EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report will bring the readers, to come to a better understanding of technology in the
workplace. Technology has affected the workplace in numerous ways in which the world is still
adapting to. Technology has dramatically reshaped the average workplace globally over the past
couple of decades. Technology in the workplace makes tasks asked to do, more efficient and
makes work quicker. Business owners reduce their workload. From payrolls, to inventory,
technology helps manage and keep a business going by having well-designed software in place.
Although, technology can sometimes be a hassle, because of how fragile it can be- it can also
break or short circuit. Modern technology is something that one should be aware of: because
employees’ productivity and efforts have been improved tremendously in the past decade.
Technology allows for globalization to exist and allows companies of all sizes to do business
worldwide.
INTRODUCTION

Gone are the days when the workplace was merely a physical space employee occupied during
regular office hours. Today’s always connected, instant access environment has blurred the lines
between the physical office and the place where work actually happens. As the distinction
between professional and personal life dissolves, and the workplace becomes truly digital,
employees are communicating and collaborating in unprecedented ways. To enable knowledge
sharing across the organization, they want the ability to forge productive business relationships
beyond natural work groups. As a result, it is increasingly clear that the traditional 'create and
push' information approach no longer meets employees’ evolving needs.

To accurately reflect their staff’s changing work experience, leading organizations have begun to
implement an entirely new working environment – the digital workplace. By integrating the
technologies that employees use (from e-mail, instant messaging and enterprise social media
tools to HR applications and virtual meeting tools), the digital workplace breaks down
communication barriers, positioning you to transform the employee experience by fostering
efficiency, innovation and growth. The key to success, however, lies in the effective
implementation of a digital workplace strategy capable of driving true cultural change
(Rodriguez, 2017). It facilitates:

 Improves communication

 Efficiency

 Mobility

DEFINITION OF WORKPLACE TECHNOLOGY

Technology refers to the work process, techniques, machines and action used to transform
organizational inputs into outputs. On the basis of efficiency, technology of an organization can
be classified into

 Core Organizational Technology

 Non- Core Departmental Technology

WHY WORKPLACE TECHNOLOGY IS IMPORTANT?

Technology has grown to become an immense part of our personal lives and has reshaped the
average workplace. People are interested in getting the most current technology whether it be the
newest smartphone or latest car model. If we constantly want to update our personal technology,
why should we not want to modernize our professional technology as well? Technology in the
workplace is important to keep an organization running smoothly and efficiently. Here are 7
reasons to keep technology up to date at the workplace.
 1. Staying Innovative

An innovative workplace is on the cutting edge of technology, design and business practices.
With a little creativity, you can come up with better ways to design products, connect with
customers, market your business, and develop promotions. When you think outside the box, you
might find an answer to a problem that no one else thought of before. And because your
innovations are like no other businesses’, hopefully, potential customers and employees will take
notice and go to your business instead of another.

2. Computational Accuracy

Small discrepancies in an organization can bring about large amounts of uncertainty. Modern
spreadsheets like Excel, with its hundreds of computational formulas, help ensure accuracy.
Accounting programs allow you to accurately keep inventory, make and record sales, manage
and pay bills, and handle payroll. Now, data can be regularly maintained in a software program
and keep detailed records without errors.

3. Industry Efficient

Whatever product or service you provide, you need to compete. Your competitors use
technology, so you need to as well. Having the latest technology allows your company to stay
competitive and provide the best quality service or products as possible.

4. Communicate Better, Collaborate More

Technology has given us a level of communication never seen before. We can literally connect
with any one of our employees, leaders, and co-workers anytime, anywhere. The influx of new
technology in the workplace has affected how employees communicate, collaborate and work
more efficiently. In fact, with many employees believing that face-to-face meetings will be
obsolete soon, the norms of office communication could be the next major change impacting the
workplace.

5. Security and Safety

The security of company information can be severely compromised without the implementation
of proper channels of technology and software. A company should implement innovative
technology as a safe haven against such breaches of security. Stealing critical and important
information was easy in the past, but now with the use of technology, the threat of data thefts and
leaks is nearly impossible.

6. Maintain Organization

Technology helps in keeping the business fully organized. Systems like Project Management
Software helps in building, delegating, reviewing, and assessing a task. Employers and managers
can easily supervise workplace activities that help in keeping everything on track. It fixes the
responsibility, accountability, and timed delivery of tasks assigned to people.

7. Increase Productivity
It’s important to study and utilize different hardware and software solutions that can
improve employee productivity. Businesses nowadays rely on many tools to overcome
challenges of executing on strategy every day. It enables managers to more easily track progress
during every phase of goal completion and offer immediate reinforcement or coaching to keep
performance and deadlines on track.
The workplace is transforming fast and so are the needs of today’s workforce as they experience
the rapid evolution of technology. It is important to understand the integral and beneficial aspects
of technology in the workplace to have a successful business (Andrea, n.d.)

