Managing Teams in the Digital Era: How Technology is Shaping Today's Workforce

The modern workplace looks a lot ­different than it did just five years ago, and it’s safe to presume that it won’t look the same in five years as it does today. The way we work, how long we work, where we work from, as well as the efficiency of our work, are vastly more unique than past working habits; in fact, there was a 159% increase in remote workers from 2005–2017 alone. Technology is both driving and enabling this change, which consistently impacts today’s workforce as new technologies and their respective capabilities emerge.

 

As CMO by Adobe reports, “The vast majority of office workers in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany said they believe technology helps them get their work done. The majority of the 4,000-plus office workers surveyed also said they believe technology makes them more productive, improves work-life integration, and helps them better connect with co-workers.” 

 

As a manager, it’s important to not only understand technology’s impact on the workforce but also how these changes can affect your employees and the way you manage them.

 

Here are three ways technology is playing a part in today’s workforce and why you should take note:

 

1. It’s expanding the talent pool

 

Digital technology enables us to assemble a "workplace" almost anywhere, which has given way to flexible work arrangements, remote workers, freelancers, and other types of gig workers. Under the right circumstances, these arrangements can be immensely beneficial for both small and large organizations. Perhaps one of the major benefits of utilizing remote workers is that you remove many of the geographical barriers often associated with hiring and recruiting for traditional, in-office employees. 

 

If you have a fully implemented system for managing remote workers, you are not limited to the talent pool within your city, county, or even state. If the infrastructure is in place to support the workflow of your company, you can attract national, even global, talent.  

 

This means that you and your company’s HR team now have access to top-tier talent and can use a much larger scope of candidates to find the best fit for a role. However, be prepared, as a staff of remote workers requires a set of reliable communication tools, like a video conferencing solution, to communicate regularly and efficiently.  

 

2. It’s fostering simple and effective communication

 

Suffice to say that there is a wide variety of communication tools and platforms that today’s organizations can use to their benefit. From document sharing platforms, to instant message applications, to teleconference offerings, businesses of all types and sizes have several tech options at their fingertips to service their corporate communications. 

 

Helping to fuel these technologies is the cloud. Because the cloud is hosted on the internet rather than an on-premise server, these collaboration technologies are easily accessible, simple to use, and flexible. For example, cloud-based ERP software, ties together a multitude of business processes, like accounting, project management, and even supply chain, and enables the flow of data between them.

 

Rather than searching through disparate systems or sorting through disconnected spreadsheets, all employees have access to updated and real-time information, making knowledge transfer and information exchange a much simpler process. 

 

That said, these tools aren’t all one and the same. Although many solutions, like Infor CloudSuite for example, are advertised as cloud-based solutions, they actually use third-party cloud vendors to deliver their services. This can make it more complex to communicate, as applications don’t work as one cohesive unit. 

 

3. It’s made employees constantly “contactable” 

 

Within the next decade, millennials and Generation Z will make up more than half of the workforce (58%), according to a report by CNBC. As these younger generations, who have grown accustomed to technology and digital communication, begin to orchestrate and conduct the operations of their businesses, it can be expected that many of their digital habits will infiltrate their workplaces. 

 

Facilitated by new means of communication established early in their social lives, this younger segment of the workforce is constantly contactable and expect their peers and coworkers to be too. In one survey, 23% of Generation Z employees viewed texting as a “crucial” way to communicate in the workplace, which has been made simple by workplace-specific instant messengers and chat apps, like Slack or Google Hangouts Chat.  

 

Although millennials and Generation Z employees are always seemingly easy to reach, this is an important factor to keep in mind as a manager. To maintain a healthy work-life balance for your employees, consider specifying set working hours in which you can reach them. Just because your employees will respond at 9 PM, doesn’t mean they should have to. 

 

When considering the impact of today’s technologies, managers need to go beyond the bottom line and efficiency. Be sure to take a step back to consider the overall picture of how the nature of work, the composition of the workforce, and the notion of workplace interactions to shape the future of work.

 

 

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