- INTRODUCTION
Employee motivation is the key parameter for the organization’s effectiveness, this paper explains about how digital technology affects the level of motivation of employees, which includes the social media culture and the fast adaptation towards digital skills. The boom of the growing digital technology will be constant and eliminates organization or the individual if the adaptability fails. Thus either replaces or removes the source, brings down the motivation level. Age and experience of the employees also comes into picture when the learning of the new technology is questioned. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a negative impact; it also has a positive impact on employees. For example the advancement in the technology fastens and eases the job or the task.
- IMPORTANCE OF EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION IN AN ORGANIZATION
Motivation level of the employee is directly proportional to all the major human resource functions and also the productivity of the employee. In order to increase the motivation of the employees many organization comes up with the performance appraisal and reward concepts. Even the compensation and benefits came into the picture in order to provide the positive work place. Dealing with employee motivation is the crucial factor in the field of human resource management. The main thing we have to understand in employee’s action is the reason behind it, by doing that the motivation can be done which in turn improves the performance of the business and also make the employees more engaged in their work. Such employees can easily adopt to change and has the ability to handle uncertainty. High motivation helps them to be a better performer and great problem solver, it can also increase creativity and innovation, which is profitable for an organization as human resource is the important asset of the organization.
1.2 BENEFITS OF EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION
- Increased Productivity
- Employee Job satisfaction
- Positive Employee – Employer relationship
- Commitment towards organization goals
- Employee effectiveness and Efficiency
- Quality in individual contribution
1.3 DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
It is said that digital economy grows 10% every year, which recommends the human resource to revise the skill set, which in turn makes the crucial key for an organization to motivate employees to go for a change. The training cost is less than the recruitment cost, henceforth organizations provides training in new technology which gives employees a change from their usual job nature and it is also a technique to retain job satisfaction; later the organization picks the best out of the rest through internal recruitment.
Let us look the evolution of digital technology in modern workplace which gradually replaced the traditional work culture. In person meetings have been changed into video conferences, hand written report have been replaced with digital documents, records storage is been done through cloud storage and advanced data storage technologies. Which reduced the need for office infrastructure as employees started working from home and on vacations.
There are number of digital technologies that are booming these days in every field that is taking up the world to be the best place to live in, the following are the major digital technologies,
- Artificial Intelligence
- Internet of things
- Block chain
- Machine Learning
- Digital Commerce
- Robotic Automation process
As this above mentioned technologies will be the future every other field is slowly moving into digital era. Let us look deep into how the digital technology influences the field of human resource management, particularly employee motivation.
3. APPLICATION OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION
HP’s Aruba has conducted a global study, which reveals that the productivity and motivation is increased in employees who is working in digital environment also has higher job satisfaction and overall provides employees emotional well being. 97% of the respondents has mentioned that if their company doesn’t improve the technology it would easily be knocked down by its competitors. Though it may not be true but still the employee’s perception towards the technology advancement may put their organization down. Further increasing the technology can also attract better talents which will increase productivity and increase motivation.
3.1 IMPACT OF IOT IN EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION
As internet of things has become the part of everyone these days especially in job environment. For example there are smart meters which can record and display the details o the application used by the employees, which segregates the important areas and pattern of the usage. In order to monitor the types of application that is accessed and the amount of time used in each application, there are applications available which produces comparative reports among employees. This is easier for employers to decide on employee’s performance and helps to find the motivation level of the employee. There are applications which track the total number of hours the employee has worked which can be sent to each individual to analyse their working pattern and so they can monitor their work life balance.
- IMPACT OF AI IN EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION
AI can help us interact with technology better by automating the routine task and let us focus on the tough and specific tasks. This can make employees to work better in digital environment. For example, there are some features in email to categorize, prioritize, appointment confirmation, notification of the important events and planner options etc. Even there are optional replies available readily based on the context.
In advanced level of AI, the chatbot can be used in an effective professional way of communication by the smart filter, the inbuilt software feature. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) which is designed by a team from Stanford University, which can help to analyse the behaviour pattern of the individual and the factors that drives negative thoughts in them, nit only that but also influence positive thoughts and behaviours the other way around. This is been implemented in Deloitte for the employee’s emotional health.
