Computers and communications networks are having a profound impact on work.

• Eliminating many jobs and creating others
• Telework and telecommuting part of our vocabulary
• Causing changes in the size of businesses and number of people employed
• Information technology giving workers more autonomy, also giving employers increased power to monitor work and movements of employees

1. The Impact on Employment
1. Job Destruction and Creation

• Computers eliminate some jobs; create new jobs
• If technology brings the cost of a product down enough to expand the market, more people will work in that field
• Difficult to count jobs gained and lost from computers. Job categories are not clearly defined and overlap.

• Technology is a significant factor in unemployment in specific areas and in the short term.

• Indications that economic and political policy and other nontechnological factors have a strong impact on employment rates, perhaps stronger than computers.

1. Income and Productivity

• Businesses are downsizing; trend toward part-time and temporary jobs
• Both parents typically work to maintain middle-class lifestyle
• Many factors affect standard of living
• Hourly wages have declined (10%); fringe benefits increased (10.9%)
• Different ways to count income and correct for inflation—either way can be supported

• National Research Council says that traditional methods of measuring productivity do not accurately measure some of improvements brought about by computers.
• May take several years for the impact of new systems to show up
• Since beginning of Industrial Revolution, working hours have declined
• Figure 8.1 compares living standards of 1970 and 1990.

• Many people consider lifestyle represented by the 1990 data to be essential
• Quirks in the tax and compensation structure encourage employers to have regular workers work overtime rather than hire additional employees
• Taxes take a much larger percentage of income than they did in the past; thus people have to work more hours for the same take-home pay

1. Is the Impact of Computers Different from Other Technologies?

1. Eliminate a wider variety of jobs than any single new technological advance in the past
2. Transition to new jobs will be more difficult because of the broad impact of computers
3. Computers eliminate more high-skilled jobs than older technologies
4. Computers make decision that used to require skilled or trained human workers
5. The pace of improvement in speed, capability, and cost for computers is much faster than for any previous technology
6. The pace of change brought by computer is new, and their broad flexibility and applications may exacerbate the stresses of change by affecting so many areas at once
7. Difficult to tell whether the negative impact of computers on jobs will be different in quality or only in degree from earlier technological changes

1. Changing Jobs

• Almost all jobs will require the ability to use a computer
• Many jobs will require a college degree
• Concerns that many while collar, professional jobs may be taken over by computers and that human intelligence in employment will be devalued
• Worry that computers may increase divisions in our society—that jobs may diverge into two groups: those with high pay that require highly skilled and trained people and those that have very low-skill requirements and very low pay
• Some see computers freeing us from the repetitious, boring aspects of jobs so that we can spend more time being creative

• When change comes slowly, attrition can reduce the number of workers without disruption.
• When changes come faster and are more pervasive, as with computers, people are fired.
• Labor-saving technologies eliminate old jobs before generating the gains from new jobs and new/cheaper products and industries
• Clearly a need for retraining

1. The Work Environment
1. Teleworking

• Working for an employer at a computer-equipped office in the employee’s home
• Some businesses set up satellite telecommuting centers with computer and communications equipment located closer to where their employees live
• The rapidly dropping costs of communications and information transfer have encouraged these practices
• Twenty-one million Americans work at home at least one day a week, using computers and telecommunications technology

• Reduced overhead and increased productivity
• Reduces rush-hour traffic congestion and associated pollution and energy use
• Reduces expenses for commuting and for work clothes
• Saves time
• Allows work to continue when roads closed due to weather
• Can help reduce child-care expenses and give more time with children
• Generally makes it easier to work with clients, customers, and employees in other countries

• Mandatory assignments increased isolation

• Lacking immediate supervision, some people are less productive
• Others overwork
• Being at home with children may be a distraction for some
• Social isolation and low morale
• Lack of visibility may be a disadvantage to promotion

• How will telecommuting affect our sense of community? Kotkin says it may encourage a return to involvement in one’s local community. Or since we can communicate with people all over the world on the Internet, will home worker stay inside and not know their neighbors?
• Two kinds of laws are involved: local zoning laws and labor laws
• Local zoning often prohibit a home business from receiving deliveries or customers at home
• Labor laws prohibit most home sewing work designed to protect women and child labor
• Local politicians do not like the fact that home businesses are less visible and therefore harder to regulate and tax.

