Tech Article for You

Like all new innovations, technology in the work environment can either work for you or against you. What is good for the employer or is not always the same for the employee.

Is Technology Working FOR You or AGAINST You

When cellphones became available it seemed that they would fill a need for instant communication - any time, any place - that would help people be more efficient and thus save time.

Then email became a mainstream method of business communication. Marvelous - now telephones wouldn’t ring off the hook, messages would not have to be stored and retrieved as verbal communications, which took time. Instead, information would be clear and concise and could be retrieved and answered any time, any where - again the promise of more freedom.

With email, internet and cellphones, was it really necessary for workers to be restrained to the office? Maybe shorter work days would ensue. Perhaps parents could collect their children from school and be contacted at home via either of these methods.

The work world was changing.

This truth came about as more workers were able to take their jobs with them. The travel from home to work and back again was no longer a barrier for actually DOING the work.

Telecommunication was making itself an integral part of conducting business. With cellphones and email, distance, time and travel were no longer barriers to conducting business effectively.

For some, this meant that coming to the office every day was an option - not a requirement.

Mothers and fathers found new freedom to take care of their children while still collecting the paycheck they needed to support them. Work could be done at home, at the park, at the grocery store, at night…

Unfortunately, this ability to work anywhere has become a nuisance instead of a luxury for some individuals. The fact that they are ABLE to do business any time, any where, means that they actually ARE doing business all the time.

Rather than free them, they found that they cannot get far enough away from work to really put it away for the day. Illness and emergencies do not stop the phone from ringing or the email from piling up - and because you can access it, there is no excuse for not dealing with it.

So for some, the convenience has become a ball and chain - creating longer work hours and constant stress. For these individuals it is necessary to commit themselves and their work mates to guidelines such as turning the phone off. Not accessing email regularly. Sticking to these rules and telling other work mates your new practices should help.

Remember that you were supposed to be ASSISTED by these devices. It is in the best interest of your health and the well-being of your family if these tools keep their proper place.

Roger Clark is senior editor at Top Career Resumes who provide free information to job seekers on all aspects of finding a new job and Medical Health News where you can find the most up-to-date advice and information on many medical, health and lifestyle topics.

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Here’s a brief story I encountered while leaving Newark International Airport following a recent business trip. Hard to believe, but true.

After a long flight home from the West Coast, I took a short train ride to the long term parking facility, located my car (which is becoming more difficult with age it seems), and proceeded to the parking exit. Note that it’s been a while since I’ve used the long term parking facility, as I normally use a car or taxi service, so I was largely unfamiliar with their new “high tech” customer solutions.

As I pulled up to the pay station (expecting the attendant to inform me of my charge), she immediately looked at me with the gaze of a very frustrated woman who’s obviously done this before. In a short tone, she barked out an instruction suggesting that I had passed an automated ticket booth, from which I should have inserted my ticket and noted the charge. I complied with the instruction, quietly wondering why this woman was in the booth at all, given the fact that the machine and I pretty much had this thing licked. I concluded of course that she must be there to collect the money, so I proceeded to pay her. Not a good assumption as she pointed me back to the machine to insert my payment. OK, I get it, I interact with the machine for this too…no problem, thinking that this is a pretty good solution. I wait for the machine to give me my receipt, an obvious assumption given how the first two steps went. Nope…wrong again. This time she wants me to drive to her and pick up my receipt, at which point she presses a button, lifts the gate, and I’m on my merry way.

I can’t help thinking about all the time and money went into implementing this slick new solution, that probably cost an arm and a leg, had little to no impact on cost savings, destroyed customer satisfaction, and obviously put the employee in a perpetual stae of ‘grumpy’. No…what this was, is yet another example of “technology for technology’s sake”.

When I work with organizations on business impovement, one of the most important themes I try to drill home is PROCESS FIRST, then technology. You don’t implement technology on top of a broken process. Nor do you attempt to fix a broken brocess with technology only.

The right path is to measure the effectiveness of the process before you begin. Establish a baseline. Understand how the process works today (’As Is’ State). Look for places to improve the process. Define changes. Examine the effect of each potential change on overall performance. Then, and only then, define the technology, systems, skills, and organization needed to support the new process. Develop cost benefits and business cases. Re-examine the degree to which performance will be improved over baseline. And then your almost ready for implementation.

It’s a simple principle, but one that often get overlooked. Try to pay some attention to this in your everyday life and you’ll probably see many similar examples. Then, use these as lessons learned, and start living by the mantra- “First Things First”- process first, technology later.

For the past 18 years, Bob has served in a variety of capacities, ranging from Internal Auditing and operations management, to business process consulting and executive change management. He has worked for over 50 clients across numerous functional areas and process disciplines. His clients cover multiple industries spanning North America, South Africa, Europe, and the Pacific Rim.

Bob currently serves as Chairman and CEO of e Performance Group International, LLC, a company that delivers a unique web based platform for online benchmarking and best practice sharing for business professionals and executives.

In addition to his role at ePGI, he continues to provide private consulting, executive workshops, and selective speaking engagements to industry leaders worldwide in the area of benchmarking, business improvement and best practice adoption.

Bob can be contacted at rchampagne@epgintl.com or by calling directly @ 908-656-1179.

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As technology becomes ubiquitous, we are still going to need the soft skills, to compete and become a successful business. Development of these skills — oral and written communications, decision-making, self esteem, overcoming the fear of speaking to groups, call reluctant and teamwork — will be the differentiation of successful businesses built to last, oppose to those that vanish.

Today, any good breakthrough idea can spread like a wildfire globally, within seconds, in the technology economy. Technology, innovation and marketing, accelerates the speed, but it is the people, their passion and skills that sustain optimal growth and culture for an organization.

Another major aspect, of the technology economy, is that start-ups today are faced with only a short time in which to reach a viable chunk of territory and mind share of the customer. For any hope of permanent leadership position you need to move quickly — marketing, leadership, teamwork and communications are essential for entry into any market.

In the technology economy, stress of information overload has replaced information scarcity as a new emotional, social, and political problem. The national Mental Health Association reports that 75% to 90% of all visits to physicians are stress-related. “The defining characteristics are absenteeism, diminished productivity, employee turnover, accidents, inattention, inability to concentrate and impulsive behavior.”

As technology requires maintenance, so do people. Companies need to be creative and innovative, in the care of their employees, in finding solutions too many new problems — including isolationism with virtual offices.

Several areas companies will need to focus on are:

• Ongoing training programs that effectively assist your employees to communicate, with congruency and enthusiasm, to your customer, what business you are in and what product you sell.
• A program that encourages and rewards communications from the bottom-up will foster greater advances in creativity, to improve your business and personal achievements.
• Programs that coach your teams in having fun while optimizing their success.
• Health and self-change that enhance your decision-making, increase your concentration, cultivate better communication in personal relationships and reduce stress related illnesses.

About the Author:

Don L. Price - Coaching Minds To Succeed - Professional International Speaker, Author, Sales and Marketing Positive Change Solution Provider: http://www.donlprice.com

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