Influence of Social Networking Sites as an Emerging Channel of Communication on Employee Performance in County Government of Kericho, Kenya

Abstract

Channels of communication is of great importance when passing information from the sender to the receiver and it also affects the performance of employees as they act based on how they have received the information and how they have understood it. Due to the rapid emergence of the channels of communication and its’ increased level of usage in workplace, policymakers and organizations are still not sure whether to incorporate it entirely in their operations even though the evidence points out that use of emerging channels of communication has led to increased productivity. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the influence of social networking site as a channel of communication on employee performance in County Government of Kericho. The study was informed by Social Network Theory. The study adopted both the descriptive and correlation survey design. The total population for the study was 3108 being both managers and non-managers and out of this, a sample size of 354 was obtained. Data was collected using a well structured questionnaire and analyzed using inferential and descriptive statistics. Data was collected using structured questionnaire and analyzed using inferential and descriptive statistics and a response rate of 81% was obtained from the 288 questionnaires that were filled. Reliability and validity of the data was examined using pilot test where a Cronbach’s alpha values for all the constructs' were above 0.70 making the research instrument reliable. The findings further showed that social networking sites (β = -0.032, p = 0.048) had a statistically significant effect on employee performance. Recommendation for the study was that county government of Kericho needed to provide computers in all the county offices and all computers to be networked for easy access and social network platform to be monitored all the time for control purposes.