Effect of Social Media Usage on Employee Performance at Higher Education Loans Board, Kenya

Abstract

The study examined the effects of social media usage on employee performance at higher education loan board. The study adopted the descriptive research design. The population of the study included all the employees of HELB countrywide (285). The sample for this study was 57. The questionnaire was administered online via google forms. The study used descriptive and inferential statistics including means, frequencies and association and correlation with aid of SPSS. The study also used reliability test to ascertain that the instrument used are reliable. The study found that there was no association between most of the social media use aspects in this study and the employees’ performance. The employees agreed with the use of social media to post work related content to customers or share their expertise in specific areas. However, they disagreed with the use of social media to organize their work files or sharing information on organization policies and objectives. They also agreed that they use social media to like follow and share content posted by others, take a break from work, make friend within the organization and organize events with co-workers. The findings showed a strong association between better performance and using social media to break from work, make friend and organizing events with co-workers. The study concluded that the effects of social media on HELB employees’ performance is significant in terms of time they spent on social media handling work or socio-related activities. The study recorded a positive effect of social media in the performance of the HELB employees. But with a relatively high percentage of respondents who were neutral-did not know or want to agree ,disagree with any of the study statements. It thus recommends that HELB should conduct social media awareness to its employees as many of them are already spending significant amount of time on SM during working hours but are neutral about SM effects to their performance.