Employee posts on personal social media: the mediation role of work-life conflict on employee engagement.

Abstract

Personal social media, as a private space, seems to have become another important arena for employees to share work-related posts, and the number of employee posts on social media is proliferating. However, academic scrutiny of the impact of social media usage remains inconclusive, and little is known regarding how employee posts affect employee engagement. The present study aims to fill this crucial gap in the existing research by constructing a conceptual model to unravel how employee posts shared on different personal social media platforms (strong-tie vs. weak-tie) influence employee engagement, as well as the moderating role of post content and employees' work-life segmentation preferences. Taking the Chinese workplace as a case, we conducted a survey of 402 participants from more than 30 organizations. The results revealed that employee posts on strong-tie social media platforms will lower employee engagement via the mediating role of work-life conflict. Moreover, these negative effects can be attenuated for sharing user-oriented posts (vs. organization-oriented posts) and employees with lower segmentation preferences, confirming the moderating role of post content and segmentation preferences. The findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of employee engagement by expanding boundary theory, and provide managerial implications for social media strategies, and organizational support.