Use and economic burden of Social Network: Evidence from Government Employees in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Social media influences various sector in the society and provide certain social benefits as well as costs. Especially it affects the company productivity. Thereby this study was carried out with the objective of identity the pattern of social network usage and measuring its economic burden among government employees. As the sample 143 government servants were selected using two-stage cluster sampling method and structured interview method was used to collect data. Fishers’ Exact Test, and frequency analysis were employed to analysis the data. the study discovered that 86.6% of government employees in Sri Lanka have at least registered one social network site and wasted time due to social network usage per employee of Top level Managers, Middle level Managers , Executive Level and Non-Executive are 56.25, 63.33, 47,51 and 45.33 minutes per day respectively . Economic loss caused by that wasted time is per head 168.32 rupees per day. Thereby government organizations should create their own set of rules, guidelines and policies to reduce the wasted time. Also monitoring the employee behaviour on SNSs is a better way to effectively manage the use of SNSs by government employees.