Issues
Employees are accessible throughout the day and night. Therefore, the organization needs to re-evaluate its engagement and assignment of duties to ensure that technology does not interfere with work and life balance. Relying on web 2.0 technologies for official organization communication is putting employees at the risk of mixing up social and personal conversations and relationships with professional conduct at work.
Monitoring actual movement and work is hard because employees work from home. However, this is not a major concern because most of the organization’s interactions with customers happen online and in occasional workshops or similar industry related events. The organization needs a better way to safeguard sensitive business and human resource information from non-organization members.
Presently, employees’ access to information allows them to expose the information to third party interests without seeking the company’s permission.
There is a likelihood of employees living artificial social lives to conform to the company’s expectations. When this is the case, then the human resource management system used by the company would be working on wrong data, thereby causing inappropriate decisions concerning people management.
Background
Signal and Noise is an information technology solutions provider with 81 employees who work from around the world. Only seven of its employees, including the managing director, work in the company’s premises. The company relies on various Internet technologies to facilitate telecommuting of its virtual workforce. It uses online collaboration tools for programming and office document application.
It mostly relies on the Internet cloud application to store, manipulate, and retrieve data on customers, products, company assets, and employees. The company practices the bring-your-own-device policy where employees chose the devices that they like.
In return, the company provides them with the necessary software and hardware tools to ensure that devices used by employees are connected. So far, there has been no incidence of employees failing to do their work due to device related issues.
The company has to spend a lot of money to bring employees together physically because they work remotely. In addition, the company has to check whether its compensation program takes care of employee overtime and captures work leave requirement properly.
Going forward, the company needs to ensure that the human resource management (HRM) system has proper inputs and parameters to work with to ensure that telecommuting and the use of web 2.0 do not lead to loss of physical and psychological attachments and relationships among employees and with the organization (Millward 2005).
Signal and Noise compensates employees based on the work they are able to deliver within the set deadlines. In addition, it offers a basic salary for all employees, together with pension benefits delivered through a third party provider.
Technologies allow the company to operate virtually in most of its traditional divisions, such as human resource, customer relationships, procurement, and sales. It has only few needs for physical engagement, thus it does not have to incur considerable running costs that ordinary physical based organizations incur.
For example, by relying on internet communication technologies, the company only spends on data costs for employees without worrying about postal charges or phone bills.
Discussion and analysis
The inclusion of information technology in human resource (HR) operations is supposed to provide better services to line managers. It should also be a mechanism for linking personal policy and personal processing throughout the organization.
Thus, it would be a way of facilitating HR management. Through the HR information system, the company receives data at all levels to facilitate decision-making concerning people management. The IT implementation in HR also reduces employee costs (Grande 2008).
Different generations of employees have different perspectives of technology. The most recent generation readily embraces sophisticated IT tools, while the older generations are still sceptical (Mullins 2007). The use of internet technologies and social media helps to hasten and reduce costs associated with recruitment. It also increases the pool of potential candidates.
It allows pre-screening of employees and recruiting methods that are less costly than physical interviews. Competitive organizations must always find additional ways of lowering costs, including the cost of hiring. In that sense, technology helps HR to meet the low cost target (Bondarouk et al. 2011).
Despite the advantages of technology, it cannot replace human interaction and only works as a facilitation tool. Organizations that utilize technology well are able to reap the benefits of recruitment, better strategic decision making, and cost reductions (Xu et al. 2008).
Any implementation of technology for aiding human resource practices has to fulfil the user needs. They include user characterisation, task analysis, situational analysis, system development, prototype develop, and appropriate training for intended users.
Good systems are pragmatic and provide interactive feedback loops with a participatory role for the user (Babuska 2010). Organizations today can source a number of commercial software packages that help them to implement a number of HR functions with more accuracy, speed, and efficiency and enjoy the benefits of reduced cost and better employee interaction at the same time.
Such software include SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and Workday. An important thing to consider with all the available options of technology integration into HR is usability. Different organizational sizes and nature of businesses demand different solutions.
Based on the social-technical systems theory, an organizational work system comprises of a social subsystem and a technical subsystem. In regards to the theory, measuring criteria for usability covers efficiency increase, user satisfaction, training costs, and user understanding. Successful implementation of HR technology needs a balance of technological capabilities and the social structures of the organization (Hester 2014).
Firms should use the technology acceptance model (TAM) throughout all stages and levels of embracing HR technology. Even in an IT firm, the use of technologies can present problems to employees’ interaction with the HR. After buying and installing HR technology, firms must ensure the new installation meets the criteria of being perceived as both useful and easy to use.
Options
Management can let the wiki technology-based system used for collaborative knowledge management in Signal and Noise to continue evolving to meet user demands. An alternative would be to upgrade it with cultural aspects so that it improves on employee knowledge about work-life balance (Banfield & Kay 2008; Bonache 2004). The new information would then be helpful as input in the company’s HRM system.
Presently, employee access to the knowledge database and company intranet service allows them to access all information about the company, including sensitive files on HR. The company can choose to install virtual walls around the content with temporary pass key for authorized personnel. This will prevent potential loss of business secrets to rival companies, which can be detrimental to the company’s competitiveness.
The no reaction option would be to retain the system if its present configuration continues relying on social monitoring techniques to identify employees who are misusing their access to sensitive company information (Bondarouk & Olivas-Lujan 2013).
To reduce the chances of employees giving false feedback in their social interaction with other company employees, the firm can look into ways of increasing the experience of its internal sites such that they are a reflection of other commercial web 2.0 solutions that provide better socialization and interaction rewards for people (Kumar 2011).
Already, employees are participating in the internal dialogue and are collaborating on various work assignments using the present web 2.0 tools used by the company (Stone 2010). They are meeting deadlines with the present telecommuting arrangements, where there is no need to make physical appearances to the office (Wang 2005; Mahr 2010).
The nature of work is suitable for virtual work environments as it involves minimal human interactions, other than the assignment of tasks and the review of work done. The company will still be on the right path to realize its competitive strategies by going on with the present HR technology (Boella & Gross-Turner 2011).
Recommendations
HR technology allows Signal and Noise to report on employee performance against required standards. As the case shows, the technology also causes conformity, which can have negative effects on the organization. Just like CCTV surveillance in company premises, the monitoring of conversations in social networks used by employees puts them in an uncomfortable position as they feel their privacy is invaded.
The company should review its HR technology system to affirm that it is constructive and rewards employee participation, rather than castigate the employees (AbuKhalifeh et al. 2013).
The lack of physical interaction among employees means that the company has little space to exercise cultural control. Therefore, there is a need to put control features in the present implementation of HR technology within the firm.
The control features of the system must conform to the present organization structure and provide appropriate corrective action to address mistakes. With well-defined objectives of the control activity and of individual activities by HR or by employees interacting with the system, the company should be able to attend to issues arising from the mismatch of HR technology implementation and competitive advantages gained.
Reference List
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