The Role of Social Media Usage in the Professional Development of Employees in Micro-Scale Furniture Manufacturing Enterprises in Trabzon, Turkey

Micro-scale enterprises contribute to the economies of the countries they are located in, such as employment generation, rural development, and providing training opportunities for semi-skilled workers. They constitute the majority of enterprises in terms of number, but their share in the production rate is low. Furniture manufacturing is one of the sub-branches of the main manufacturing industry, and the majority of the enterprises that produce furniture are micro-scale. These enterprises face several challenges. One of these challenges is that a significant portion of their employees have not received any formal vocational training. The communication opportunities and tools (such as social media) of our time have made it easier to access information. This has made informal education possible for those who have not received a formal vocational training or have received it but want to improve themselves. In this study, the use of social media in the vocational development of employees of micro-scale enterprises manufacturing furniture was investigated. With this objective, a structured survey was conducted face-to-face with 110 participants in the central district of Trabzon to adequately represent the target population. To analyze the data, frequency tables, Spearman Correlation Analysis, Kolmogorov-Smirnov Normality, Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U and Chi-Squared Tests were used. The findings indicate that a significant majority of the employees are aged between 25 and 54, with 47.2 % lacking any vocational training. Furthermore, substantial differences were observed in the employees' use of social media for vocational development purposes, correlated with their age and educational level.