts upon the organization. This concept is meant by the principle of work performance‟ of employees. It reflects many important aspects of an enterprise such as growth, expansion, production and profit. Though a plethora of factors plays vital role on the „work performance‟, social media, being a nascent and most influential matter in the daily life of the mankind, an analysis on the nature and extent of its impact upon the employees work performance would be stand as necessary.

EMPLOYEES’ WORK PERFORMANCE

The way or nature the employees are in is simply called as employee's work performance. Work performance simply means how individuals perform in their job duties. In other words, it can be defined as the degree to which one meets the formal requirements of a job and adequately completes his assigned duties. Thus how well an individual performs a job, role, task, or responsibility is meant by the concept of work performance.

Performance of an employee is evaluated with respect to documented responsibilities, objectives, goals and reasonable expectations associated with a role, profession and industry. Employees‟ work performance can also relate to how efficiently a company uses economic resources. John P. Campbell describes job performance as an individual-level variable, or something a single person does.

The work performance is compiled of three major elements namely behavior, performance and result. Behavior of a person led him to perform his tasks either negatively or positively there by produces results. And the performance domain embraces behaviors that might have positive effects and behaviors that might have negative effects on organizational goal accomplishment. Thus the aggregate of behavior, performance and result forms the work performance of an employee. The elements of „work performance‟ are illustrated in the following figure.

IMPORTANCE

Each second of an employee within the organization‟s work site is the unique resource of the organization for which the firm in turn does pay a sum of compensation. The waste of employees‟ time is the waste of valuable resources of the organization. Thus, all factors having an impact effect on the employees' work performance should be taken under a detailed study or investigation to find whether those enhance or diminish the work performance of employees, to develop proper measurements to maximize pro factors or control cons factors.

Moreover, a workforce consisting of healthy employees in good working conditions is pertinent to foster steady production, minimize risks of accidents/injuries, and to curtail health care premiums. Moreover, it reflects many important aspects of an enterprise such as growth, expansion, and production.

Successful employees meet deadlines, make sales and build the brand via positive customer interactions. When employees do not perform effectively, consumers feel that the company is apathetic to their needs, and will seek help elsewhere. Employees who perform effectively get things done properly the first time.

Further, it is an important criterion for organizational outcomes and success. Success of any organization depends on the productivity of employees. When your employees are not performing well, it negatively affects productivity. Poor employee performance can decrease a company‟s competitive advantage in the business environment. Employees usually represent the largest expense for a company, and measuring performance is essential to the employee management process.

The following chart shows the nature of how work performance of employees has an impact upon the organization and its the major role in the accomplishment of organizational objectives which is the ultimate aim of any enterprise.

SOCIAL MEDIA AS A FACTOR

Social media is the most advanced, accepted, renowned, and widely used technology in the cyber arena. Social media is one of the computer-plus internet-based platforms that facilitate the sharing of information, ideas, and personal messages, in the form of text, document, photo, or video, to virtual networks or communities. To be note it is an area that is being evolved and changing day by day. Surprisingly, along with the proliferation of new kinds of social media applications and nascent features, the number of social media users is at an exponential surge. Undoubtedly, succeeding years would witness a staggering surge in usage of social media, particularly in India which has a significant young population.

Crucially, employees are also a part of these innovations and changes concerning social media. Moreover, several studies and surveys indicate the exponential surge of social media usage trends among worldwide employees regardless of working sectors.

Further, Social media is said to be a charming matter since once a person initiated to scroll through any social media platform it might be hard to withdraw from the same to a normal person. Certain studies found that two third of the total time spent by an average person on social media is unproductive and futile of any merits. Further, it steals a major portion of his valuable time which otherwise would be beneficial for more productive matters. This is untenable, particularly in the cases of employees who are the main resource of an organization whose imperfect would tamper its goals, invite its stalemate and turn it into closure leaving nonmeasurable losses and liabilities behind.

Hence, the social media usage behavior of employees stands as a strong or critical factor which might affect the employees work performance either positively or negatively thereby have a vital impact upon the achievement of organizational objectives. Undoubtedly, social media have been evolved as a critical part of life of any person including employees to an extent that it would hard for employee to lead one of his day with no support of social media. Additionally, social media also evolved as a pertinent platform in which almost every organizations and its management performs some of its managerial, administrative and even financial functions. Moreover, some organizations even have a separate department for social media. In short, social media would affect the employees' work performance which is a vital element for the success of any organization.

