Tutorial 10 Flashcards
Work-Life Balance Challenges Due to Mobile Technology
●Increased Expectations of Availability: Employees feel pressured to be always
available, often working late into the night.
●Blurring of Work and Personal Boundaries: Mobile technology makes it harder to
separate work time from personal time.
●Complex Coordination Among Co-workers: Flexibility leads to coordination
challenges, as work schedules become less predictable.
●Reinforcement of Work Addiction: Employees feel compelled to stay connected,
checking emails and messages even during personal time.
Three Perspectives on Work-Life Relationships
○ Compartmentalised: Employees strictly separate work and personal life. Mobile technology is seen
as a tool, but not used outside of work hours.
○Overlapping: Employees accept some spillover of work into personal life but
maintain a “zone of tolerance” for work intrusions.
○Encompassing: Employees fully integrate work into their lives, often
prioritizing career over personal time.
Organizational Strategies to Manage WLB
- Compensation strategy
- Negotiation strategy
- Integration strategy
- Protection strategy
Compensation Strategy:
Offering monetary incentives or extra time off to
employees working beyond standard hours.
=> Doesn’t solve the work-life imbalance, rather provides employees incentives to overlook the problem
Negotiation Strategy:
Customizing work expectations based on employees’
personal preferences and commitments.
=> Goal is to limit stress by taking into consideration the personal situation and capabilities of the individuals
Integration Strategy:
Creating an environment where work and life seamlessly
blend (e.g., allowing pets at work, flexible office spaces).
=> Only effective for employees who hold the encompassing perspective
Protection Strategy:
Shielding employees from unreasonable connectivity
expectations and ensuring well-being.
Best Practices for Organizations (WLB)
●Recognize Individual Differences: Employees perceive work-life balance
differently, requiring flexible policies.
●Avoid One-Size-Fits-All Policies: Universal policies fail because employees
have different needs and preferences.
●Use Mobile Technology Strategically: Design mobile policies that support
work without overwhelming employees.
●Encourage Organizational Collaboration: Managers, employees, and IT
departments should work together to establish effective mobile usage norms.
Sundermeier, 2022
Four Phases of Digital Workplace Transformation:
- Inertia
- Experimental Repatterning
- Leveraging Causation Planning
- Calibration
Four Phases of Digital Workplace Transformation:
1. Inertia
●Companies initially replicated physical workplace practices in a digital setting
●Maintained fixed working hours and synchronous workflows with minimal
adjustments
Four Phases of Digital Workplace Transformation:
2. Experimental Repatterning
●Trial-and error phase where forms experimented with digital tools and hybrid setups
●Employees played a key role in suggesting tools and workflow adjustments
Four Phases of Digital Workplace Transformation:
3. Leveraging Causation Planning
●Companies formalised their digital workplace strategies
●Implemented structures long-term planning for technology, culture, and office spaces
Four Phases of Digital Workplace Transformation:
4. Calibration
●Organizations continuously assess and refine therapies digitally workplace strategies
●Hybrid models and remote work policies are optimised for efficiency and inclusion
Key Strategies for a Successful Digital Workplace Transformation:
●Align digital tools, organisational culture, and physical spaces
●Must work together to support asynchronous workflows and remote collaboration
●Encourage Experimentation
●Allow employees to test digital tools before company-wide implementation
●Develop a crisis response plan
●Have pre-defined strategies to enable remote work before a crisis occurs
●Adopt hybrid work policies
●Define clear guidelines for when employees should be in the office versus working
remotely
Companies are increasingly integrating AI unto business process to improve
efficiency and reduce costs. AI is applied across three major categories:
- Process Automation
- Cognitive Insight
- Cognitive Engagement
- Process Automation:
Using AI to automate routine digital and physical tasks that
follow structured rules (e.g., data entry, document processing => robotic process
automation, or RPA)
●Reduces the need for human involvement in repetitive, rule-based work
●May lead to job displacement in offshoring industries, but augments employee
efficiency in internal operations
- Cognitive Insight:
Uses machine learning to analyze vast amounts of data
and detect patterns, improving decision-making (e.g. fraud detection,
customer behavior prediction)
●Doesn’t replace humans entirely, but enhances business decision-making by
providing deeper insights
●Requires human expertise to interpret AI-generated predictions
- Cognitive Engagement:
AI-powered chatbots, virtual assistant, and
intelligent agents interact with customers and employees using natural
language processing
●Doesn’t completely replace human workers but automates routine interactions
●Allows employees to focus on complex problem-solving and customer
relationships
=> Don’t currently threaten customer service or sales jobs => Goal is not to reduce the headcount but handle growing numbers of employees and customer interactions without adding staff
Adoption Strategies for AI:
●Incremental Approach: Companies should adopt AI in small steps, focusing on
augmenting human capabilities rather than replacing jobs entirely
●Pilot Projects: Begin with pilot AI projects to assess feasibility and effectiveness
before scaling up across the organization
Challenges for AI Implementation
●AI Integration: One of the biggest challenges is integrating AI with existing business
processes and systems. Companies often face difficulty when scaling AI applications
across the organizations
●AI Talent Scarcity: A shortage of skilled professionals in AI, data science, and
machine learning
AI’s Impact on Jobs:
●Job Augmentation, Not Replacement: AI seen as a tool argument human work
rather than completely replacing it
●But leads to job replacement in with the process automation and cognitive insight =>
not with cognitive engagement because these are tasks that we humans can’t do
Integrating AI in Organizations
- Understanding the Technologies
- Creating a Portfolio of AI Projects
- Launching Pilot AI Projects
- Scaling AI Across the Organization
- Understanding the Technologies
●Before implementing AI, companies must recognise the different types of AI and their
capabilities
●Businesses must ensure they choose the right AI technology for their needs rather
than blindly following trends
- Creating a Portfolio of AI Projects
●Companies should develop a prioritised portfolio of AI projects based on:
-Business needs: What problems AI can solve?
-Feasibility: How easy or difficult is the implementation?
-Value potential: Will the AI initiative generate measurable benefits?
●Start with low-risk, high-impact projects, then gradually expand AI adoption across
the company
- Launching Pilot AI Projects
●Instead of jumping into large-scale AI transformation, organizations should begin with
pilot projects to test feasibility
●Pilot projects help companies learn from small-scale implementations before
committing significant resources
●Example: AI-powered chatbots or automated document processing before full-scale
AI driven decision-making
- Scaling AI Across the Organization
●Once pilot projects are successful, companies should focus on scaling AI solutions
●Challenges in scaling AI:
-Integration with existing systems
-Workforce adaptation and training
-Change management (convincing employees to adopt AI tools)
●Companies should invest in AI talent and optimise AI-human collaboration to
maximize long-term impact
