Employee use of social media networks during working hours is an increasing concern for companies. Reports show that billions in lost revenue is due to employees’ cyberslacking (Young, 2010). Previous literature in this field suggests that employee usage of social media during working hours affects their productivity as well as the organization’s reputation (Young, 2010; Aguenza et al., 2012; Molok et al., 2012). Limited research has been conducted on employee use of social media networks during working hours specifically in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Therefore this paper investigates the employee usage of social media and its relation to productivity and organizational reputation within the Department of Culture and Tourism in Abu Dhabi. Interviews were conducted with 15 employees of the Department of Culture and Tourism. The findings suggest that using social media is not necessarily conductive to lower productivity, however low levels of employee satisfaction appear to be, as lower job satisfaction is linked to a higher use of social media. In addition, participants reported a lack of differentiation between personal and professional social media posts, presenting a potentially risky situation in which organisational reputation may be compromised. Based upon these findings, a set of recommendations are presented which include mandatory training for employees and managers to increase awareness of social media policies, the implementation of policies and procedures to protect organisational reputation and, finally, the introduction of regular job satisfaction surveys. Rather than limiting employee access to social media over organisational networks, this paper presents a more balanced approach, acknowledging the potential benefits of social media, but encouraging responsible use of these sites.

Abdul Molok, N. et al. (2010). A case analysis of securing organisations against information leakage through online social networking. International Journal of Information Management 43, pp.351-356. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2018.08.013.

Aguenza, Benjamin B., et al. (2012). Social Media and Productivity in the Workplace: Challenges and Constraints. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research in Business, 2 (2) pp.2046–7141.

Akbulut, Yavuz, et al. (2017). Cyberloafing and Social Desirability Bias among Students and Employees. Computers in Human Behavior, 72 pp.87–95., DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2017.02.043.

Andreassen, C. et al. (2014). Predictors of Use of Social Network Sites at Work - A Specific Type of Cyberloafing. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 19(4), pp. 906-921. DOI: 10.1111/jcc4.12085.

Banghart, S. et al. (2018). Organizational Boundary Regulation through Social Media Policies. Management Communication Quarterly 32(3), pp.337-373. DOI: 10.1177/0893318918766405.

Behringer, Nicole, and Kai Sassenberg (2015). Introducing Social Media for Knowledge Management: Determinants of Employees’ Intentions to Adopt New Tools. Computers in Human Behavior, 48, 2015, pp. 290–296., DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2015.01.069.

Bertot, John Carlo, et al. (2012). The Impact of Polices on Government Social Media Usage: Issues, Challenges, and Recommendations. Government Information Quarterly, 29 (1) 2012, pp. 30–40.

Braun, Virginia, and Victoria Clarke (2006). Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3 (2), pp. 77–101., DOI: 10.1191/1478088706qp063oa.

Cilliers, Francois Quintin. (2013). The Role and Effect of Social Media in the Workplace. Northern Kentucky Law Review, 40, pp.567–592.

Dreher, Sonja. (2014). Social Media and the World of Work a Strategic Approach to Employees' Participation in Social Media. Corporate Communication: An International Journal, (19) 4, pp.344–356.

Gudaitis, T. (2010). The Impact of Social Media on Corporate Security: What Every Company Needs to Know: Cyveillance, Inc.

Gunnlaugsdottir, J. (2015). Employees’ Use of Social Media for Private Reasons during Working Hours. In: The 4th International Conference on Integrated Information. Reykjavik: University of Iceland, pp.24-31. Available at: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.4907813. [Accessed: 19 February 2019].

Holland, Peter, et al. (2016). Social Media at Work: A New Form of Employee Voice? Work, Organization, and Employment Employee Voice at Work, 27 pp. 2621–2634., DOI:10.1007/978-981-13-2820-6_4.Jacobson, W. and Tufts, S. (2013). To Post or Not to Post: Employee Rights and Social Media. Review of Public Personnel Administration 33(1), pp. 84-107. DOI: 10.1177/0734371x12443265.

Lee, S. and Lee, S. (2018). The effect of Facebook use on office workers’ job performance and the moderating effects of task equivocality and interdependence. Behaviour & Information Technology 37(8), pp. 828-841. DOI: 10.1080/0144929x.2018.1485743.

Leftheriotis, Ioannis, and Michail N. Giannakos (2014). Using Social Media for Work: Losing Your Time or Improving Your Work? Computers in Human Behavior, 31 pp. 134–142. DOI:10.1016/j.chb.2013.10.016.