1. Management and Hierarchies

• Some see trends toward smaller businesses and more independent consultants and contractors
• Company loyalty and identification may decrease
• May encourage more workers to become self-employed
• Increase in Mom and Pop multinationals
• Correlation between more computer use and small firm size
• Contributing to the growth of large, multinational corporations, with mergers between giant companies
• At the same time, some large companies are splitting into smaller units

Two trends—flattening hierarchies and empowerment of workers

• Flattening hierarchies—the need for middle managers is decreasing and their jobs are changing. Think of themselves as facilitators.
• Empowerment of workers—the availability of information technology is leading businesses to give workers more information and more decision-making authority

1. Employee Monitoring
1. Background

• Supervisors have always monitored their employees
• Degree of detail and frequency has varied depending on the kind of work, economic factors, and available technology
• Total hours worked, total output, pace of work could be timed or counted
• Could listen in on work of telephone operators and customer service reps
• Surveillance cameras used in factories and offices for security
• Electron monitoring capabilities are modern time clock, telephone extension and camera
• With computers, monitoring can be constant, more detailed, and unseen by the worker
• Subjects of most precomputer monitoring were factory and telephone and clerical workers
• Now can affect professional workers (reading e-mail)

1. Monitoring Keystrokes

• Purposes are to evaluate individual employees and to measure and increase productivity
• Workers complain that such constant, detailed surveillance causes a loss of a sense of dignity and independence and destroys confidence
• Surveillance causes stress and boredom
• Different views on the reasons for detailed monitoring and how likely it is to continue or increase

1. Physical Surveillance

• Electronic identification badges serve as door keys provide increased security for a business, but they allow monitoring of the movement of employees
• Some businesses equip company cars with locating devices for security

1. Monitoring Customer Service Calls

• The employer has a strong interest in ensuring that customer calls are handled accurately, efficiently, and courteously.

• Some companies regularly listen in to train and evaluate
• Some argue it infringes the privacy of the employees and customers
• Complaints have led many firms to establish clear and detailed monitoring policies
• Also led to proposed regulation of monitoring

1. Employee E-mail, Voice Mail, and Files

• In virtually all systems, the system manager can access anything on the system
• Good reasons for monitoring:
• Find needed business information in messages or files when employee is not available
• Protect security of proprietary information and data
• Investigate possible criminal activities by employees
• Prevent personal use of employer facilities
• The Electronic Communications Privacy Act prohibits interception of e-mail on commercial e-mail services
• At a minimum, an employer should inform employees whether or not personal use of employer-provided communications and computer systems is permitted, and if employer will access messages and files

1. Regulation

• Covers both monitoring of customer service workers and monitoring of voice mail and computer files of other employees
• Generated strong opposition from employers because it would have banned many kinds of monitoring and access to employee message and files
• Advocates argue that bill will actually benefit employers
• Giving more freedom and respect to long-time employees will maintain their loyalty and make them more productive

1. Health Issues
1. Repetitive Strain Injury

• RSI includes more than a dozen different conditions, each with different symptoms and treatments
• RSI involves soft tissue damage, for which, in many cases, there are no clear, objective physiological diagnostic tests
• Symptoms may take weeks, months, or years to show up

• Increased use of computers
• Increased automation leading to a faster pace of work
• Improved accuracy in reporting
• Coverage by the news media
• Increased awareness of the problem by employees and employers

• Some people emphasize physical design of keyboards
• Improve the physical arrangement of work area
• Training the user in proper technique (importance of rest breaks, posture, and exercises)

• Some recognize that preventive measures cost less than medical expenses and lost work time for affected employees.
• Sara Lee Corporation good example of change
• Some studies show job stress is related to RSI (but not the cause).

• Thousand of workers are suing keyboard makers and employers. The uncertainty of causation makes winning such suits difficult.
• OSHA has imposed stiff fines on some companies where a large number of employees suffer from RSI.

• Experienced a sudden sharp epidemic of RSI.
• Found that poor equipment design alone did not explain the high rate of reported RSI cases in Australia.
• When workers in large offices begin to suffer serious pain and disability, coworkers begin to worry and seek treatment sooner than they might otherwise.
• Coworkers who are having milder problems begin to worry and seek treatment soon than they might otherwise.
• RSI became a focus for union and feminist activity
• Medical establishment were willing to diagnose it early
• News media covered the problem in detail
• Workers’ compensation paid easily
• Main conclusion of study was that RSI complaints resulted from generally poor job conditions and low job satisfaction.
• The study suggested that ergonomic changes, while important, would probably not solve RSI problems as long as jobs themselves are poorly designed.

• Both employers and computer users need to be aware of the potential problems from improper or intensive keyboard work.
• The need to learn what is known about prevention and treatment of RSI.