INTRODUCTION
Career, being a profession and actions taken
by an individual is a lifetime decision. This achievement enhances a woman’s
status in the society and boosts her
self-esteem within her clan. However, the
organisation
she works in determines how she spends her leisure time when it comes to
undertaking a self- employed business in which she has interest. This is mainly because such a business ought not to
interfere with her duties in the organisation
she works with. Hence, a female civil servant may find it difficult to be
involved in a business she will have to leave in the hands of an outsider (a
sales girl or boy as the case may be) especially at this recession period in
Nigeria.
The use of social media can ease the pursuit
of a female civil servant who intends to be involved in a self–employed
business. This is similar to the assertion of Andreas and
Micheal
(2010), that social media, which can also be referred to as ‘Web2, 0’ is an
internet based tool and service that allows interaction between internet users
in order to generate content, distribute and explore for information. For
instance, the advertisement of old and new products can be displayed and
accessed on the social media by internet users. Self-employed business or private business
which will be used interchangeably in the
context of this paper has to do with a government worker who is involved in a
small business, an entrepreneur who
desires to have a secondary source of
income using social media to promote such business.
What is social media? Social media is an
online medium of communication among different groups of people whether friends,
strangers or acquaintances. It can also be seen as a means of participating in
social networking via websites and application with the use of different online
tools like Instagram, blog, Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, YouTube, Inter alia. This paper focuses on social media tools which include
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn that may be
useful for a female civil servant involved
or interested in self-employed business. This could earn her more income, whether the
salary is stable or not and she may decide to contribute her quota to the
economic aspect of her family. Career women in the context of this paper are the
female civil servants working under the Ministry of Women Affairs, Oyo state
Nigeria.
A civil servant is an employee under the body
of either federal, state or local government administration called Civil
Service. Civil service is a body of state administration which excludes judiciary and military branches of
government. They are politically neutral to issues that have to do with partisan
politics. It is a professional body of the state administration with a
feature of permanency. It is an
administrative service of the government agencies either national or
international.
The civil servant or public employee works in
various fields like teaching, management,
administration for federal, state and local government in ensuring the smooth running of the administration under which
they are functioning by designing, formulating and implementing public policy.
They also carry out government functions and development programs (Lebowski, 2015). They are expected to be at their duty
post and carry out their duty assiduously with no biases. (Okonkwo, 2014) This should be based
on mutual agreement between the employer
and the employee that is the government and civil servant. This should be in
accordance with the provision of Nigerian Labour Act 1974 which stated that
‘Daily hours of work are to be fixed by mutual agreement or by collective
bargaining (section 13:1). Provision is made for rest intervals of no less than
one hour in total if the day’s work is longer than 6 hours (section 13,3), and
for one day’s rest per week (section 13:7)
. After twelve months of continuous service, a
worker is entitled to an annual leave of at least six working days that may not
be deferred by more than twelve months (section 18 )’ Ojo, Salau & Falola, (2014). However, This is not the case most times
amongst civil servants in Oyo State. The state dictates when to get to work and
when to leave without a mutual agreement with workers.
Some countries of the world
like Denmark, Sweden Norway and some European countries, according to
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 2011 Report, have
been ranked highest based on flex time which include leisure and personal care
time, share of labour force that work for very
long hours like 50 hours a week.
Leisure time for Nigerian
civil servant women is believed to be used for something profitable like
venturing into private business in order to support their homes. However, most
times, the so-called Leisure time in Nigeria has been constricted by official work and assignments. The
need for this research work is to help as many female civil servants who desire
or are already into the private business to be able to attain their dreams in
life.
It is no secret that times are hard everywhere
and the major reason for this paper at this period is consequential on the recession, specifically unstable salary (Oketola, 2016)
and restricted movement of public workers during the official hour in Oyo state, Nigeria. In spite of the unstable salary
(which is a major concern as prompt payment of salary is one of the motivational
factors for workers) Nnamdi; Offiong; Tonwe;
2004:93, public servants, in Oyo state are expected to
put in their best without any other private business interfering with their jobs
within official work hours. They are expected to get to work on
time between the hours of 7:30 – 7:45 am on
Mondays and Fridays. Their closure time varies, depending on the position they
occupy. Any worker found wanting in his/her duty post is no longer given a
warning or query letter but rather fired immediately.
This paper, therefore, with the use of
exploratory research, examined the following research objectives; i. to examine
how social media can promote the self-employed
business of female civil servants in Oyo state; ii. to find out those militating
factors influencing the use of social media to improve self-employed businesses;
iii. to determine the level of commitment to official work when female civil
servants make use of social media to promote their private business. The tested
hypotheses for this research work were; Hi: there is a significant relationship between self-employed
business and the use of social media by civil servant women for the promotion of private business. Hii: Use of social media determines the promotion of
personal business; Hiii: Use of social
media has an effect on a commitment to official work when combined with
personal business.
This
paper is thus, divided into different parts which include, Introduction,
Balancing Work-Life with the use of social media, Methodology, Research and
Discussions of findings, Conclusion, and
Recommendations.
Balancing Work- Life
with the Use of Social Media
Work-life Balance in the context of this work include the use of leisure time for
private business for women in Nigeria and Africa generally, has not
been given more attention unlike that of the western world (Ojo, I. S.,
Salau, O. P., & Falola, H. O., 2014).