Leitch, Claire M., et al. (2009). The Philosophy and Practice of Interpretivist Research in Entrepreneurship. Organizational Research Methods,13(1), pp. 67–84., DOI:10.1177/1094428109339839.

Liberman, Benjamín, et al. (2011). Employee Job Attitudes and Organizational Characteristics as Predictors of Cyberloafing. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(6), pp. 2192–2199. DOI:10.1016/j.chb.2011.06.015.

Lin, J. et al. (2012). Social Media Usage and Work Values: The Example of Facebook in Taiwan. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal 40(2), pp. 195-200. DOI: 10.2224/sbp.2012.40.2.195.

Opgenhaffen, M. and Claeys, A. (2017). Between hope and fear: developing social media guidelines. Employee Relations 39(2), pp. 130-144. DOI: 10.1108/er-04-2016-0086.

Peluchette, Joy, et al. (2012). Professionalism and Social Networking. The Health Care Manager, 31(4), pp. 285–294., DOI: 10.1097/hcm.0b013e31826fe252.

Robertson, Brett W., and Kerk F. Kee (2017). “Social Media at Work: The Roles of Job Satisfaction, Employment Status, and Facebook Use with Co-Workers. Computers in Human Behavior, 70, pp. 191–196. DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2016.12.080.

Ryan, Damian (2017). Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation. Kogan Page.

Saunders, M. N. K., et al. (2016). Research Methods for Business Students. 7th ed., Pearson.

Stewart, Farley (2003). Internet Acceptable Use Policies: Navigating the Management, Legal, and Technical Issues. Information Systems Security, 9(3), pp. 46–53., DOI:10.1201/1086/43310.9.3.20000708/31360.6.

Syrek, Christine J., et al. (2017). Share, like, Twitter, and Connect: Ecological Momentary Assessment to Examine the Relationship between Non-Work Social Media Use at Work and Work Engagement. Work & Stress, 32(3), pp. 209–227., DOI:10.1080/02678373.2017.1367736.

Thomas, David R. (2006). “A General Inductive Approach for Analyzing Qualitative Evaluation Data, American Journal of Evaluation, 27(2), pp. 237–246., DOI: 10.1177/1098214005283748.

Turban, Efraim, et al. (2011). “Enterprise Social Networking: Opportunities, Adoption, and Risk Mitigation.” Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, 21(3) pp. 202–220. DOI:10.1080/10919392.2011.590109.

Vaast, Emmanuelle, and Evgeny, Kaganer (2013). Social Media Affordances and Governance in the Workplace: An Examination of Organizational Policies. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(1), pp. 78–101., DOI:10.1111/jcc4.12032.

Van Zoonen, W. et al. (2017). Understanding the consequences of public social media use for work. European Management Journal 35(5), pp. 595-605. DOI 10.1016/j.emj.2017.07.006.

Vitak, J. et al. (2011). Personal Internet use at work: Understanding cyberslacking. Computers in Human Behaviour 27(5), pp. 1751-1759. DOI 10.1016/j.chb.2011.03.002.

Walden, J. (2016). Integrating Social Media into the Workplace: A Study of Shifting Technology Use Repertoires. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 60(2), pp. 347-363. DOI: 10.1080/08838151.2016.1164163.

Wang, M. et al. (2016). How workers engage in social networking sites at work: A uses and gratification expectancy perspective. The International Journal of Organizational Innovation 8(4), pp. 161-176.

Wisdom, Jennifer, and John W. Creswell (2013). Mixed Methods: Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis While Studying Patient-Centered Medical Home Models. https://pcmh.ahrq.gov/page/mixed-methods-integrating-quantitative-and-qualitative-data-collection-and- analysis-while.

Young, Kimberly (2010). Policies and Procedures to Manage Employee Internet Abuse. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(6), pp. 1467–1471, DOI:10.1016/j.chb.2010.04.025.

Zelizer E. (2010). Embracing and controlling social media in the workplace - Ten rules. HR ADVISOR, https://files.drinkerbiddle.com/Templates/media/files/publications/
2010/controlling-social-media-in-the-workplace--ten-rules.pdf

Zoghbi‐Manrique‐De‐Lara, Pablo, and Arístides Olivares‐Mesa (2010). Bringing Cyber Loafers Back on the Right Track. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 110 (7), pp. 1038–1053. DOI: 10.1108/02635571011069095.