Employee engagement level in ICT organizations as a barrier to the use of social media functions

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to prove and discuss the relationship between employee engagement in ICT organizations and the degree of use social media by audited companies. The literature on the subject suggested that social media create a space where it is possible to use tools for communicating, collaborating, connecting, completing, and combining. However, it requires the organization to understand and accept the fact that to achieve purposes in social media it is necessary to engage the whole organization at its different levels.

Research methods: For the needs of the research goal we carried out a quantitative research using the CAVI and CATI survey method and Spearman’s correlation coefficient on a sample of 400 companies in the ICT industry. The research question was: Can the number of people employed in marketing or social media be a determinant of the engagement of other employees to create content?

Findings: The presented analysis shows that the companies in ICT industry use the possibilities of social media only in limited extend. It has also been observed that the growing number of employees who are responsible for corporate social media is perceived by managers as the reason for the low engagement of other employees in creating content for business social media. As a consequence, between the organization’s employees do not create the community ready to engage in activities in the social media.

Practical Implications: The practical implication of this article can be used to elaborate a model of engaging employees of the company as a community which successfully interacts with the surroundings.

Originality/Value: This article is valuable; it contributes to a discussion on management methods in organization that plans to successfully use the potential of social media. Also, it can set the direction of creating a policy of employee engagement in the company.