In today’s world, the expectations for employees are higher than ever. Even blue collar employees are expected to know how to work an iPhone – being able to receive emails while out in the field was a game changer for companies that need agility in their teams. White collar employees are almost always expected to know how to work a computer and maintain it themselves. It is, in fact, part of UNLV’s business school requirements to understand basic Excel formatting, and know how to put together formulas within the sheet to do long or complex math the easy way.
This is all good, yes? Aside from the added strain on the employee, who is now able (and expected) to do more work, this is an efficiency boost and a good thing all around. However, whether one can or can’t keep up with the technology, it comes with costs.
To be in the past computer-wise is not difficult: the things have only been around and replacing paper ledgers and accounting for about 25 years when you look at broader trends, and in the terms of someone who’s been a career accountant for 35 years, they may have started on paper and had to transition to digital at some point, at which point they learned what they needed to in order to do their jobs and not much more. Integrating technology is a good thing to do, but it has to be done in a way that doesn’t disrupt the work environment; recordkeeping is very sensitive to being disrupted, and can lead to huge issues down the line if vital tax or HR documents aren’t transferred successfully.
For blue collar workers, the transition happened even more recently – what good would a bulky, heavy Apple Mac do out in the field? A cellular phone or a pager was a big improvement for people like plumbers, gardeners, pool teams, and more, but the actual computers stayed in the office with the manager. People like janitors, who work in one building and don’t need a phone for their manager to find them, needed one even less. It was only recently that the smartphone was both reliable enough and cheap enough to give to outbound teams, and as such it’s only recently that training is available for them. The smartphone is a big jump from a flip phone. It needs to be stored correctly, so that it can’t be turned on while in someone’s pocket, especially if they’re sweating (because sweat can make the phone register screen touches through fabric), it needs to connect to a work email or text messaging system, which may or may not require a log in with a username and password (which the employee will have to remember), and it can’t be left out somewhere, because now that the things have email, it’s possible to leak company data that way.
If you don’t understand your phone, or at best can only manage the email or phone call features, has your work life really been improved by this fragile rectangle of black glass? Your actual job, which may be anything from maintaining a golf course to cleaning pools or cutting branches from trees, now also has you wrangling a device that doesn’t do any of those functions and simply works to connect you better to home base, with all of the extra work and complications that entails. To be good at cutting dead limbs from trees is different than being able to work a smartphone effectively.
This is actually a major barrier – jobs that used to be available to people who couldn’t work with complicated language or complex UI systems (including deaf people, blind people, dyslexic people, et. Cetera) are now being gatekept there, too, with something that was supposed to make their lives easier. Training courses may be available, but they’ll be geared towards people who don’t have learning or physical disabilities that keep them from using the phone ‘properly’.
Maybe, sometimes, the flip phone is better!
If you’re trying to figure out the best technology solutions for your office, contact us! Book a call here: ElixisTechnology.com
