I will start this with a warning: this has been written during the Covid-19 outbreak and escalation in Australia with gatherings of more than 500 people to be banned from tomorrow (Monday 16th March 2020), so there are quite a few raw emotions about workplace expectations under the current circumstances and the reports circulating from the media about these (links in with my first article post).
Technology has had and continues to have a significant influence on society. Over the past twenty to twenty-five years, technology has become increasingly integrated into all aspects of life. We now rely on technology for work, school, home and our social lives. I have grown up during the extensive changes. At primary school there were two computers in the classroom, I am talking big boxes with games like Treehouse and something to do with a zoo. We learnt to type in year 4 or 5 and in year 6 set up our first Hotmail accounts. Now (side note the Department of Education in NSW has very skewed views on how things should be delivered and the resources they have actually supplied) students have access to shared class sets of computers and laptops. High school students have access to mobile phones and those that don’t are viewed as inferior by some of their peers. TikToks and snapchat are the bane of classroom learning as teachers are now responsible for monitoring use rather than focusing on teaching. Society expects that people should be available at all times, resulting in some work places having to specify in policies that people are not available at all times. Technology takes work into the home and social lives into the workplace with the easy of communication available.
Organisations now must take into consideration their technological and media tools to be used. Policies are now required to be in place to ensure appropriate use of technology and the relevant tools occurs within the organisation. Not only that but in the scope of the school, the policies filter into the classroom for students and their appropriate use. Organisations who don’t use technology are not as well known as those who embrace it and utilise it effectively. The rise in online media outlets is an example of how a name can be made through using technology effectively (Nekmat, 2020, p. 4). Organisations are required to remain up to date with changing technologies to remain relevant and current with the desires of consumers.
Main points to consider in organisations
- Is the technology useful?
- Is the tools available through the technology going to increase productivity, social well-being of employees, communication, profits? (Is there a balance?)
- Are the relevant policies in place to support the use of technology and the relevant tools?
- Is it relevant and necessary?
Nekmat, E. (2020). Nudge Effect of Fact-Check Alerts: Source Influence and Media Skepticism on Sharing of News Misinformation in Social Media. Social Media + Society, 1(1), pp. 1-14. Sage Publishing. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305119897322