Share, like, twitter, and connect: Ecological momentary assessment to examine the relationship between non-work social media use at work and work engagement

Abstract

Non-work social media use at work has seen a dramatic increase in the last decade and is commonly deemed counterproductive work behavior. However, we examined whether it may also serve as a micro-break and improve work engagement. We used ecological momentary assessment across one working day with up to ten hourly measurements in 334 white-collar workers to measure non-work social media use and work engagement, resulting in 2,235 hourly measurements. Multilevel modeling demonstrated that non-work social media use was associated with lower levels of work engagement between-persons. Within-persons, non-work social media use was also associated with lower concurrent work engagement. However, non-work social media use was related to higher levels of work engagement one hour later. While more extensive non-work social media use at work was generally associated with lower work engagement, our advanced study design revealed that the longer employees used social media for non-work purposes during one working hour, the more work engaged they were in the subsequent working hour, suggesting that employees turn to social media when energy levels are low and/or when they (temporarily) lose interest in their work. This behavior may serve as a break, which in turn increases work engagement later during the day.

Procrastination in Daily Working Life: A Diary Study on Within-Person Processes That Link Work Characteristics to Workplace Procrastination

“…Finally, future research on workplace procrastination might also want to devote itself to further integrate the literature on workplace procrastination with other streams of work and organizational psychology literature, like the literature on withdrawal behavior (cf. van Eerde, 2016 ), task completion (e.g., Claessens et al, 2010 ), and online media use at work (e.g., Syrek et al, in press ). We have the impression that although procrastination is not quite often investigated in work settings, there are many related topics in work and organizational psychology that might benefit from a better inclusion of procrastination research and vice versa.…”

Is cyberloafing more complex than we originally thought? Cyberloafing as a coping response to workplace aggression exposure

“…For example, recent meta-analytic evidence indicated that contrary to commonly held assumptions, cyberloafing did not negatively impact employees' job performance (Mercado, Giordano, & Dilchert, 2017). Other researchers have gone even farther and found that cyberloafing might have positive impacts such as elevating employees' moods (Lim & Chen, 2012) and increasing employee work engagement (Syrek, Kühnel, Vahle-Hinz, & De Bloom, 2018). Germane to the current study, researchers have also found that employees engage in cyberloafing in response to stressful work conditions (Henle & Blanchard, 2008;Pindek, Krajcevska, & Spector, 2018), providing initial evidence that cyberloafing may serve as one way for employees to cope with work stress.…”

Evaluating the effects of social networking sites addiction, task distraction, and self‐management on nurses' performance

“…When employees spend most of their time using SNSs, their mental ability to perform job‐related tasks is reduced, which results in low level of concentration required for the assigned job. According to Syrek, Kuhnel, Hinz, and De Bloom (), SNSs addiction reduces the work engagement of employees and distracts the essential energy required to perform the assigned tasks. Thus, SNSs addiction results in task distraction.…”