CHAPTER 8

Aligning with Technology

In this chapter, I discuss technology and its relationship to work-life supports. Technology is the proverbial double-edged sword as it relates to navigating work and life demands. While it provides tools that allow greater flexibility for where and when people work, it can also tether employees to their work constantly. This chapter describes why employers should offer technology provisions for employees, and how they can best do it. It suggests new skills and behaviors that will be necessary as work and workers respond to shifts in technology, and it recommends some ways workers can use technology to navigate work and life.

In my research, I find that companies that provide more technology for employees tend to also have greater work-life support options for employees. For companies at the forward edge of technology provisioning, this chapter will feel like well-known terrain, but there are many companies with their entire workforces still tethered to desktop computers. This is true even for companies with brands that are known for being forward thinking and innovative. The future will arrive, just not everywhere at the same time.¹ Technology is correlated with greater work-life supports. Technology itself is a work-life support, but it also creates new demands that diminish successful work-life navigation. Technology is complicated.

THE PROS AND CONS OF TECHNOLOGY

Within the last few years, there was a popular commercial for a wireless network. It features a beautiful mom with a cell phone and three beautiful daughters. The girls are getting ready for the day and want to play and go to the beach instead of spending the day with a babysitter who watches TV all day. Unfortunately, the mom can’t go to the beach because she has an important meeting with a client. One of her little girls says, “Mommy, when can I be a client?” This changes everything. The mom responds by leaving the babysitter home alone watching TV, taking her girls to the beach, and taking her client meeting on a conference call from there. This is all thanks to her superior cell phone and wireless network. Cindy Lauper’s song “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” provides a triumphant chorus.² The ad is testimony to the complexity of technology. It liberates us from the physical office while it also chains us to schedules and work in a way that can be limiting.

Linda, a general manager for the software division of a global technology company and who was part of my study, provides a starting point for exploration: “Technology is accelerating the breakdown of the barriers of a traditional work schedule and a traditional office environment. Companies have two choices. They can either resist it or embrace it and actually use it to their advantage.” Livia, an executive with a media company says, “It’s great to have a flexible work schedule but you’re given a smartphone and the objective is that you’re going to respond immediately. That is unhealthy. It creeps into your whole life. It is important to take time off and be away from the device.”

Experts agree that staying connected and working 24–7 is damaging to health. An article in Inc. magazine³ reported on research that found:

• Working eleven hours per day rather than eight hours resulted in a 67 percent increased risk of developing heart disease.
• Working more than fifty hours per week led to three times greater risk of developing a problem with alcohol abuse.
• Twenty hours without sleep was the equivalent of a .1 blood alcohol level (five or six drinks for people 160 to 180 pounds), resulting in problems with judgment.

Figure 8-1 Health Impacts

Recently, I spoke with a senior executive who had progressed quickly in her career and found herself in her late thirties with two small children, a great house-husband, and a job as a high-level vice president. The problem was that she was frantic and she never turned off. This senior executive was not well liked by her peers, and this caused her significant difficulty in accomplishing her work and feeling satisfied with her relationships with colleagues. She confided that she slept with her smartphone under her pillow. She was so afraid of the CEO to whom she reported and so afraid for her job security that she felt the need to respond immediately to whatever messages she received. Her solution was to sleep with her phone. While this example is extreme, it is a true story. It demonstrates the disadvantages of technology when people don’t have the skills or feel empowered enough to manage the boundary issues it can potentially create.

RESISTANCE

It is perhaps these negative effects on health and well-being that create resistance to the provisioning of technology for work-life supports. Livia, Diane, and Lorraine are all employed with media companies. All three women say that, for their companies, cost is a significant obstacle in providing technological support to workers. Lorraine betrays a deep-seated resistance to employees working at home when she cites the added costs of filling the shoes of employees who aren’t in the office. She believes that if you give employees technology that allows them to work away from the office, they will get less work done and the company will be required to hire more people to “fill the holes left by a worker who is flexing her hours.” Technology must be considered in relation to both its cost and its payback. For leaders who increasingly want to provide technology options to employees, they must make a business case to justify investing in the technology.

