Why workplace technologies must be beneficial to both employers and employees

Even before the pandemic, a Gartner study revealed that 50% of surveyed large employers were using nontraditional monitoring techniques. These techniques accelerated in the pandemic era, as businesses sought to track worker engagement remotely.

Algorithmic management in warehouses and call centres has made work more stressful, gruelling, and dangerous. Such technologies have eroded worker privacy, autonomy, and civil liberties.

A human-centred approach

However, simple and advanced technologies also nearly singlehandedly carried the world through the height of the pandemic. They maintained and expanded work opportunities, and ushered in a new normal for work-life balance, which was enabled by flexible work arrangements for workers of all socioeconomic statuses.

It's clear that workplace technology can improve worker well-being – or make it worse. Now more than ever, in order to compete globally and contribute to a fairer future of work, business leaders such as chief executives, information, technology, and human resources officers - in addition to general counsel - must work to ensure that the workplace technologies they adopt are implemented in a human-centred way benefitting both employer and employee.

By including workers in the process to identify and implement workplace technologies, employers can increase trust in new technologies, and increase employee retention and engagement in addition to productivity improvements and cost reductions.

Read the full article here.