ENHANCES EMPLOYEES' WORK PERFORMANCE

Social media could boost employees work performance and engagement in several ways including the following:

• It bestows them a mental break.
• It enables them to share their ideas and communicate conveniently though they are working on a project.
• It allows them to understand life outside of work.
• Short breaks for social networking might boost mood, which will consequently enhance their engagement.
• It strengthens their work confidence and happiness.
• It keeps workplace relationship alive.
• It creates a fair awareness of the business they are in.
• Insightful articles, journals and videos help them in learning, developing and upgrading their skills.
• Brand surveys and campaigns can also be done on different social media sites.

A significant number of research studies could be found on how social media does impact several aspects of human being in general as well as in particular. While some studies hypothesized that the work performance is positively and significantly related with social media use in the work of employees, some others hold it is negatively related.

However several studies came to a conclusion regarding its positive relation. Castilla (2005), indicates that from a sociological perspective, social networking is positively correlated with employees‟ performance. Its work-related advantages focus on maintaining external professional networks, creating and strengthening ties with colleagues, gathering professional information, and promoting knowledge sharing and resource (Cao, Vogel, Guo, Liu, & Gu, 2012; Skeels & Grudin, 2009). Yammer a social networking service designed with enterprise communication claims that their commercial Enterprise Social Network leads to a new way of working that naturally drives business alignment and agility, empowers employees to be more productive and successful by enabling them to collaborate easily, reduces cycle times, engages employees, and improves relationships with customers and partners.

Ioannis Leftherioti, Michail N. Giannakos found in their work titled “Using social media for work: Losing your time or improving your work?” that a positive relation exists between the use of social media and the work performance. It found that two out of three employees make use of social media in their work irrespectively of their age. It reveals that the motivation for using social media for work is to watch the market/competitors as more than half of the employees claimed. It has concluded that these results built on the potential of social media as a medium for improving collaboration and knowledge sharing, thereby increasing productivity among employees.

Vogel, D.R.; Guo, X.; Liu, H.; Gu, J. in their research study named “Understanding the Influence of Social Media in the Workplace: An Integration of Media Synchronicity and Social Capital Theories” proposes that social media can promote work performance by stimulating trust among employees and offering a communication channel where explicit and implicit knowledge can be effectively transferred. It found that though social media‟s benefits for organizations are difficult to quantify, social media are valuable CMC tools in the workplace. This study integrates media synchronicity theory (MST) and social capital theory to investigate the influence of social media on work performance. The data were collected from 105 Chinese software professionals through a cross-sectional survey.

Cao, X.; Guo, X.; Vogel, D.; Zhang, X. reveals in their study named ”Exploring the influence of social media on employee work performance” that social media can promote the formation of employees‟ social capital indicated by network ties, shared vision and trust, which, in turn, can facilitate knowledge transfer. Shared vision and knowledge transfer positively influence work performance. Although network ties and trust do not have a direct impact on work performance, the influence is partially mediated by knowledge transfer. It contends that contend that social media use at work contributes to work performance through improving employees‟ social capital and knowledge transfer.

Moqbel, M.; Nevo, S.; Kock, N. has made a study titled “Organizational members’ use of social networking sites and job performance: An exploratory study” which suggests that social networking site use, rather than causing presenteeism, may be a new way through which employees balance their work‐life realms, in turn benefitting their organizations. It examined the use of social networking sites by organizational members and its effect on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance. It found social networking site use intensity has a significant positive effect on job performance through the mediation of job satisfaction, and that this mediating effect is itself mediated in a nested way via organizational commitment.

Moqbel, M., Nah, F. F. H. in their study “Enterprise social media use and impact on performance: the role of workplace integration and positive emotions” found that the enterprise social media use can increase workplace integration, which further enhances performance directly and indirectly through positive emotions. Enterprise social media use also has a direct relationship with performance. It has used social capital theory and the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions to explain the relationship between ESM use and knowledge workers‟ inrole and innovative performance. Further it found that ESM use contributes positively to knowledge workers‟ performance by helping employees to better use the human and social capital in organizations.

Seung Yeop Lee and Sang Woo Lee, have studied ”Social Media Use and Job Performance in the Workplace: The Effects of Facebook and KakaoTalk Use on Job Performance in South Korea”. Analyzing whether social media use has different effects on individual job performance depending on the characteristics of the given task, it finds that both Facebook and KakaoTalk had linearly positive effects on individual job performance. It further asks the firms to consider encouraging employees toward this practice more since it improves job performance and to implement policies that encourage their employees to use instant messaging or SNS. Further, it suggests that social media must be clearly categorized in studies related to the effects of social media use on job performance.

IMPAIRS THE WORK PERFORMANCE

Here are some of the problems associated with the usage of social media which consequently cause adverse effect on the work performance of employees;

• It could make them psychologically unhealthy.
• It may turn personal problems into work problems.
• It could create an awkward and unprofessional atmosphere in the office.
• It might be misused for non-business matters.
• Scrolling through their social media accounts during working hours also severely affects employee productivity in the workplace.