In which situations do leaders and companies experience less resistance? Interestingly, there is a relationship between technology provisioning and other work-life supports. Again, technology is a mechanism to support work-life and it also creates the conditions for more work-life supports such as flexible working and more choice making by employees. From my research it is clear that companies that have provided more technology for longer periods of time—in the form of devices such as smartphones, laptops, and tablets—tend to have greater work-life supports in other forms as well. They have climbed the curve before other companies because their access to technology has allowed them to experiment with how employees can work from other locations and still be productive, connect with others, and remain engaged with the organization.

One company is testing remote working by providing a handful of employees with enhanced technology. The catch? They must trade off their assigned workstations. Those employees who choose to receive the goodies (a smartphone, a printer at home, access to applications such as Skype that aren’t available to all employees) must in turn choose to relinquish their traditional offices. Companies are willing to pilot a new approach that involves workers coming to the office less, but they require the benefit of providing less office space and thus spending less per square foot than they traditionally allocate.

SYSTEMS

Technological supports are more than just the devices that companies provide to employees. They are the broader systems of the network, the storage systems, and the IT policies that allow employees easy access and connectivity. Isaiah, a senior executive with a technology company, describes the types of systems that must be part of a technology support system. He says, “If a company doesn’t have the technical systems that allow employees to work remotely—phone systems, order processing systems, financial systems, collaborative systems, or others—it will have a hard time keeping employees engaged and productive.” When companies make it easy to work from anywhere, with comprehensive consideration for these types of systems, they provide employees with a greater level of support. Sometimes it means employees working from home early in the morning or late at night. Sometimes the support means working from an airport or a hotel. Sometimes it means working from a daughter’s lacrosse game between halves.

A related system is travel and expense policies. At first blush, they may not seem related to technology-oriented work-life supports, but they are. In one company with which I consulted, there was a finance department that was known for applying extremely stringent policies to travel and expense activities. One of the policies it implemented removed all financial support for wireless connection in hotels or on airplanes. This was a cost-savings measure—the company was looking for any and all opportunities to reduce costs—that made sense on paper. Unfortunately, the policy had negative consequences for employees and their families, especially those employees who traveled most frequently. Employees were expected to pay for each of these connectivity points, which amounted to between $10 and $25 per connection.

The manager in charge of travel argued that the company didn’t expect people to work on airplanes or in hotel rooms, and that employees should have downtime. However, people wanted to choose when and how they had time away from work. Employees argued that they wanted the ability to work in multiple settings, such as airplanes or hotels, without undue personal cost. In this way, employees felt they could enjoy more time with their families and friends when they were home, instead of having to spend personal time catching up on what they weren’t able to accomplish on the road. The moral of this story? Offer choice. When employees are able to choose their own approach and allocate time as they wish, they benefit. Self-determination is significantly satisfying. The company also benefits because employees are effective in producing results through multiple settings and situations.

TRENDS

A current trend is BYOD—bring your own device. In this approach, employees supply (and pay for) the devices they prefer, and are expected to use them in order to accomplish their work. In addition, employees must obtain support for their devices on their own. Increasingly, IT help desks are directing employees to cell/data carriers or device manufacturers, leaving employees to seek assistance elsewhere. This trend has significant implications for employee well-being and work-life supports. With all the demands that employees are facing, this practice potentially places additional demands on already overloaded employees. Companies that choose to take this approach should consider the ramifications for employee levels of stress and their perception of challenge with their work and life.

Many companies are also reducing the amount of technology training they offer. This reduction places additional burdens on employees as well. As employees are seeking to integrate and navigate demands, some will see this as a boon: they can learn on their own as they choose. Other employees will experience additional stress because of the requirement to learn the new technology independently, placing additional demands on their discretionary time.

