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Workplace Strategies. Modern Technology

Workplace strategies


Since technology continues to expand into newer and newer aspects of our lives, it's a natural process that the way how work is made changes. Now various technological innovations are applied to redesign the work process in many organizations. And I'm talking not about manufacturing industries – here machines replaced huge part of human work rather long ago. Along with manufacturing production of services is also engaged in this process. This is a wide field for computer technologies. Both with machines and computer technologies two strategies are mainly practiced. They sound as following: "Smart people around a machine" and "People working for a smart machine." These strategies have strong sides as well as weak ones. In this paper I want to discuss the two strategies on examples.

First example is the case described by Haines. Here we see how optimizing computer technology was used to help people. I call it help, because in this case new software is a tool in hand of workers. A right part of work was chosen to give it to computer - the routine activities which are very time-consuming and don't require some sophisticated evaluation. After introducing the new technology people became able to use their work-time for tasks which actually require human intervention and can't be solved by a machine. These are unusual cases. I think that in this case a strategy of "smart people working around a machine" was implemented. This strategy occurred to be very efficient. Its benefits are obvious: people are relieved from depressing routine work, the whole process now can be much faster, ultimately clients get better quality services, because usual cases take less time and unusual ones get more thorough treatment.

Besides all that there are other positive factors which refer to changes inside the organization. First of all now employees are more motivated and satisfied with the work. It's not a great surprise, because every person likes to use his knowledge and skills as much as possible. By getting more time for not standard cases employees have this possibility. Overall atmosphere of the workplace has improved and became friendlier. With the introduction of new technology work became more personalized and employees can show up. This increases chances to be notice and to get promotion. This increases motivation even more. And, since workers perform as supervisors of the computer processing, they feel more important for the organization. This in turn increases commitment and self-identification with the organization and its goals. This change in work organization also eliminates a whole layer of management which makes the organization more flexible and the work process less costly.

As you can see, implementation of modern technology in this government organization had great outcomes. I won't overstate situation by calling it a success. Usage of the "smart people working around machine" strategy had provided a win-win-win situation. I use three "win" because three parties benefited. First party is certainly clients. Actually for their sake this whole thing was launched. Second party is the employees. They got better conditions of job which reduce job dissatisfaction and also experience factors that increase job satisfaction which are interesting job, feeling of importance, etc. And the third party the organization itself which increase its effectiveness and efficiency. The only probable negative outcome is decrease in number of workplaces needed. This means that someone is will be fired and those people will have unfavorable turn in their lives.

The second example is described by Head and refers to organization of work process in call-centers. To be hones this description doesn't give one even a slightest desire to work in such a place as call-center. As we can see the work conditions here are very strict. The strategy used is definitely "people working for a smart machine". In this case this is even truer than can seem from the first sight. You see, the primary goal of employees now is not serving clients as it should be, but to keep the machine "satisfied". The thought "let that red button not switch on" takes too much of worker's mind.

The overall atmosphere of the workplace is very stressful and not friendly at all. This certainly reduces motivation and job satisfaction. It was discovered long ago that financial motivation is not the only one needed. People spend half of their life at work and they want to get satisfaction from their job. Under present system call-centers lack that job satisfaction of first-level employees. And here comes one of negative outcomes of the system – high job turnover in the industry as a whole, and in every particular company described by Head. Other outcomes are that employees lack commitment and motivation. They feel treated as tools. And this contradicts human nature. People by nature don't like to be treated only as means. All these problems arise from the quantity management style of call-centers. It's good to be customer-oriented, but managers never should forget their employees.

As a result of this "people for smart machine" strategy customers are in "win" situation, but employees are certainly in the "lose" one. Due to this, in my opinion, call-centers can't achieve the best possible performance. The only problem is that at present moment no other alternative ways to organize a huge call-center and keep it's productivity on the same level are available.

The third example provided by Zuboff again shows the usage of the "smart people around a machine" strategy. Here people are put into the first place no matter who are these people – clients or employees. Shoshana states the managerial capitalism has live itself out and now is outdated. It's actually true. Now social relationships, a part of which are workplace relationships, became very complicated. People want more than they did before to be satisfied. Now a raise in pay can solve all problems. That's why machines are called to reduce employees' routine activities and to provide much more space for creative interesting job. The concept of supportive economy stated by Zuboff is aimed to solve this task. In this case we can see all positive outcomes of using the strategy as we saw in the first example. Again we see a "win" situation for all parties involved.

Considering these three examples, I can say that the strategy of "Smart people around a machine" much more effective than the strategy of "People working for a smart machine." I think that the last strategy is becoming obsolete. It was very efficient when business was only beginning to use technology. Now things have changed. And the new strategy should gradually replace the old one at least where it is possible to implement the new it. There are still some industries where the only possible way to organize the work and get the highest outcome is the former workplace strategy. But I believe that it's only a matter of time to find the solution for such undustries.

Posted by: Christie Ingram

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