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

Christine J. Syrek, Jana Kühnel, Tim Vahle-Hinz, Jessica De Bloom
2017 Work & Stress  
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
more » ... k 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.
doi:10.1080/02678373.2017.1367736 fatcat:lvafo2cteffgvchuzwqdd67w74