A recent study by the Pew Research Center highlights how important technology has become to modern workers.
The Pew Research Center surveyed 1000 American adults and ended up following up with 535 who were working full or part time. The findings are fairly straight forward: the internet and e-mail are perceived by online workers to be very important communication tools for productivity. Both technologies serve as multipliers allowing workers to communicate more broadly than traditional phone.
Interestingly, social media was not rated that highly by either office based workers or non-office based workers.
The study can be found online at the Pew Research Center website.
Questions for the OD Professional
The study raises some issues in the people space:
- The trend to a more mobile and internet connected workforce will continue. How are you helping your organisation to build capability to manage that change in direction.
- How are you building capability in frontline supervisors to enable and support this shift (if the shift aligns with your business strategy)?