Talk to any IT professional and she will tell you about another trend organizations are facing: an “internet of things,”⁴ in which technology links tangible objects (such as cars, traffic lights, desks, homes, toys, or shoes) with one another and with humans. In Harvard Business Review’s September 2013 issue, H. James Wilson cites Pew Research in which 21 percent of workers were found to use self-tracking technology such as apps to support journaling or apps to support health habits and biometrics.

The Economist asserts that technology will soon offer predictive value. For example, when we arrive at a hotel on a business trip to a foreign country, our phone may suggest directions to our customer meeting.⁵ Or as we approach our front door, the phone will sense our presence, thanks to an iBeacon, and unlock the door and tune the television to our favorite show.⁶ In these cases, the implications for work are fascinating. We could have offices that recognize us as we walk in, changing over all devices and amenities to our preferences. Work-life support would be enabled by an office that responds to the worker by removing the necessity to even consider the physical space—no matter where a worker chooses to work that day.

Another trend is algorithm-assisted decision making, in which we leverage technology to collect, filter, and analyze massive amounts of data for better, quicker decisions. An example is a worker who commutes to work and whose GPS suggests an alternate route because of a traffic jam ahead.

WHAT PEOPLE DO AUTOMATICALLY

To consider how technology is changing the way people work, think about how our automatic ways of getting things done are changing. On one hand, people may use technology to do the same tasks in different ways. For example, Brittany could send a letter with a stamp through the U.S. mail, she could send a memo through the internal mail system, or she could send an e-mail. Brittany is performing the same task—communicating with a colleague through the written word—she’s simply accomplishing it in different ways, enabled by different technology.

On the other hand, think of finding an unfamiliar location. In the past, Brittany might have obtained a map or a TripTik to plan her trip ahead of time. If she were lost or needed coaching along the way, she would potentially stop at a gas station to ask directions or drive around until she found her destination. Today, reliance on technology has changed the way people accomplish tasks. Now, Brittany is not planning with a map or AAA TripTik. Instead, she is plugging the address into her car’s navigation system or her smartphone’s GPS while pulling out of her driveway. Her automatic response if she’s lost is less likely to include stopping for directions or simply driving around. Instead, her automatic response is to consult technology. When automatic responses change, skills also change. For example, the skills of navigating are becoming less acute as people, like Brittany in this example, simply follow the auto-voice on their smartphones.⁷

In another example, when my children need to make a list, they automatically reach for their smartphones in order to type the list on a notepad app, instead of using paper and a pencil. In this case, where people are typing rather than handwriting, there is an effect on handwriting skills. Some schools no longer teach handwriting skills—they teach printing skills, but the act of writing now happens by pressing keys on a keyboard more often than by holding a pen and forming script on a page. Spelling skills are reportedly on the decline as spell-check becomes the norm and text messages are rife with abbreviations and autocorrect. Why does this matter to work-life supports? Because as companies provide support for the demands that people face in their work, it is helpful to consider technology that will help them accomplish tasks more easily. If tasks have changed, then the way companies support people with technology also needs to change. Quentin Hardy, deputy technology editor for the New York Times, believes technology is changing civilization at all levels (for more, see the featured interview). The challenge will be to manage technology for our own purposes.

NEW BEHAVIORS AND SKILLS

Technology is changing social norms and requiring new behaviors and skills. Patterns of behavior relating to selective attention and novelty are shifting. In addition, workers must learn to set boundaries and be present with others in new ways.

SELECTIVE ATTENTION

Another consideration for the provision of work-life supports is the additional skill of selective attention that people require in order to survive in a world of technological complexity. From a perception standpoint, anything new in an environment tends to gain attention. This continues until the feature in the environment is no longer perceived as new and is filtered out by the subconscious. This process of novelty and selective attention is largely outside awareness.