In Africa, women, traditionally, are expected to look after the homestead
by helping on the farm and to procreate. (Mojekwu-Chikezie,
2012)
Man (husband) ensures that he takes care of his immediate family, all things
being equal, by searching for jobs outside the
home
or working on the farm together with his
immediate family. However, as a result of
economic challenges, women outsource for fund rather than sit back at home while
her husband works alone (Alao, 2012).
Working as a woman brings self-esteem. It helps her to contribute her quota to
the standard of living of her family no matter how little she may earn. She is
expected not to fail in her roles, that is, as a wife, mother, and executive in different institutions. (
McLellan & Uys, 2009). Consequently, she contributes her quota by working as a
civil/ public servant, a housewife with a small business or an employer with her
owned business. Being a career women does not mean that all is well especially
in a situation where a woman is working and payment of salary is unstable.
(Alao, 2012)
As a result, many things are affected such as
feeding, shelter, transportation, clothing, health etc. Therefore the need for
an alternative source (s) of income to keep up with the family’s standard of
living even when payment of salary is irregular.
Civil Servants in Ibadan are
not exempted from such scenario and there is the need to outsource for fund.
Salaries of 2016 are yet to be fully paid in some states in Nigeria as at the period this paper is being researched
on. This is coupled with recession in the
country, as a result of drop in international price of crude oil, Niger Delta
Militant Blowing up oil installation, high wage bill, low internal generated
revenue, Dollar exchange rate fluctuation
etc., (Oketola, 2016). This situation has
negativily affected Oyo state and the country as a whole. It is no news that
indescribable hardship is everywhere in Nigeria but that of Oyo state civil
servants are even worse as a result of unpaid salaries which led many civil
servants to depend on their relatives for means of transportation to work,
feeding and even shelter for as many that could not afford to pay house rent. This is a ridiculous experience which
linger on. No freedom of speech and the
National Labour Congress is believed to have been bought over by the government. (Awodipe, 2015).
In some families, both husband and wife are Oyo state civil servants, hence the
need for women to be more proactive with the use of social media to promote
self-employed businesses in order to support their families and not be a burden
to anyone. Private businesses such as event planning service, green cleaning
service, fashion designing, selling of either male or female outfits, shoes or
sandals, food stuff, bead making, pastry making, etc. are various areas where women may
venture.
According to Katyan Roach, a
Social Media Consultant, recessionary period and financial trying times is an
avenue to give social media networking a trial through Social Media Marketing
(SMM) Strategy because it is the most cost - efficient way of engaging and
communicating in business either physically or visually (Roach, 2017) . Pavel(nd) averred that social media
marketing is an inexpensive and effective tool for business, reason being that
it can reach large number of
targeted customers within a short period with less effort required. Also,
branding can be done effectively on social media through Facebook, Instagram,
Youtube, among many other mediums. This attracts interaction with online users
and as many that are interested in such brands. This consequently, leads to an
increase in sales of such online products. Neti (2011) laid more emphasis that
the role of social media in marketing
both small and large scale
businesses can not be over emphasised because of the benefits attached to it.
This includes cost reduction by decreasing staff time and increasing probability
of revenue generation. It is the best option avaliable to a brand for connecting
with potential customers being a medium for socializing
online.
What then is Social Media
Marketing? Social Media Marketing is a process which empowers individuals and
organisations in reaching out to customers and potential customers on the
product you want to market to them. It is a virtual network process that can be
done through social media application which does not need someone’s presence
before his/her product can be displayed or advertised to the outside world at a
very low cost (Weinberg, 2009:14; Khan and Jan, 2015) . This fact was further
asserted by Lazer and Kelly (1973) that SMM is ‘concerned with application of
knowledge, concepts, and techniques to enhance social as well as economic ends’
in order to make profitable impact with less time and effort involved.
In order for female civil
servants to reach consumers that are busy as well as those that are not during
their liesure time and when off duty, it is very important to make use of the
following channels made available by social media network which include
LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube to reach their business
partners and customers. This will ensure a balance between work life and private
business life.
METHODOLOGY
This research is exploratory in nature. It
adopted a mixed method which included
quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative aspect includes the use of questionnaires administered
to women civil servants under the ministry of women affairs. While that of
qualitative involves relevant literatures. Sampling technique that was adopted for
this paper was the simple random sampling technique which gives subjects in the
population an equal chance of appearing in the sample size. The respondents for
this study were limited to Ibadan, being the Administrative seat of the whole of
Oyo state. The questionnaire consist of three (3) sections with 100
questionnaires administered to 100 female respondents from Women Ministry Affairs,
Secretariat, and Ibadan Oyo State which were randomly distributed. The
information supplied in the questionnaire was organised, analysed and interpreted out to arrive at an
empirical conclusion using simple percentage while Chi-square was used to test
the stated hypotheses to show whether there is a significant relationship between
self-employed business and the use of social media for enhancement of female
civil servant income.
Frequency
distribution of the parameters was found
while the association or relationship between self-employed business and the use
of social media to enhance female civil servants income such as gender, age, the
type of social network, among others were
determined using Chi-square
test.
RESULTS AND INTERPRETATION
Findings from the survey on the use of social
media by women in self – employed business in Oyo state civil service, Nigeria,
obtained from the administration of questionnaire in the Ministry of Women
Affairs in the state between the period of March and April 2016 are presented in
this section.
The data was presented in tables using simple
frequencies, percentages and mean.
