IT and the Design of Work

1
IT and the Design of Work

• Define telecommuting, electronic immigration,
  outsourcing
• Describe the demand for IT workers and how
  employers are meeting the demand
• Describe what is meant by virtual workers and
  discuss the reasons for hiring them
• Compare supervision and evaluation using
  traditional and newer approaches
• Discuss the benefits, disadvantages, and issues
  related to telecommuting
• Describe the productivity paradox

2
Job Design Framework

• What tasks will be performed?
• How will the work be performed?
• Who will do the work?
• Where will the work be performed?
• How can information systems increase performance,
  satisfaction and effectiveness of the workers
  doing the work?

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What tasks will be performed?

• IT changes the way work is performed
• IT changes communication patterns of workers
• IT changes the type of information available
• The Internet changes many jobs
• Work is more team oriented
• Informating vs. automating?

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How will the work be performed?
or
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Has IT resulted in more or less jobs overall?
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A Growing Demand for IT Workers

• Emerging
  technologies
• New
  applications
• Global growth
• WWW
• Y2K

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Projected Growth of IT Professionals
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Breakdown of IT Workers2005
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The Numbers Dont Add Up!

• Needed 2.2 million in 2005, an average of
  95,000 systems analysts, computer programmers and
  computer engineers per year per year
• Produced by Information Systems and Computer
  Science Programs in 1994 24,553
• Limits on H-1B non-immigrants 115,000
  professional workers per year starting Oct.1 (may
  be exhausted by Jan 2001)
• Limits on H-1B visa raised to 200,000?
• Growing global shortage

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Issues Related to IS Personnel

• Staffing
• Training
• Supervising
• Evaluating
• Motivating
• Retaining

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Staffing Who will do the work?

• College recruiting of IS/CS majors
• Raiding other companies
• Hiring from other disciplines
• Beefed up training programs
• mainframers, older workers
• End-user computing
• Outsourcing

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Outsourcing

• Purchase of a good or service that was previously
  provided internally
• Varying types and extent
• telecommunications
• software development
• operations
• the whole ball game

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Outsourcing Options

• Foreign outsourcing electronic immigration
• India, Russia, Eastern Europe, South Africa,
  Ireland, East Asia
• India - 200,00 programmers
• Outsourced software accounted for 41 percent of
  Indias software exports
• Outsourcing companies
• Temporary/Virtual workers

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Temporary Workers Types

• Regularly scheduled part-time employees
• kept on payroll or on file
• hired intermittently or for short periods
• largest segment of temporary workforce
• Virtual workers Workers who arent employees of
  organization

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Virtual Workers

• Consultants or self-employed professionals
• Temporary help service firms
• Unskilled labor
• Highly skilled professionals

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Reasons for Hiring Virtual Workers

• Provide specific technical skills on temporary
  basis
• Allow workforce expansion during peak periods
• Cut costs (no benefits)

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Supervising/Evaluating
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Motivating/Retaining

• Rewards Salaries, Benefits and Perks
• Extrinsic vs. intrinsic
• Rewarding desired performance
• performance metrics must be meaningful
• harder to define when based on broader view of
  work
• Equity
• inside and out IT organization

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DxR

• What is DxRs approach
• to staffing?
• to training?
• to supervising and evaluating?
• to motivating and retaining?

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Telecommuting Where will work be performed?

• Definition
• Benefits
• Costs
• Key Technologies
• Managerial Issues
• Other Issues

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Telecommuting - What is it?

• Working from a home-based or remote office during
  normal business hours one (?) or more days a week
• How many days before you are a telecommuter?
• Do you need a computer to be a telecommuter?
• Types home-based, local telework center
• More than 20 million Americans telecommuted in
  1998

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Why Telecommuting? An Employees Perspective

• Better balance of work and personal life
• Increased schedule flexibility
• Reduced stress
• Saves commuting time
• Greater geographic flexibility
• Saves gas and transportation costs (also societal)

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Why Telecommuting? The Companys Perspective

• Increases productivity and morale (10-50)
• Demonstrates care, trust and empowerment
• Complies with Clean Air Act
• Reduces offices space and associated costs
  (25-75)
• Reduces recruitment and turnover costs (20-40)
• Can be utilized during disaster recovery

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Tab for Telecommuting

• Support 500 one-time fee, 347 annual costs
• Network 203 one-time fee, 1,282 annual costs
• Home equipment 3,522 one-time fee, 494 annual
  costs
• Corporate setup 237 one-time fee, 35 annual
  costs
• Total 4,462 one-time fee, 2,158 annual costs
• Source Computerworld, 4/8/96. 100

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Telecommuting Managerial Issues

• Planning
• Organizing
• Staffing
• Directing
• Controlling

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Telecommuting - Planning

• Costs (who pays)
• owning maintaining hardware
• insurance premiums
• possible zoning issues
• Pilot program
• Supervisor training
• Selecting qualified employees
• self-starters, self-disciplined, flexible
• disabled working mothers
• certain jobs

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Telecommuting - Directing

• Morale of telecommuters
• Morale of those left behind
• Need for coordination
• schedules
• planned meetings

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Telecommuting - Staffing

• Exempt or nonexempt (overtime)
• Disabled employee considerations
• Independent contractor vs. full-time permanent
  employee
• Workers compensation payments

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Telecommuting - Control

• Monitoring employee activities
• (reported productivity increases)
• challenges managers (feel they are losing
  control)
• Security of data
• password authentication
• dedicated leased lines
• physically securing equipment
• firewalls

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Telecommuting - Other Issues

• Personal
• dual career families working out of home
• Perceptions about peace and quiet, value of work
• Family
• 55 of all mothers with children less than 3
  years old now work (US DoC, 1989)
• computer addicts
• Psychological - stress of taking work home and
  keeping up

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Why the Benefits of IT are Not Achieved?

• Lack of knowledge about IT and IT management
• Incompatible hardware and software
• Inefficiencies in work processes
• Incompatible organizational cultures and climates
• Continual need to upgrade

IT Productivity Paradox
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IS Productivity Paradox

• Over 1 trillion dollars spent on computer and
  communication technologies since 1980
• Systematic relationship to financial performance?
• People make the difference
• Measures may be flawed
• service workers
• longer hours