Impacts of Information Technology in Business Management
Impacts of Information Technology in Business Management
Is the magical effect of digital technology on management diminishing?
According to the Cegos 2017 barometer, digital tools facilitate access to information and professional efficiency. But they continue to weigh heavily on workload and time management. The study mainly shows a gap in perception between employees, managers and HR managers.
Cegos regularly produces a very detailed barometer on the social climate and quality of life at work. For several years now, the observatory of the business world and its evolutions has been questioning employees and their managers about the impact of digital technology on working life. The results of the 2017 edition are interesting and show that digital technology is becoming commonplace.
Content HRDs, employees less satisfied
They all praise easier access to information, greater professional efficiency and improved collaboration between departments. However, the detailed study shows that perceptions change according to the position in the company. If 72% of managers find that access to information is facilitated, the proportion rises to 64% for employees and falls to 61% for HRDs. Note that these results are down compared to the 2015 barometer, where 85% of managers and 80% of HRD/HRDs gave the same answer. Is it the galloping infobesity that causes too much info to kill the information (and especially makes it more and more difficult to find the relevant information?
Similarly, on the issue of professional efficiency, 57% of managers cite this positive point, down 15 points from 2015. The most interesting case remains the facilitation of collaborative work. While 59% of HR cite this point (up 9 points), only 57% of managers and 51% of employees (down 5 points) say the same.
Commonplace digital tools
However, the study of the results on negative points relativizes the hasty conclusion that one could draw from the previous results, namely that the digital would be perceived less and less positively. It is rather a trivialization of digital tools IoT that is underway, the scores obtained by negative effects are also decreasing.
Thus, the third category is made up of workload (25% of employees, 32% of managers and 30% of HRDs/HRRs), working time management (17%, 17% and 24% respectively) and work-life balance (16%, 32% and 25%). The decrease is 20 points for managers on workload and 29 points for the pro-personal team compared to 2015. Does this have to be seen as an effect of the debate and the law on the right to disconnect, which has led many companies to take up this subject? Unless both of them have already domesticated these tools, which are not so new anymore…