THE HUMAN FACTOR
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Understand the meaning of “human factors” applied to MIS.
2. Know how to deal with resistance to change.
3. Understand the role of education and training in MIS effectiveness.
The role of the human factor
“For you, management is the art of smoothly transferring the executives’ ideas into the
workers’ hands”. The human factor is regarded as the most serious obstacle to the full
application of IT for the improvement of organizational performance. Both senior
management decision-makers and systems suppliers have colluded in creating this situation.
Company decision-makers have put most of their energies into technical appraisal and
selection, arranging for initial training and leaving line managers to handle the transition.
Suppliers have played down the human elements involved in the change for fear of
frightening the customer, recommended a modicum of training and quickly moved on to
another hi-tech sale. As a result, companies have succeeded only in automating the status
quo. They have failed to take full advantage of the new systems in creating new approaches
to work and in developing a corporate culture that maximizes the commercial benefits.
Ask managers, in all but the smartest companies, if they make full use of a new digital
telephone or a new office utilities system. You will certainly find that most of them use less
than half of the facilities available.
Resistance to change
The inertia of people, when facing a change from comfortable and safe methods of working,
is normal and understandable. But, when faced with change involving IT, organizations often
behave like rabbits transfixed by snakes.
A case study by McCalman and Paton describes a high technology change programme at
Digital’s factory in Ayr, United Kingdom. Even here, in the heartland of IT, the project team
encountered strong resistance: “Some people... feel threatened, unsure and anxious about how
they will be affected.”
Some of the problems were personal: some people preferred traditional ways; it took time and
effort to change established habits; and the change process exposed personal feelings and
emotions.
Some of the problems were managerial: concepts had to be adapted to existing
circumstances; the boundaries of the change were not clear; supervisory roles became
ambiguous; and timing became a major issue.
A manager explained: “Things were a battle. You had this battle mentality. Whoever you
worked with, you were in a battle with on some issues... The reason is, the objective and the
goal are not the same for individual groups. Really, the goals should be common, and the
ownership should be common: the only way to do it is by teamwork.”
Invest in the culture change
And there lies the problem - the reason that, so often, high investment in IT fails to bring a
corresponding pay-off in productivity. Top management must take responsibility for that
common ownership. The culture change necessary to maximize the benefits of IT needs as
much investment in management time as the decisions on hardware and software. People are
part of the system!
Education and training
A key enabler for this culture change is creating organizational know-how: not just training
people to use machines but developing true awareness of the impact of IT on current
activities - and also of the changes it will bring to those activities.
One of the greatest resistances to change is the fear of looking a fool, as can so often happen
when we lack knowledge of new things. The speed of change is such that everyone in an
organization will need to be constantly re-educated or face intellectual redundancy.
The experiences of leading American firms suggest that people need to spend 10 per cent of
their time on education - half a day a week. In this respect organizations should select
people for their “connectivity” (ability to understand computer terminology), “compatibility”
(fitting into existing approaches) and “networking” (relationship-building capability);
and maintain people with briefings on MIS issues and a continuous programme of IT
education.
Against this background of education there will be times when new systems are introduced
and specific training is organized. You should ensure that your own people:
- devote prime time to training on the system;
- take maximum advantage of the vendor’s need to ensure customer satisfaction with the
installation by bombarding them with questions;
- are not satisfied with understanding “how to” but have hands-on experience until they “can
do”;
- make sure that people will need and consequently use IT in their daily work; and
- repeat, refresh and reinforce until the new technologies become habitual.
Build an MIS/management partnership
“If only people who understand business and (those who understand) information technology
thought alike, shared a common language and talked and worked together!” (Peter Keen).
We have talked a great deal about making MIS part of the organization’s strategy: but it is
more important (because strategies change) to make it part of the organization’s culture. Like
it or not, we have moved from the industrial age into the information age. MIS and IT can no
longer be peripheral to the activities of a business: they must be at its heart!
This module is really about relationships and dialogue. Your organization has specialists who
are experienced in handling the technical issues we have described. Your job is to be aware
of the potential of MIS and to know enough about the technology to brief them and liaise
with them. The checklists will, we hope, have stimulated the dialogue and enriched your
relationships. We hope you will keep the dialogue going and build a relationship that will
result in your organization and yourself developing maximum productivity from Management
Information Systems.
Human Factors and User Interface
The information systems are designed for the users who are human beings. The human beings
are the drivers of the information system to meet their information needs. The use of the
information system is made through an interactive process between the human beings and the
system through which the information system is activated, operated and closed.
May times, in spite of the Information System software design being good, the user interfaces
are not properly built causing a discomfort to the users. As it is difficult to consider all the
users to build such an interface, the human perception, the human skills and the skill levels,
the behavioural profiles and the activities expected in the interactive processes are the human
factors of design of the user interface.
The use of the information system is accomplished through a visual medium. The user reacts
to the printed reports, the graphical presentations or the displays on the screen. The reaction
is through the visual and the mental responses to these displays or reports through his
perception of the information conveyed to him through size, shape, color, format, layout,
orientation and such other characteristics of the display. The human response differs from
person to person owing to the varying human perception. Hence, the user interface should try
to minimize the distortions which may occur when the displays are made.
The quick human response neutralizing the human perception differences is the requirement
of the user interface. When most of the users belonging to the same class of human
capabilities find the interface easy to operate and it results in the same human response, then
the user interface is friendly. The system then is called a user-friendly system.
The first step in the interaction is extracting the information from display. The speed of the
extraction of the information will depend on the display design which includes the text size,
the front type, the text length, the use of upper case and lower case, positioning and
application of colour, etc. The speed will be decided by the choice of these factors and its
retention in the memory will be governed by the impact it makes on the human beings who
are the users of the system.
The next factor is skill levels and behavioural differences amongst the various users. The
differences in the skill levels occur due to differences in the training, experience and
exposure of the people in the business operations. The behavioural differences occur due to
personality variations and personality traits.
The user interface is expected to assist the four tasks which are basic to all the software or the
systems. They are communication dialogue, system execution and control of the process. In
the latest technology advances, the interface characteristics are more or less standard. The
system execution will be handled through a menu driven feature. It will provide a window
based help for reference or local processing. Such windows can be popped up in a number of
sequences. The interface will have a point and pick facility to pick the icons which could be
general or can be built for the system.
