Amon Sa­ba Saakana

As at­tached as we are these days to our smart­phones, tablets, lap­tops and desk­tops and their abil­i­ty to con­nect us to the World Wide Web, it is worth re­mem­ber­ing that 20 years ago, few of us had mo­bile phones or had even heard of the In­ter­net.As the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the World Wide Web grew, ser­vices like Web-based e-mail, in­stant mes­sag­ing and search en­gines be­came the on­line des­ti­na­tion for thou­sands of Caribbean peo­ple. Hot­mail, Ya­hoo!, Skype, Ama­zon and Google have be­come fa­mil­iar names.

To­day, the ad­vent of so­cial me­dia, gam­ing, mu­sic, movies, In­ter­net bank­ing, on­line re­cruit­ment and a host of oth­er ap­pli­ca­tions means that more and more busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als spend an in­creas­ing por­tion of the day con­nect­ed to and in­ter­act­ing through the In­ter­net.Of­ten, they do not even need to use cor­po­rate re­sources to do so. Con­sumer-friend­ly tech­nol­o­gy, such as mo­bile phones, lap­tops and tablet com­put­ers, means that we can con­nect to the cy­ber world at our will and plea­sure, by­pass­ing cor­po­rate fire­walls, cor­po­rate In­ter­net use poli­cies, snoop­ing boss­es and net­work ad­min­is­tra­tors.

Face­book sta­tis­tics sug­gest that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 36 per cent of T&T is ac­tive on their site alone. If we take the world­wide av­er­age of just over five hours and 30 min­utes spent per day on so­cial me­dia and con­ser­v­a­tive­ly al­lo­cate an ad­di­tion­al 30 min­utes for In­ter­net bank­ing, mes­sag­ing and gen­er­al Web brows­ing, one could ar­rive at a rea­son­able con­clu­sion that at least 30 per cent of em­ploy­ees are spend­ing some pro­por­tion of these six hours every day not work­ing for their em­ploy­ers. Or at least, that is one way of con­sid­er­ing it.

Cer­tain­ly, while there re­mains a need for or­gan­i­sa­tion­al poli­cies gov­ern­ing time-wast­ing at work, the re­al­i­ty is that In­ter­net-en­abled de­vices are chang­ing the very na­ture of work it­self.Yet, to para­phrase Shake­speare, con­sumer-friend­ly tech­nol­o­gy marks a tide in the af­fairs of men, which tak­en at the flood by busi­ness lead­ers can ac­tu­al­ly be­come a source of in­no­va­tion, greater ef­fi­cien­cy and high­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Re­defin­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty

Ac­cess to the In­ter­net through con­sumer de­vices has fun­da­men­tal­ly shift­ed how peo­ple in­ter­act and how or­gan­i­sa­tions do busi­ness. Tech­nol­o­gy is not so much hin­der­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty as chang­ing the pa­ra­me­ters of what it means to be pro­duc­tive.One of the biggest changes in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is the blur­ring of lines be­tween pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al as peo­ple utilise the same tech­nol­o­gy for work as well as for pri­vate af­fairs.

The same mo­bile tech­nol­o­gy that gives work­ers ac­cess to per­son­al e-mail or al­lows them to pay bills and cred­it cards on­line is the same tech­nol­o­gy that en­ables the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains of re­mote work­ing. Un­der the right con­di­tions, an em­ploy­ee's pri­vate Black­ber­ry or iPhone can be­come an on-de­mand busi­ness tool.

A home In­ter­net con­nec­tion can fa­cil­i­tate cor­po­rate ob­jec­tives. The pow­er of so­cial net­works, like Face­book and Twit­ter, are dri­ving new in­no­va­tions. These tools im­pact how busi­ness­es reach new cus­tomers, deal with com­plaints, con­nect with sup­pli­ers and fa­cil­i­tate in­ter­nal col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Many or­gan­i­sa­tions are al­ready pig­gy-back­ing on con­sumer tech­nolo­gies to cre­ate in­no­v­a­tive busi­ness tools, par­tic­u­lar­ly as more and more dig­i­tal na­tives-those for whom com­put­ing tech­nolo­gies are an in­dis­pen­si­ble part of nor­mal life-en­ter the work­force. For ex­am­ple, some com­pa­nies are cre­at­ing mo­bile apps which al­low staff to ac­cess every­thing from cus­tomer in­for­ma­tion to va­ca­tion plan­ning on their per­son­al mo­bile de­vices.

The in­creas­ing ex­pec­ta­tion of em­ploy­ees is that they must be able to use tech­nol­o­gy to man­age their work as eas­i­ly and seam­less­ly as they use it to man­age their per­son­al lives. If or­gan­i­sa­tions do not strate­gise for this blur­ring of cor­po­rate and pri­vate bound­aries, they risk los­ing their most pro­duc­tive and tal­ent­ed staff.

Fail­ure to ac­knowl­edge the re­al­i­ty of shift­ing tech­nol­o­gy us­age and be­hav­iour can in­ad­ver­tent­ly en­cour­age dan­ger­ous breach­es in cor­po­rate se­cu­ri­ty as em­ploy­ees se­cret­ly use pub­licly avail­able tools to make life eas­i­er.

Blurred lines, clear con­se­quence

At the most fun­da­men­tal lev­el, busi­ness­es need to be­gin to think about peo­ple and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in new ways. Em­ploy­ees are a vi­tal source of cre­ativ­i­ty and in­no­va­tion with­in or­gan­i­sa­tions. Tap­ping in­to this cre­ativ­i­ty through a cul­ture of staff de­vel­op­ment, en­cour­age­ment and re­ward is key. Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty can no longer be mea­sured in sim­plis­tic terms, such as time spent at work.

New fac­tors, like over­all out­put, cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, per­son­al de­vel­op­ment, cre­ativ­i­ty, in­no­va­tion and con­tri­bu­tion to wider team or busi­ness-wide goals and tar­gets, must now be con­sid­ered.This blur­ring of the lines be­tween per­son­al and cor­po­rate tech­nol­o­gy calls for a shift in how busi­ness­es view staff, work­flows, in­no­va­tion, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and tech­nol­o­gy it­self.

Bevil Wood­ing is the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer at Con­gress WBN, an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion and an In­ter­net strate­gist with US-re­search firm, Pack­et Clear­ing House.

He is al­so the founder of­Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, cre­at­ing Caribbean-fo­cused dig­i­tal con­tent, apps and train­ing pro­grammes.

Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing

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