Business Communication Assignment: Advantage and Disadvantages of Social Media Communication

Question

Assessment task
Workplace communication issues: Effective communication throughout a workplace is an essential ingredient to align people’s efforts towards achieving organisational goals. Yet it seems that ‘communication problems’ are continually mentioned as one of the main difficulties for most organisations. Your boss, the CEO of ABC Company, has asked you to prepare a report investigating the question:'Why and how should managers master the corporate communication function'?In so doing she expects you to examine the following four subfunctions within the function:

1. Identity, image, and reputation
2. Corporate responsibility
3. Media relations

Answer

Executive Summary
The following content has been in alignment of management of communication highlighting Sunshine 100 organisation from the food sector of Australia and has been entailed to social media issues. There has been produced the advantages and disadvantages of using social media within organisation in context of employees. Further, there have been implemented comments regarding influence of social media negative consequences on organisational productivity. Further, a communication strategic plan by virtue of social media policy amendments has been made to highlight the issue. Lastly a conclusion has been derived to summarise the conclusive facts.

Introduction
Use of social media can be helpful for the organisations to hire efficient employees by checking their CV from various websites. However, increasing use of social media can reduce productivity along with damage employee morale. The following report in this context would shade light over the social media events hampering well as elevating the business prospects of Sunshine 100, a food sectored organization. There would also be considered a communication plan strategy for highlighting social media strategy implementation in mentioned venture. The plan would be formally discussion regarding policy driven approaches and to create awareness for the strategies being implicated.

Potential advantages and disadvantages when using social media within an organization
Social media is constructive as well as destructive for the employees’ productivity in Sunshine 100. The constructiveness of having social media usages are;

Employee recruitment: Through use of social media in Sunshine 100, employees’ recruitment from various corners can be possible by the management. Abed, Dwivedi and Williams (2015, p.44).For this reason, Sunshine 100can be able to hire all the efficient employees through social media so that they can be able toachieve their business goals.

Enhancement of information discovery and its delivery: Social media encourages employees to have wider access to information regarding their jobs andfulfil all the demands of their clients.Wider information sets lead to better understanding of job role that reflects through working scales. Sunshine 100 encourages employees for social media usages to a certain scale for accessing wider information levels.

However the negative impacts of having social media usages is;
Misuses: The individuals those are using social media in their working hours, are facing concentration problems that is affecting overall productivity of their organisation. Sunshine 100 has restricted their employees to use social media at the time of working within the organisation. This may disrupt the working scales.

Malicious attacks: Malicious attacks can be occurred if the organisations are using social media for their business purpose. In context of Sunshine 100 it can be said that there can be huge chances of malicious attacks. The attackers can insert malware in the system and hack all the information by sending malicious content through social media.

Impact by the individual employee’s comments or behaviour on the organisation’s brand
Social media usages can be result in both positive and negative way for Sunshine 100 when the question arises on brand management, by virtue of employee/individual comments. The positive sides can be;

Better recognition of brand: In case if positive review from the internal stakeholders of Sunshine 100 is available, then a positive thought can be taken into consideration for that particular company. Better product reviews from the individuals can give the company audiences a way to approach towards Sunshine 100 with more demands. This can give better brand recognition to Sunshine 100. In addition, positive comments from individuals can lead the organisation to have increased audiences which in turn can translate increment of sales for the venture.

Disruption of organisational productivity and growth: A single negative comment either from employee or from any individualof management of Sunshine 100 can lead to organisational productivity disruption. In case of negative comment in social media from the internal employees regarding the products can hamper the reputation of that organisation (Sigala & Chalkiti 2015, p.44). In case of such situations it would become hard for Sunshine 100 to regain its lost status and reputation. This might affect the overall business environment of Sunshine 100. Decrement of sales can be taken into consideration on account of negative publicity by virtue of social media usages. Less amount of audience can be entailed that may take sunshine 100 to depletion of their organisational existence and their prospects.

Social media policy of the company
Sunshine 100, in order to safeguard their social environment by virtue of their employers can implement the mentioned stages in their social media policy for organisational betterment;

• The employees would be given the liberty to tag Sunshine 100 while posting any content in social media. However, they have to ensure that their posts are not hampering thereputation of the organisation. There would be no liabilities for Sunshine 100 consulting any sort of repercussions generated from employees post.
• Any information pertaining to high sensitivity and involving company data are not to be made public through social media contents. Information regarding designs, operational plans and other legal affairs are not to be disclosed in public. In case of such, liabilities would be severe against the accused and might be retreated from their employment (Roque & Raposo 2016, p.63).
• There are to be follow ups of proper copyrights and legal terms when posting any kind of organizational related post on social media. Violation of any rules and regulations are to be charged with severe penalties extending to loss of employment on legal basis (Donelan 2016, p.717).
• Sunshine 100 is liable for reserving the rights for making any sort of changes or amendments regarding any sort of misleading contents that are produced by employers on social media. Deletions of posts made by employees are also entailed by Sunshine 100.

Communication strategy (Refer to PPT)

Table 1: Communication strategy
(Source: created by researcher)

Conclusion
It can be concluded from the study that an organisation can be treated well by virtue of social media within the corporate environment however might met with negative consequences on several conditions. Use of social media within organisations can lead to productivity on one hand however may disrupt it on other hand. In light of this, the communication plan would be effective for managing social media events for Sunshine 100. Producing copyrights can be taken as a better concern stopping any sort of illegal terms in social sites. Training and motivating employee can be considered a positive strategy for giving them the overview of social media aspects thus not hampering the organisational productivity.

Reference list
Journals
Abed, S. S., Dwivedi, Y. K., & Williams, M. D. 2015. ‘Social media as a bridge to e-commerce adoption in SMEs: A systematic literature review.’ The Marketing Review, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 39-57.

Burt, R. S. 2017, ‘Structural holes versus network closure as social capital’, InSocial capital, vol. 1, no. 34, pp. 31-56.

Donelan, H. 2016. ‘Social media for professional development and networking opportunities in academia.’ Journal of Further and Higher Education, vol. 40, no. 5, pp. 706-729.

Go, E., & You, K. H. 2016,‘But not all social media are the same: Analyzing organizations’ social media usage patterns’,Telematics and Informatics, vol. 33, no. 1, pp.176-186.

Ott, L., &Theunissen, P. 2015,‘Reputations at risk: Engagement during social media crises’, Public Relations Review, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 97-102.

Roque, V., &Raposo, R. 2016. ‘Social media as a communication and marketing tool in tourism: an analysis of online activities from international key player DMO.’ Anatolia, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 58-70.

Sigala, M., &Chalkiti, K. 2015,‘Knowledge management, social media and employee creativity’,International Journal of Hospitality Management, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 44-58.