Consider a person who moves into an apartment in the heart of a city that is situated near train tracks. At first, he’ll hear the train go by every time. It will wake him up, interrupt his thoughts, and generally be noticeable in his day-to-day experience. However, he’ll eventually grow accustomed to the sound and won’t register it anymore. This is the skill of selective attention. Human consciousness tends to identify and filter out stimuli that are constantly present until they are no longer experienced as stimuli. In the example of the city apartment dweller, if the train schedule changes, or if he is home on a weekday and therefore experiencing the weekday train schedule, which is different from the weekend schedule he’s accustomed to, he will again hear the train more keenly. Technology is similar to this.

People are learning new social norms for attending to or ignoring technology, and selective attention is a collective skill as much as it is an individual skill. When a smartphone buzzes in a meeting, sometimes the meeting participants will interrupt their conversation and wait for the recipient of the call or message to attend to it or turn it off. As group members become more familiar with one another and with their technology, they are more likely to simply ignore the interruption with no discussion, no lost time, and no nonverbal signaling regarding the interruption. The group is selectively attending to the content of the face-to-face activity without allowing the technology to intrude.

NOVELTY

People must also adjust for things that are novel. As technology evolves, people reshape their thinking. When something is new, people tend to think of it as “technology.” As they become accustomed to it, they stop thinking of it as “technology” and instead simply take it for granted. At one time, a refrigerator was the best new technology around. It changed life immeasurably. More senior generations remember how their first refrigerator changed the need to haul ice. It reduced the requirement to shop as frequently. It changed the type of food they ate. It altered how food was prepared (less spices and salt because it could now be kept cold in the refrigerator). It changed how and where food was stored. At first, a refrigerator was considered technology, but today it is simply a fixture in homes that people take for granted and can barely live without. Why do I mention this here? Because we’re on the cusp of a new generation of technology, which will soon become invisible and taken for granted. When technology becomes a seamless, invisible, inevitable part of providing work-life supports, employees and companies will benefit.

BOUNDARY MANAGEMENT

Another skill related to technology is boundary management. Both organizations and individuals must improve their skills in setting expectations and managing boundaries as they relate to technology. Recently, our family was dining out. Nearby, there was a table of eight teenagers. As they sat together, each one was on his handheld device. I was struck by the sociological changes we’re witnessing. Every one of them was sharing time with someone who wasn’t at the table, either virtually, by looking at Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr posts, or literally, by exchanging text messages. In some cases, there were two kids leaning together over one small screen, but in general, they were gathered together enjoying the company of other people, not the people they were physically with.

Technology is fundamentally changing the way people share time and relate to one another. People are less present when they are on their devices instead of being in conversation with others. They are less engaged with the real life of being in the same place, at the same time, sharing the same activities, undistracted by a device. The more technology allows people to work anywhere and communicate in multiple ways, the more they must treasure their time together. This is true at dinner. It is also true at the office.

Boundary management is also playing out at the office through a new movement called “Be Here Now.” I first saw “Be Here Now” on a poster at a very large health insurance company. The following week I was at a law firm and saw the same sign on bulletin boards there. The week after that I was at a broadcasting company, and saw again the same saying. This time it was taped on doors of collaborative spaces. The idea is gaining traction. It means that it is necessary to be present in a meeting with colleagues and to be “lids down,” so distractions are minimized and employees can bring their full attention to the discussion within the group. These companies believe that when employees are more present for meetings they will get more done and, more importantly, they will be more effective in maintaining strong relationships with colleagues.

In another example of work-life supports that encompass boundary management, one of my colleagues believes that as a leader, she has the responsibility to create and manage boundaries for her team. In order to do this, she never sends e-mails over weekends unless it is an emergency. She regularly works over the weekends herself, but she post-dates her e-mails so they are not delivered to her team members until Monday. She expects them to turn off their devices over the weekend and manages their workloads so they do not have to work undue numbers of evenings during the week.

