Abstract:
Channels of communication is of great importance when passing information from the sender to the receiver and it also affects the performance of employees as they act based on how they have received the information and how they have understood it. Due to the rapid emergence of the channels of communication and its‟ increased level of usage in workplace, policymakers and organizations are still not sure whether to incorporate it entirely in their operations even though the evidence points out that use of emerging channels of communication has led to increased productivity. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to examine the effect of emerging channels of communication on employee performance. Objectives of the study were: to establish the effect of the use of short message service on employee performance: to determine the effect of the use of electronic mail on employee performance and to examine the influence of social networking site on employee performance in County Government of Kericho. The study is informed by Uses and Gratification Theory, Social Exchange Theory and Social Network Theory. The study adopted both the descriptive and correlation survey design. The total population for the study was 3108 being both managers and non-managers and out of this, a sample size of 354 was obtained. Data was collected using a well structured questionnaire and analyzed using inferential and descriptive statistics. A response rate of 81% was obtained from the 288 questionnaires that were filled. The study findings indicated that the coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.972) accounted for 97.2% of the total variability change of emerging channels of communication on employee performance. The findings further showed that SMS (β = 0.019, p = 0.034), electronic mail (β = 0.979, p = 0.000) and social networking sites (β = -0.032, p = 0.048) had a statistically significant effect on employee performance. Therefore, SMS, electronic mail and SNS showed that they have a significant relationship with employee performance in County Government of Kericho. The study recommends that county government should embrace the use of short message services, provision of computers in all the county offices and all computers to be networked for easy access to emails and that social network platform to be monitored all the time for control purposes. The study further suggests that there is need for a similar study to be carried out in all other County Governments in Kenya.