3.3 BIG DATA LEADS TO INCREASE IN EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY
Data is the important factor in any organization and handling the data becomes the crucial factor in any organizations. Digital technology like big data helps to make this task easier. There are plenty of data regarding employees which in turn are the reason to analyse and reward them. For example attendance, activity, task completion, timeliness etc can be taken into account and with the help of available analytic tools the actionable intelligence can be performed. By all this analysis the organization can alter and design the suitable work place curriculum and also in a customized way of approach.
4 ALARTS OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
Digital technology has the ability to measure the aspects which can’t be measured previously, getting to know how each and every employee get to spend their time. That also helps to prioritize one’s work and task. Though the same digital technology can distract employee from their work at times it made their job easier. At some situation the productivity has been reduced rather increased. In order to compensate the distraction they encounter the employees tend to work faster in cost of their time pressure and efforts but that doesn’t in most cases instead end up reducing the productivity of the employees.
When there is series of messages persists, the task gets slow down which decreases the efficiency of the employee and the ability of decision making. There are experiments that show the ability reduction based on the previous series of tasks. Overloaded individual tends to confuse things. In which the digital technology has a major role that has effect on decision making process, planning, time management, attention towards task are part of it. If tried to be correcting such might risk in getting stressed.
As the employees are engaged with digital technology and as discussed earlier that might lead to distraction the employee tend to spend personal digital time or an unwanted digital time, which will drag the quality time of the employee that reduces the productivity and also makes individual to be digitally addictive.
Digital addiction is nothing but algorithm that gives the users an urge to stay connected based on their own interest which is collected based on the previous usage data of the users. Every social media platform uses the data to track the user’s interest to track their buying behaviour of the customer.
This digital addiction is an unhealthy behaviour in a work place that consumes productivity of the employees. Also damages the well being of the employee both physically and emotionally. Following are the negative outcomes of emotionally unstable condition of the employees.
4.1 Lack of sleep:
Due to the technology addiction and off working timing work the individual lacks he sleeping hours or the patterns. The alertness gets reduced once there is no adequate sleep which makes them tired because of the exposure of blue light which is emitted from the mobile devices.
4.2 Less physical movement:
As technology connect people virtually, the real in person meetings has been reduced dramatically which caused less movement in turn leads to less physical movement. Due to constant engagement with devices individual lack family, friends connectivity in real which drives them loneliness that causes work as burden. Work life balance has no meaning as they are always on.
4.3 Mental damage:
Due to the continuation work and distractions individual tends to be affected mentally due to the time management constraints. FOMO (fear of missing out) becomes the major mental disorder for people who gets distracted and finds difficult to complete the task on time. Anxiety leads its way when one task has been replaced with other as a form of sacrifice, though there are opportunities readily available.
With all the above applications and alerts we have seen how the digital technology plays a major part in employee motivation below will be discussion how an employer can drive the motivation of the employees with the help of digital technology.
5. FUTURE SCOPE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY IN EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION
The more the benefits are the more the defects are, as the technology increase the efficiency of the skill might have a challenging situation. Sometimes the focus on the performance o the employee might not be that sharp as that on technology that can lead to question one’s own ability which will have an impact on motivation of the employee. The technology as well as people should always go hand in hand to cultivate a healthy work environment and a non addictive nature.
5.1 THE PERKS AND PERILS OF WORKING IN DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT
Earlier work life highly hectic with long days, stressful environment then technology made it easier for employees to stay on every time without have o be physically present in a desk or a cabin. American Psychological Association has provided a data that 53% of employees work over the weekends, outside the scheduled working hours is 52%, even during sick time there are 54% employees work. That shows the more the employees are given freedom the more their motivation increases and more the productivity gradually.
The more increase in technology the more change in culture and mindset of the individual. It tends to become their habit to be self motivated. In other hand it can lead to Digital addiction, which in workplace is highly dangerous. Digital addiction will reduce the productivity of the employee.
6. CONCLUSION
A highly motivated and skilled employee is essential for any organization which seeks increase in productivity. In this aspect motivation is nothing but the efforts that are self willed directed towards organizational goals. Digital technology plays a major role in these days in any sector, hence the ways and which employee can be motivated with the available and advanced digital technology has been discussed deeply in this paper. The high the employee motivation higher the productivity and as we are moving towards the digital era employee must be ready to accept and adopt the change. There are plenty of digital technologies that can do wonders in enhancing employee motivation. Thus increasing the motivation does not only increases productivity, creativity but also the employees trust towards the organization.
Bring your best out 