CORE vs. NON-CORE TECHNOLOGY

Thirty years ago, business in mature, largely Western economies was upended by the realization
that they didn’t need to do everything. In the old model, an organization did as much as it could
itself, largely because the costs of transacting with other organizations made it uneconomic to do
otherwise. As a result, organizations accumulated functions endlessly: Manufacturing companies
built housing estates for their workers; oil companies made their own drilling equipment;
retailers set up their own logistics operations. But the new model did away with this and much
else: Business functions were categorized into core (essential to keep in-house) and non-core
(best handed over to a specialist third-party with superior skills and/or technology). The impact
on those third parties was profound: From almost nothing a new industry emerged (outsourcing)
and that in turn spawned other new industries (offshoring).

Consulting firms also benefited from this because, while consulting projects are shorter than
typical outsourcing deals and involve a far less explicit transfer of work from client to firm, it is
still predicated on the idea that clients can’t—or shouldn’t—do everything themselves. Indeed,
organizations in countries such as France and Germany, where outsourcing was relatively slow
to take hold, also tended to be those that invested in internal consulting departments.

So why talk about this now? Because some n e w r e s e a r c h w e ’ v e d o n e i n t h e U S suggests

that organizations are having a fundamental rethink of the core/non-core issue, and that will have
profound consequences for consulting (and outsourcing) firms in the future.

There are, in fact, two changes. First, some functions that, for the last three decades, have been
considered non-core are now firmly back in the core. The most important of these is the
technology function. Complex, expensive, and opaque, the IT function of 30 years ago was first
up against the corporate wall, handed over to third parties to deliver a better service more
cheaply. That same function is now more likely than any other to be of central importance to an
organization: The advent of new technology and the way in which customers and employees
interact have created an unprecedented level of dependency. Take away an organization’s
technology today, and you pretty much take away the organization. That points to a more
existential, but just as important, shift. The whole concept of an organization was borne out of
the idea that, to get things done, people need to be able to work together. Now, it seems,
organizations enable people and technology to work together. The second change is more
surprising, though, when you stop to consider it, makes perfect sense. Organizations are
decoupling the idea that core functions should be insourced. Again, technology is the main
culprit: With the pace of change so dizzyingly fast, few organizations think they can keep up
with the skills required, and many suspect that the skills required today will be automated
tomorrow (Czerniawska, 2020)

And all of this will challenge our notions of what an “organization” and what a consulting “firm”
is.

EXAMPLES FROM DIFFERENT INDUSTRIES

1. Sensing, measurement and process control- GPS trackers, what make smartphones "smart"

2. Materials design, synthesis and processing- half the time it takes to identify a new material
and bring it to market, a process that currently can span decades. Example: The technology
for lithium-ion batteries, for instance, was first conceived of by an Exxon employee in the
1970s, but it wasn't introduced commercially until the 1990s.

3. Digital manufacturing technologies- Cloud computing and inexpensive 3D scanners (it's now
possible to do a simple 3D scan with an iPhone) are transporting these methods out of
sophisticated facilities and into the mainstream where they can be used by entrepreneurs.

4. Sustainable manufacturing- Energy-efficient manufacturing

5. Nonmanufacturing- expected to play a future role in the production of things like high-
efficiency solar cells and batteries, and even in bio system-based medical applications, such
as a sensor inside your body that could tell your doctor that your cancer is gone.

6. Flexible electronics manufacturing- Tablet computers that bend when you sit on them.

7. Bio manufacturing- This field uses a biological organism, or part of one, in an artificial
manner to produce a product—like developing drugs and medical compounds

8. Additive manufacturing- Three-dimensional printers

9. Industrial robotics- Industrial robots can operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with
repeatable and increasingly fine precision

10. Advanced forming and joining technologies- mechanical manufacturing

TIPS FOR DEPLOYING A DIGITAL WORKPLACE

1. Ensure senior ownership: manage the digital workplace at senior and strategic levels.

2. Build strategic alignment: align your digital workplace strategy with your business direction
and strategy.
 3. Think holistically: think about a holistic digital workplace rather than simply implementing
individual technologies.

4. Understand culture: understand and support the existing organizational culture. Don’t try to
force something that is not part of the current culture.

