Jeremy Cannon: Technology in the Workplace

Jeremy Cannon

December 5, 2014

Cas 283

Technology in the Workplace

            As technology advances around the world, one of the main areas affected is that of the business world. Advances such an email, conference calls, video chatting and even Google docs have changed the way many people go about working, building and operating a business. Text messaging and group messaging have revolutionized the way cooperation groups of people relay information and work together. Using such new resources allow people to get work done no matter where they are. The need to be in “the office” is decreasing and businesses can be managed from almost anywhere.

            The Internet itself has changed the way businesses conduct themselves in a few ways. The internet allows businesses, as well as their consumers, to have access to enormous amount of information, gather information about potential rivals and advertise to a much larger audience that was previously unavailable and conduct sales around the world.

A study done by Kathleen E. Huffman states that technology in the work place makes the organization more efficient on the day-to-day basis. Time and distance are no longer a problem with today’s technology as organizations aim to compress time, speed up their responses and processes, and make things happen at a faster rate. She also states that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2010), 24 percent of employees worked from home in 2010 and also that at IBM, about 42 percent of the company's 330,000 employees work on the road, from home, or at a client location, saving the computer company about $100 million in real estate-related expenses a year (King, 2007).

In Huffman’s study she cites five work place areas in which technology impacts communications. They include cultural communication, human resource management, organization development, marketing, and healthcare management. In international business settings culture can influence how people think, communicate, and behave. Several trends exist between technology and the human resource management field that can have either a direct or indirect impact. Huffman states that e-recruitment and performance management software are also helping to dramatically improve HR’s ability to carry out effective people relationship management (PRM), and improve their organization’s employer brand (HR Management, 2011).

In her conclusion, Huffman believes that influence that technology has on communication in the workplace is significant. Aspects such as the initiation of relationships with co-workers, to the attendance of conferences, to the productivity of companies outside of the office are affected by technology and over all increased the amount of communication that takes place in the workplace each day, as well as eases the effort of businesses to contact other companies, employees, and clients.

I can agree with Huffman and her research as well as personally testify to the influence technology has had on my interactions as consumer to any business. In today’s world, technology is taking away the necessity of having to be in a store to purchase things, to be in a classroom to learn and to be an office to work or manage a business. Face to face interactions are becoming less frequent in all aspects of society. It’s easy to see the direction the use of technology is taking us in terms of communication, but whether that’s a good or a bad place will always be up for interpretation.

Here’s the link to Huffman’s study: http://search.proquest.com/docview/923280196