PRESENT BY PROXY

As technology changes, people must learn to make connections in new ways. A classic sociological concept is the idea that “proximity is the number one determinant of relationships.” In other words, those people who physically see and interact with one another most often will tend to have the closest relationships emotionally. There are exceptions, but in general, proximity breeds familiarity and closer relationships. For example, when Lily and Edith see each other regularly, they have a greater basis for casual conversation and connection. Lily notices that Edith was absent and asks about her time off. Edith says she was at a college visit for her son. This provides Lily more information about Edith and fodder for future conversations (“How’s the college selection going?”). Lily and Edith have the basis for a reinforcing loop in which they’re building knowledge of each other. This type of proximity demands presence. When people are present, they benefit from the relationship-building effects of being in close proximity.

Technology can be a proxy for physical presence. When employees are working with remote teams in multiple locations across the globe, across town, or across the building, technology is a powerful way for them to connect and feel close. In digitally mediated relationships, people get to know each other through their e-mail or IM persona or through social networking. A leader within my team, Bailey, is expert at being present when she is not present. Despite being across the country from all her team members, she has found a way to be accessible and personal from a distance. She does this by answering her phone when people call, by responding to e-mails quickly, by including personal notes in e-mails, and by using tools such as Skype, e-mail, IM, and Lync. Her commitment, dedication, and leadership come through.

Contrast this with another teammate, Zach, who is remote but never accessible. When he “never” answers the phone and when he takes days to respond to easy e-mails or urgent requests, the team begins to wonder whether he’s spending too many hours improving his golf game. Consistency is key. Bailey is predictable. She sets appropriate boundaries and people know when to expect her to be available. Zach is consistent as well—in his lack of availability. Work-life support is evident when leaders and teammates are consistently accessible to one another. Technology facilitates this accessibility.

In another example, technology helped a struggling team make important connections. The team was just forming. The members of the team had been together only months and had been reorganized multiple times during their collective tenure with the organization. This constant shuffling had worn the team members thin and they questioned their value to the organization. “They don’t know what to do with us” and “We’re stepchildren who don’t have a place” were refrains from team members. To make matters even trickier, none of the team members worked in the same location. They didn’t know each other well and didn’t understand one another’s roles on projects.

The organization took action to support the team, improve the way it was working, and thus support work-life integration. The leader established common goals in order to link the team members’ work. In addition, he set up mentoring relationships between team members so they could learn from one another and create personal and professional connections. The leader also established “communities of practice” for group sharing and learning on key topics. He also increased lines of communication by initiating more frequent e-mails and conference calls among team members.

The team also initiated a daily “water cooler time.” At first, team members sent calendar invitations for certain times each day so they could log onto the IM system at the same time and connect casually. Eventually, this planning became unnecessary and team members would simply log on and invite others to chat during a virtual coffee or lunch break. This helped build strong relationships, and team members would increasingly phone one another to check in during an average day. Far from intruding on productivity, the check-ins actually enhanced engagement and effectiveness because team members were learning from one another and felt reinvigorated after a brief human connection with others on their team. This is an example of how technology can be a proxy for presence.

Being present by proxy also applies to the life side of work-life. I’ve coined the term text parenting, in which parents reach out, connect, coach, guide, and support their children via text. This, too, represents a work-life support strategy for employees who are free to text during the workday. Moms and dads can check in with their children during school or work—about after-school logistics, Lego Robotics sign-up, or encouragement before an exam. Leveraging technology to be present in their children’s lives allows employees to be in two places at once, effectively contributing at work while finding additional points of connection with their children. Of course, this text parenting can also apply to other relationships, too (text relating). It is therefore an effective proxy for nonparents in reaching out to friends or other family members. Leveraging technology allows life into work.

Figure 8-2 Text Parenting

IN SUM

Our technology has developed to the point that people need new skills and capabilities in order to use it to the greatest advantage. People are developing new social norms and habits, and learning to set new boundaries. Technology can be a proxy for presence, but a ringing cell phone or the ping of an incoming text is rarely as important as the person in front of us now.