BIZ101 Business Communications Online Tutoring

Introduction

Jeanetta (2017) argued that many businesses fear that the use of social media at the workplace will cause a distraction for the employees. However, according to Lampe and Ellison (2016), over 77% of the employees use social media at the workplace (even on their personal devices). Thus, the companies must accept this reality and find ways to use social media to increase the productivity of employees as it provides an informal medium to communicate and creates a sense of community in an organization.

A law firm based out of Sydney is also considering to replace its newsletter with social media so that employee engagement can be increased. This report analyses the framework required to implement the above change.

About the technology

The technology being considered by the management of the organization is an internal social media platform. Herlle and Astray-Caneda (2012) suggested that organizations must develop their own social media platforms. This suggestion is being evaluated by the management of the law firm.

Haddud et al (2016) argued that the management of an organization must leverage the power of social media to share information and knowledge within the organization. The management intends to use social media as a replacement of internal newsletter so that the partners in the firm and the associates of the firm can have an interactive discussion on various cases. This is expected to improve knowledge sharing in the organization.

Uses of the technology

In the initial phases, the management is looking to use the technology only for replacing newsletter. Going forward, as argued by Herlle and Astray-Caneda (2012), the platform can be used to increase collaborations and knowledge sharing with others. Also, the social media platform can be utilized for training employees as well.

Since the social media platform is internal to the organization, Haddud et al (2016) suggested that the access should be kept restricted to the employees of the organization. Additionally, the social media platform must have the following features: forums, wikis, file sharing, tagging, feeds, activity feeds, user profiles, file repositories, and discussion threads.

Advantages and Disadvantages of the technology

Implementing a technology in an organization has both advantages and disadvantages. Haddud et al. (2016) argued that the advantages of using internal social media platform in an organization are not confined to employee engagement as the high employee engagement results in innovation, increased productivity, and reduced turnover. Haddud et al. (2016) further argued that while the increased usage of social media promotes employee engagement, it has no visible impact on the leadership competency of the management. However, social media acts as a communication medium for leadership to promote a change in the organization.

Implementing an internal social media platform in an organization can result in some potential disadvantages for the organization. Herlle and Astray-Caneda (2012) suggested that there are several concerns of the management usually regarding the use of social media at the workplace: First, the employees spend considerable time on social media, while missing out on their work duties. Second, the use of social media platforms in the workplace may also result in data theft or leakage. However, there is a need to understand that the above concerns become irrelevant if the social media platform is an internal platform. Also, since the social media platform is an internal platform, the management can take several steps to draft and implement an effective social media usage policy. These steps are discussed later in this report.

Factors to be Considered

There are several factors that need to be considered while implementing an internal social media platform. Of these factors, the three most relevant factors are discussed below.

The first factor that needs to be considered is if an internal social media platform is relevant to a law firm. This consideration is made on the argument that internal social media usage cannot be applied equally effectively across all industries. However, Chiu et al (2012) argued that professional services (like a law firm) can have a high level of available values that can be captured through social media. They also identified that professional services are one of the leading industries that are adopting social media technologies. In professional services, internal social media usage can improve productivity in several areas including operations, business support functions, and service development. The law firm in focus has over 60 employees so internal social media platform can be used for knowledge sharing, unlike in a large organization where it is largely confined to broadcast messages.

The second factor that needs to be considered is if the organization has the necessary technological infrastructure to implement and support an internal social media platform. Young and Hinesly (2014) argued that for an organization to have an effective social media usage, it is necessary that various organization systems are modified so that the implementation of social media can be effective. So, it means if the organization makes the necessary investment, it can develop the necessary technological infrastructure.

The third factor that needs to be considered is if the organization has an appropriate organizational structure. Cetinkaya and Muhammad (2018) identified that organizational structure plays a mediating role in the relationship between employee job performance and social media usage. This could be understood from the following example: In case of a centralized organizational structure, the employees at lower levels of hierarchy will not be able to be actively involved in social media usage, as they may fear facing repercussions, if their post or comment may not be liked by their senior, despite the post or comment not being a violation of the organization’s social media policy. In case of a decentralized organization, the employees at all level will be actively involved in social media usage as they can post or comment freely (provided it is not a violation of the social media policy of the organization.  Thus, it can be argued that decentralization is a precursor to active social media usage in an organization. Cetinkaya and Muhammad (2018) also found that social media drives decentralization in organizations that promotes quick decision making, thereby serving as a competitive advantage for the business. Thus, social media usage and the extent of decentralization of organization structure have a bi-causal relationship with one another. In the analyzed organization, the firm has a mix of centralized as well as decentralized structure as each partner looks after different services with the help of his/her associates.

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