5. Deliver business value: focus on delivering business value rather than technology
implementation.

6. Research technologies: choose carefully – it is an active market with strong innovations and
improvements.

7. Make it easy: introduce better ways for employees to do their work with widespread
operational impact.

8. Involve risk, compliance and legal: don’t forget it or you could pay the price.

BARRIERS IN WORKPLACE TECHNOLOGY

In the following section we analyses the barriers that prevent workplace innovation from
spreading further. They can be divided into two main categories: microeconomic considerations
such as risk aversion, lack of trust between social partners and costs related to the transition
towards a new work environment, and macro explanations related to the national context in
which institutions operate. We also check whether the sector of employment, the size of the
company and the age and skills of the workforce constitute a barrier. We come to the conclusion
that none of them directly a barrier in the sense that different elements of workplace innovation
can fit different contexts.

1. Risk aversion, resistance, and lack of trust

Despite the fact that positive outcomes of workplace innovation outnumber negative
ones, the literature survey and the case studies reveal that each of potential parties
involved in the change has rational reasons to resist the introduction of innovative
practices in the workplace: workers, middle-managers and top managers. Gillen Doug
(2002) describes this process very well: When a new technology is introduced factor
proportions change, responsibilities are altered and procedures change. There are threats
to lines of authority, job security and responsibility. In all cases there are threats and the
successful implementation of a new technology into any firm requires that it be managed,
it will not happen automatically and ultimate success of the firm will be contingent on the
implementation. The adoption of new technologies has always presented challenges for
managers, employees, and organizations in general. As the advent of mass production in
the assembly line and more recent models of flexible specialization required planners and
workers alike to adapt to and exploit new ways of interacting and organizing the
productive process, so too have advances in Information Technology (IT). Employee
 resistance and insufficient management support are, together with inadequate resources
investment, a major part of difficulties in implementing of new technology (ibid.).
2. Costs of a transition towards WPI
From the company’s point of view, restructuring the organization has a cost and this cost
can prove to be disincentive to the decision to reorganize the workplace. It is the result of
the sum of new furniture, new ICT equipment and related training, and consultants’ fees
involved in providing expertise. As such it constitutes an investment because it entails an
expenditure that is expected to provide future benefits that are greater than its cost, which
in this case take the form of higher productivity, better innovation capacity and lower
costs. The time horizon in the medium-to-long-term: in the view of the CEO of Oticon
the objective behind the creation of the spaghetti organization was to improve the long-
term competitiveness of the company and not to restore its short-term balance. Being an
investment, restructuring the company around new forms entails a risk: at the end of the
process, the company may produce more or deliver on time and with fewer production
errors but it could also result in a totally chaotic process and a situation that is worse than
at the beginning of the process. The uncertainty of the expected payoff (higher
productivity, innovation capacity and job satisfaction) leads to risk aversion.
3. Production sector and skills/age of workers
The image the term ‘workplace innovation’ conjures up is one of a modern office where a
group of very highly skilled people work equipped with the state of the art technology. If
this image is true of certain cases, it also true that it does not tell the whole story. The 58 |
BEBLAVÝ, MASELLI & MARTELLUCCI research question behind this section is the
following: to what extent do the production sector and age and skills of the workforce
constitute a barrier to the adoption of innovative practices at the workplace? As far as the
sector is concerned, the evidence provided by the data collected by TEKES is quite clear:
in the three programmers, the share of companies in the industry sector accounted for
approximately one third of the total, which is surprising if one has in mind the typical
Taylorist model of a traditional manufacturing company. Another important and growing
share concerned the public sector, whether at the local or central level.
4. Small vs. big companies When looking at workplace innovation from the point of view of
companies, one question immediately comes to mind: does size matter in the decision to
adopt more innovative workplace organisation practices? In other words, is the size of the
company a barrier to the adoption of innovative practices at the workplace? This issue
has been explored in the literature, with some authors explicitly referring to small
companies. The rapid spread of information and communication technologies indeed
greatly reduces coordination and transaction costs for small and medium enterprises
(SMEs). The implementation of ICT flattens organisational structure, enhances the
autonomy, creativity and mobility of workers, eliminates physical distances as a major
limiting factor, increases productivity of labor, reduces hiring and recruiting costs
significantly and – when used appropriately – could serve as a strategic tool to increase
 flexibility in relations with customers. ICT offers organisations a promising opportunity
to cope with the challenges of the ever-changing business environment. De Kok &
Hartog (2006) studying HPWS in small Dutch companies conclude that there is a positive
relationship between HPWS and higher labor productivity and innovativeness. “This
suggests that HPWS may enhance the ability of small firms to select, develop, and
motivate a workforce that produces superior and innovative employee output”. More
precisely, Coleman, in his paper on enterprise social collaboration argues (contrary to
Osimo et al.) that company size has a great effect on how quickly social collaborative
tools are used: in general, small companies were quicker adopting social networks. Yet
again, enterprise may be cautious to adopt social collaboration tools due to perceived
security risks or failure of the senior management to identify their value.

