The impact of enterprise social media on employee performance of hardware business environment in Masvingo urban.

Abstract

The prime focus of this research study was to examine the impact of enterprise social media on employee performance in the hardware business environment in Masvingo urban. It was aimed to investigate the relationship between enterprise social media and employee performance. Previous studies on enterprise social media and employee performance in the past decade were done by numerous scholars in developed countries and unfortunately most of these studies overlooked developing countries such as Zimbabwe and many developing countries in the African continent. The insights and concepts by these scholars were of significant help in the compilation of this research study, as the researcher managed to identify knowledge gaps and close the gaps using the ideas and suggestions by other authors, which gave the researcher a more profound understanding of the enterprise social media platforms and how these improve on the performance of hardware employees. To achieve this purpose, data was collected from a sample of 144 employees from fourteen different hardware stores in Masvingo. Five major variables of enterprise social media were used which are user profiles, news feeds, groups/communities, messaging and chatting and document sharing and collaboration and their impact on employee performance. The results indicate that variables of enterprise social media mentioned above have a positive and significant influence on the performance of employees in the hardware business industry in Masvingo urban. Moreover, to ascertain the relationship between the variables of enterprise social media and employee performance, a quantitative research was conducted. The collected data was analysed using SPSS version 16.0. Standard deviation, Cronbach’s Alpha, normality test and the Spearman’s Correlation analysis were applied and indicated that enterprise social media has a strong positive relationship with employee job performance. Possible interpretations, limitations, and implications for management professionals were also discussed so that hardware stores can benefit from this study by improving on (ESM) usage to improve on employee job performance. The research then concludes that user profiles, news feeds, groups/communities, messaging and chat and document sharing and collaboration positively impact on employee job performance. From the conclusions made, the research recommends that hardware stores should focus on how to improve on the use of enterprise social media to enhance employee performance.