| Studies indicate that disengagement among employees costs the U.S. economy three to six times more than unemployment. Engaged employees have been found to have a measurable impact on their organization's performance and financial returns. Social media adapted for use inside the enterprise (ESM) have also been found to contribute to a company's performance, as employees share and learn in a social context, turning information into insight and action. Widely thought to be job resources for moderating employee engagement, there remains a fair amount of skepticism as to ESM's effectiveness in moderating engagement and performance. Applying a framework of engagement's psychological dimensions, constructivist learning theory, and affordance theory, the present study was among the first to quantitatively examine worker engagement at the individual level, when using an enterprise shared-video application for task-related learning. The study indicated that the performance metrics of a large and geographically dispersed workforce of telecom technicians were highly correlated to their use of the video-sharing application. The study also indicated that applied broadly, the increase in technician performance associated with ESM use has the potential for a significant financial impact to the enterprise. Further research is warranted to examine specific video content and subsequent technician performance on tasks associated with the content. |
