Staying in touch while at work: Relationships between personal social media use at work and work-nonwork balance and creativity

Abstract

Personal social media use at work is usually deemed counterproductive work behaviour reducing employee productivity. However, we hypothesized that it may actually help employees to coordinate work and nonwork demands, which should in turn increase work-related creativity. We used ecological momentary assessment across one working day with up to ten hourly measurements on 337 white-collar workers to measure personal social media use, work-nonwork balance and creativity, resulting in a total of 2244 hourly measurements. Multilevel modelling revealed that personal social media use was associated with better work-nonwork balance, but with lower levels of creativity between- and within-persons. Work-nonwork balance did not mediate the relationship between personal social media use and creativity. More research is needed to understand why employees use social media at work for personal purposes and how this affects their well-being and job performance.