Technology Is Not The Answer When It Comes To People Matters

With all the attention being given to the attempts by various government bodies around the world to give more protection to consumers against Big Tech, it is easy to forget that technology is increasingly pervasive in business, too. Of course, much of this is to the good in terms of efficiency and quite simply being able to do things that would not have been possible before. For instance, had the pandemic occurred a decade earlier who knows how the world would have reacted. Organizations would certainly not have been able to switch apparently effortlessly to remote working.

But it is the very success of this policy that is now causing problems for so many workplaces. Employees who had found themselves working harder and longer because mobile technology made that possible in the main reacted positively to the new working conditions because they enabled them to push back against the increasing demands on them. Unsurprisingly, they have proved reluctant to give up what they have gained in terms of greater work/life balance and return to the office in anything like the numbers many of their bosses would like.

There has been much talk of employers responding by making their offices more appealing places for meeting and collaboration. But many of them appear to be using more technology to press their case for higher attendance levels. It is not obvious that this is the wisest course of action. Yes, we all know that those smart cards that office workers have dangling on their lanyards enable their bosses to know when they enter and leave their workplaces and even where they are when in them. As is often the way with technology, proponents talk up the advantages using complex jargon, such as “unified observability,” which sounds like a more acceptable way of saying that the security staff are watching you and is, apparently, necessary for combatting cyber threats. But making too much use of this sort of development could easily backfire. Organizations like to talk of trust — and surely they recognize that this was a key element in making the working practices introduced in response to the pandemic successful — but letting employees know (as if they did not already) that they are effectively being spied on smacks of a return to the old days of clocking in and out and of “scientific management.”

So when a company like Riverbed, which describes itself as “the leader in Unified Observability,” announces that a survey it has recently conducted finds that “organizations must employ high standards for the DEX [digital employee experience] in order to remain competitive and retain talent,” you wonder whether the businesses in question are missing the point. Surely, the issue is that they are being overly reliant on digital to the extent that genuine human contact is minimal. For a generation that is just entering the workforce after years of remote learning at school and college that must be the final straw. No wonder they are, as the survey finds, considering leaving.

Another survey out this month comes from Leapsome, “a people enablement platform,” reveals a divide between human resources staff and those on the front line on a range of issues, including the use of AI and its effect on productivity, employee wellbeing and reasons for leaving their jobs. The study, Beyond the Cubicle, reveals a significant perception gap between HR leaders and employees on engagement, alignment, and performance. While half of HR leaders believe their employees are “completely engaged,” only one in three employees feel this way, it says. These are hardly extraordinary insights from a company using technology to help other organizations manage their people.

Perhaps the lesson is that leaders should not be afraid to confine technology to what it is good at and not use it as a crutch in dealing with one of the trickiest aspects of running a business — the people. Technology is a given these days. While it is important that the equipment people use at work is at least as good as that on which they play games and watch TV at home, it is not going to win their hearts and minds. Only a personal touch will do that.