OK generations, interact! : A quantitative case study on motivations, employer engagement, perceptive and technical affordances on internal social media from a generational perspective.

Abstract: Successful internal social media motivates and engages employees in the emerging digital world. It provides them sufficient tools to exchange skills and collaborate through these platforms. For instance, they are able to build relationships with their colleagues and employer (relatedness), learn and share their skills and expertise (competence). In times of remote working, internal social media can help to facilitate these values that help all parts of the organisation to stay connected with each other. These platforms are also enriched with technical functions that enable the users to interact with each other in different ways. It also provides opportunities for visual storytelling to enhance and strengthen the communication that takes place on internal social media. The platforms are challenging since it is hard to engage and motivate age generations, where they all have different technological experience and somewhat cultural differences. This thesis is a quantitative survey case study conducted for a larger cooperation, based on theories such as self determination theory, employer engagement and affordances. This research contributes to existing literature by understanding generations’ motivation and engagement on internal social media, in contrast to existing research on private social media. It also analyses how professional and private social media use is related to employer engagement. Lastly, what interactions and formats are most valuable to each generation based of affordances. The study analyzes a sample of 330 respondents collected through the company's internal social media (Workplace). The generations that will be examined are from the oldest Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials and youngest Generation Z. The final result concluded low participant frequency on Generation Z, which led to them being combined with Millennials in the analysis. Findings indicated that, Generation X are most motivated to exchange skills and expertise on Workplace (Competence), Baby Boomers and Millennials and Generation Z were less motivated to use it in general. However Baby Boomers were slightly more motivated by relatedness. The result also shows that there is a strong relationship between social media usage and employer engagement. The most valuable functions for all generations were the comment function and they all agree the video is the best way to communicate on internal social media.