Abstract
The modern era with technological advancement removed physical activities. Most of the people seem busy in their androids. Especially, office workers perform duties online throughout the working hours, along with online work activities employees have developed their interest in leisure activities on social media websites. Statistically, 81% of the Malaysian population are social media users in 2020, whereas 17% spend more than 9 hours on social media websites (Statista, 2020; Yougov, 2019). The purpose of the study is to identify the effect of social media addictiveness and social media activities related to the job on job stress among office employees. A simple random sampling technique is used to collect data. Data is collected through a questionnaire survey from 253 office employees working in the oil and gas industry, Malaysia. The reliability of the questionnaire was found through Cronbach alpha. Pearson Bivariate Correlation analysis is used to identify associations among social media addictiveness and social media activities related to job and job stress among office employees. The results indicated that social media addictiveness enhances job stress by 52% at 1% level of significance, whereas social media activities reduce job stress by 12% at 5% level of significance and social media addictiveness. It is concluded that job stress among office employees can be reduced by discouraging social media addictiveness. Although social media activities related to jobs decrease job stress, it can be harmful to the reputation of the employer and can create problems for the employee in the long term. Alternative methods should be used to release job stress, such as social support within the workplace and physical interaction among employees. This study is useful for the organizations related to office employees to identify the employees with social addiction, provide them training about safety in surfing online websites, enhance physical interaction and create social support for the employees within the organization. Employees may adopt the right channel to release their stress despite social media that is actually enhancing stress. Further, this study is valuable for the forthcoming researchers to enhance research in this area.
Highlights
Occupational health and safety play a critical role for an organization to work smoothly
Whereas on the other hand, it affects negatively to work performance (Lau, 2017)but this study found a significant positive impact of social media addiction on job stress; it indicates more time spent on social media decreases allocated work time and increase work burden, which leads to an imbalance in job demand and control and causes job stress. on the other hand, social media usage distracts the employees from office work, and after the usage of social media it took much time to create interest in work again
Most of the employees are getting addicted to social media by perceiving it as a stress releaser, but it has the worst effect on job stress, employee health, and productivity
Summary
Occupational health and safety play a critical role for an organization to work smoothly. Job stress is one of the major issue comes under occupational health and safety, threatening health and wellbeing of the employee as they spend a maximum and important part of their time at the workplace(Thorp et al, 2012). 2017 of National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) Malaysia, job stress is at an increasing level, especially among office employees. The question arises here, does social media engagement enhancing stress, or it releasing stress as many of the surveys concluded that employees use social media to release their stress. Several factors were investigated to manage stress at workplaces, social media engagement is considered a stress releasing factor, but there is a gap to identify the impact of social media addiction on job stress
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