Surprisingly majority of the studies are of having a conclusion that social media maintains a negative relation against the work performance of employees. Some reports argue that use inside companies are blamed for reducing productivity of employees as they spend unacceptably long periods of time online and chatting. Moreover, Social meida are considered as time-wasters and security traps by some (Turban, Bolloju, & Liang, 2011).

Nucleus research conducted a research titled “Facebook: Measuring The Cost To Business Of Social Networking” which revealed that found companies effectively lose an average of 1.5 percent of total office productivity when employees can access Facebook during the work day. However it found that the 13 percent of users that had a business reason for accessing Facebook, most were not using it for personal networking but to promote a business, product, event, or fan site to Facebook users and Facebook was just one component of an overall marketing strategy. It suggests that companies should evaluate their Facebook policy and the cost to the organization in allowing access to Facebook, as today blocking Facebook may actually result in a 1.5 percent gain in productivity.

Accountemps in its survey “CFOs Concerned About Time Waste but Also See Business Benefits in Social Media Use” reveals that 51 percent of chief financial officers (CFOs) interviewed recently said their greatest concern is that employees are wasting time during business hours using sites such as Facebook and Twitter. CFOs also expressed worries their staff may behave unprofessionally or post inappropriate information online. It concludes that firms with concerns about employees wasting time online while at the office can encourage appropriate online activity by developing and establishing a set of consistent guidelines.

Brooks, S.; Cali, C. conducted a study on “Social media-induced techno stress: Its impact on the job performance of it professionals and the moderating role of job characteristics” which shows that there is potential of techno stress to exist related to using social media at work for non-work related tasks, and that such stress can negatively affect job performance. Moreover, it provides what situational factors may increase and decrease this negative relationship. The study which extends the research on job-stress, social media, techno stress, and job characteristics, suggests that organizations must recognize that the use of social media at work for personal reasons could be highly detrimental to job performance. Moreover, it draws the attention of managers to several ways to reduce social media-induced techno stress, namely, by making sure that employee‟s perceive their job characteristics to be in-line with their needs and desires for their job.

Gonzalez, E. S., Leidner, D. E., Riemenschneider, C., and Koch, H have made an empirical study on “The impact of internal social media usage on organizational socialization and commitment,” which aims at to see if internal social media use can help socialize new employees and engender commitment and thereby enhance their job performance. The results indicate that using an internal social media technology for social-related purposes can help new employees develop two dimensions of socialization: knowledge of the organization‟s culture and social acceptance and further it also foster affective commitment. It suggests that organizations may benefit more by allowing employees to socialize over an internal social media rather than appropriating it for work-related uses like knowledge management and training.

Priyadarshini, C., Dubey, R. K., Kumar, Y. L. N., and Jha, R. R. (2020) have studied “Impact of a social media addiction on employees’ wellbeing and work productivity” identified five categories of themes as the effect of social media addiction on employees‟ physical and mental wellbeing. They were (a) Lack of sleep, (b) Backache and eye strain, (c) Feeling of envy, (d) Lack of depth in the relationships, and (e) a Tendency to seek approvals. It finds that the addiction causes a dent in their personal and professional relationships and further leads to a sense of insecurity and an inferiority complex. Moreover based on the study findings, it advises employers to take a note of personal experiences shared by the employees and design a new or alter the existing policies and guidelines regarding smartphone and social media usage at the workplace, the employers should also provide counseling sessions to the employees making excessive use of social media channels during the working hours and employees must be educated about the ill effect of social media addiction on health and psychological wellbeing.

CONCLUSION

However, to the date, little research has empirically examined the relationship between enterprise social media use and knowledge workers‟ performance. Several authors have highlighted the need for further empirical work in the area of social media in order to shed light onto the positive and negative consequences of employees using social media in the workplace. Empirical research on social media in the workplace is rare, and such studies are usually conducted in a limited and specific sample (Cao et al., 2012). Despite the rapid uptake of corporate social media technologies, very little is known about the uses and effects of social media on enterprises (Jarrahi, 2011). Due to the rapid rise of social media and its users (Jarrahi & Sawyer, 2012) the need for investigation of the use of social media for work purposes has emerged. Therefore, further analysis considering the use of SMs for employment purposes is needed since this still remains an issue under investigation despite the prevalence of social media (Miller, Marks, & DeCoulode, 2011). However, it is very rare to find studies analyzing how does the social media usage at home affects employees' work performance. Thus such an aspect also be included and analyzed in further studies with regard to this. 

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