WHAT SHOULD POLICY MAKERS DO? (SOLUTIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS)

More specifically, there is a strong correlation between country level the presence of various
aspects of workplace innovation at and technological and economic progress. While correlation
does not prove causation, workplace innovation and several other phenomena tend to evolve
together as a package at the country level. At the organizational level, literature and our case
studies generally lend support to beneficial aspects of workplace innovation. Looking at the role
of technology in workplace innovation, literature and case studies led us to conclude that while
technology is an important enabler of workplace innovation, it is not always indispensable for
workplace innovation, which can frequently occur without it. However, technology is
indispensable for workplace innovation in some types of organizations and in certain types of
workplace innovation practices. It is indispensable for the development of certain institutions
like the Open University and SGI/GI as we know them today. It is also vital for lowering the
costs of workplace innovation.

The division of work into tasks, for example, that can be redistributed across more workers can
indeed happen independently of technology: the example previously mentioned is the creation of
the paralegal profession, in which some of the more repetitive tasks of a lawyer are taken over by
a specially trained legal assistant. This can happen without technology but for the redistribution
of tasks to spread across a larger geographical area, technology becomes indispensable because it
allows cutting transaction costs linked to organization and communications at longer distances.
Looking at the extent of WPI diffusion across Europe, we found it differs substantially for
individual practices. Yet, Nordic countries remain the leaders with more workers involved in
most practices, from teleworking to task rotation, while the “South” and some of the new
member states lag behind. It is worth noting, however, that Slovenia scores in the top third of the
member states, and the quasi-Nordic Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) also score
better than the rest of the new member states despite the fact that they are not more
technologically or economically developed.
Most dimensions of workplace innovation froze over the decade 2000-10, with the exception of
an increase in performance-related compensation and higher involvement in improving the
organization. We then tried to understand why, if workplace innovation brings positive results
for organizations as well as for workers, it does not spread more. We provided five main
explanations:

 Risk aversion, parties’ resistance, and lack of trust

 Costs of the transition towards WPI
 Sector of production and skills/age of workers o Size of the company
 National context

In looking at what policy-makers can and should do to promote workplace innovation, we start
with how the relevant international organizations – in particular the European Union bodies –
look at this issue. Based on this survey, we also present a brief agenda for the EU institutions.
We then progress to four specific types of recommendations. These follow also from previous
research that indicates that the barrier to the adoption of workplace innovation is not only a lack
of awareness about such practices, but also issues such as ‘culture’ and ‘resistance to change’.
The four types of suggestions – in addition to the proposed EU agenda – address these and other
problems by focusing on:

 Building trust and workplace institutions

 Overcoming risk aversion and lack of information
 Overcoming regulatory barriers and uncertainty

A CASE OF STANDARD CHARTERED BANK

Company snapshot: Standard Chartered Bank is an international bank with ~1,800 branches on
six continents, dozens of recent industry awards and steadily-increasing profits through organic
growth and acquisitions.

Challenge: In the wake of the 2009 global financial crisis, Standard Chartered Bank
immediately set to work reinforcing customer relationships. The Head of Consumer Banking in
Hong Kong stated: “As a leader in the industry, we needed to regain customer confidence. And
rebuilding that confidence is not about just pushing products and services – it’s about using the
best technology to foster deep, longstanding relationships with our customers. It’s about helping
them manage their money better.”

Digital workplace solution: For consumers and corporate customers, the bank developed a suite
of mobile banking and lifestyle applications. Corporate customers use the bank’s Sraight2Bank
platform, which includes a mobile authorization app that gives corporate treasurers better control
over transactions. Internally, Standard Chartered deployed thousands of iPhones to employees
worldwide, developed more than a dozen in-house iPhone applications and is rapidly expanding
its iPad use.
Key benefits: iPhone and iPad use helped personalize customer service, simplify everyday
business activities, streamline internal processes, securely transmit financial data, improve
communication between customers and banking staff, and even tap into back-end systems for
approvals and collaboration.
REFERENCES

Andrea, A. (n.d.). The Importance of Technology in The Workplace. Retrieved from

https://n-o-v-a.com/

Beblavý, M., Maselli, i., & Martellucci, E. (2012). Workplace Innovation and Technological
Change. CEPS Special Report.

Czerniawska, F. (2020). Core versus non-core: Organizations have a new vision of their future.
Source Global Research. Retrieved from https://www.sourceglobalresearch.com

Gillen, D., & Doug. J. (2002). Bus Rapid Transit and the use of AVL Technology: A Survey of
Integrating Change. UC Berkeley.

Rodriguez, L. (2017). Technology in the Workplace. Prezi. Retrieved from https://prezi.com

Zarvas, O. (2012). Workplace Technology and Design. Retrieved from

https://www.slideserve.com/odelia/workplace-technology-and-design