Executive Summary

 Over the years, technology has transformed our view of the world. Technological change has led to the creation of amazing products and services, putting connectivity to people and information from around the world at our fingertips.

 Technological innovation has made the discovery of many functional and utility devices like the computer and the smartphone possible. All these revolutionary changes have made our lives faster, easier and more fun. However, not everyone shares the same positive outlook when it comes to technology. People are often anxious or sceptical about the benefits that new technology brings.

The purpose of this research study is to understand the relationship between people’s responses to, and acceptance of, technology and its impact on their performance in the workplace and in their personal lives. The research studies international trends observed in academic journals, trade publications, commercial articles and social media, with a special focus on North American workplaces. A primary research study was also conducted in order to better understand people’s prevailing attitudes towards technology using a screening tool designed by internet : intelligence, an e-Business service provider who hypothesized that only 15% of people are actually comfortable with technology, whereas the remaining 85% are either anxious, avoidant and/or addicted to technology. The survey categorizes people into ‘anxious’, ‘avoidant’ and/or ‘addicted’ based on their relationship with technology. The sample population was chosen to be representative of the Canadian national full-time employee population. The report also includes a critical assessment of the survey tool employed and suggest possible alterations to the tool.

The study concludes that employees attitudes towards technology are impacted by the ease of use and the benefits that the technology brings. Primary research findings indicate 100% people are either anxious, addicted and/or avoidant of new technology. These attitudes have a direct impact on their performance in the workplace. While people may be addicted to familiar technologies such as smartphones and social media, they are also anxious and avoidant when they encounter new hardware or software. The study also reports that there exists a technology understanding gap in employees that often offsets the performance benefits of technology.

Introduction

Technology is changing everything around us at breakneck speed, in ways we have never imagined before. This introduction of new technologies has not just made our personal lives more convenient and connected but has taken over our professional lives as well.

Workplaces are nothing like they were a few years ago, they have been transformed by rapid technological advancement. In person meetings have turned into online conference calls, email inboxes are being replaced by team chat and collaboration apps and typewriters and registers have been replaced by word processor and spreadsheet software.

However, not everyone shares the same positive outlook towards new technologies. People are simultaneously enthusiastic and anxious or avoidant of technology. They are satisfied with the convenience that technology brings to their lives and at the same time confused by the complexity of using these new hardware or software. The advantages that this new technology offer such as more capacity, efficiency, & performance are at least partly offset by the time users have to spend learning to use it. In such situations, it is easy to feel like this technological change is happening to us and not for us.

The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of people’s responses to, and acceptance of, technology and its impact on their performance in the workplace and in their personal lives. The research looks at global trends observed in academic journals, trade publications, commercial articles and social media, with a special focus on North American workplaces. In order to better understand people ‘s prevailing attitudes towards technology, a primary research study was conducted using a screening tool designed by internet : intelligence, an e-Business service provider. The survey helps categorize people into one of two possible categories in terms of people’s use of, and attitudes about, technology: comfortable or uncomfortable. The following indicators cause people to be classified as uncomfortable with technology: ‘anxious’, ‘avoidant’ and/or ‘addicted’. It tests a hypothesis that claims only 15% of people are actually comfortable with technology, whereas the remaining 85% are either anxious, avoidant and/or addicted to technology.

The paper continues as follows. The next section reviews secondary data pertaining to people’s attitudes towards technology and resulting workplace performance. Subsequently, we describe the primary research methodology and present the research findings including

the data analysis and hypothesis testing. This is followed by an assessment of the screening tool. Finally, we draw conclusions regarding the connection between people’s relationship with technology and job performance and their personal lives based on the insights drawn from primary and secondary research.

Part 1 – Secondary Research

This section of the report includes a distillation of the prevailing beliefs related to how people’s attitude towards technology affects their performance at work and their personal lives based on insights drawn from commercial articles, academic journals, and trade and industry publications supplemented by research conducted using multiple social media vehicles. The report begins by looking at the relationship between employee’s attitudes or ‘affect’ and work performance, it then looks at factors that affect people’s attitude and acceptance of new technology and their prevailing beliefs and finally, the potential impacts of technology on professional and personal lives.

The relationship between attitudes and performance

In her paper titled paper titled, “Why Does Affect Matter in Organizations?”, Sigal Barsade, a management professor at Wharton writes that employees’ attitudes, sentiments, and general outlook can have an impact on job performance, decision-making, innovation, turnover, collaboration and leadership. Barsade, an academic whose research is focussed on emotions and work dynamics, says an emotional revolution has occurred in the past 30 years as both academics and managers discovered that employees’ emotions play an integral role in what goes on in organizations. She also outlines that these emotions can be contagious and one person’s negative attitude towards their job or some aspect of it can spread throughout the team and affect the team’s performance as a whole.[i]

A paper by Barry M. Staw, Robert I. Sutton, Lisa H. Pelled in Organization Science titled “Employee Positive Emotion and Favourable Outcomes at the Workplace” indicates that positive emotion helps employees obtain favourable outcomes at work, with evidence of better performance in annual appraisals and larger salary increments as well as increased support from co-workers and managers.[ii]

People’s attitude towards technology

In his doctoral thesis at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Fred Davis proposed the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to explain system acceptance or rejection. He anticipated that system use is a response that can be explained or predicted by the user’s motivation to use the system, which, in turn, is directly influenced by the actual system’s usefulness in terms of features and capabilities.[iii]

He concluded that people make decisions about whether or not to use technology based on the effort that they require to put in to use the new technology and the possible benefits that could arise out of them using this new system. A later extension of TAM included behavioural intention to use new systems. It discovered that both perceived ease of use and utility of the new technology had a direct impact on behavioural intention, which in turn led to the actual use of the new technology.

A digital attitudes study conducted by BBC and Doteveryone reveals that ‘society is not just divided into tech-lovers and luddites (a person opposed to new technology), on the contrary, people hold these apparently conflicting attitudes simultaneously.’ A number of people are even disturbed by their reliance on technology in their everyday lives. 52% of respondents to this study said that they wouldn’t be able to get through all the things they need to do every day if they didn’t use the internet because of the reliability on the internet for information. 80% of the respondents said that they value the convenience and new opportunities and knowledge that technology brings to their lives.

Social media shows #techaddict[iv] and #techaddiction[v] have been trending in America, Canada and India. It shows posts and articles about people becoming slaves to social media and smartphones. A survey by Office for National Statistics states that young people spend about one-third of their leisure time on devices. The survey also revealed that middle-aged people spent one fifth of their leisure time with technology in 2015.[vi]

On the other hand, about 24% of the respondents to the digital attitudes survey reported that they felt pressurized to use social media and the internet in order to stay relevant in their social groups.[vii] The study also reveals that respondents are limited in their appetite for innovation and that there is an understanding gap when it comes to new technology. They do not want technology to create disruption if it occurs at the expense of jobs originally handled by humans or results in a disadvantage for the underprivileged.  89% of the respondents said they felt disempowered by a lack of transparency in how online products and services operate, they wanted clearer terms and conditions and would like to know how their data is used but couldn’t find out.[viii]

‘Tech Anxiety’ is a new term being used across blogs and social media to express their concerns with their reliance on technology and the unknown capabilities of new tech. The burden to keep up with the most modern technology has caused many individuals and professionals to second guess themselves and often feel one step behind new technology. Dystopian Sci-Fi show ‘Black Mirror’ portrays the negative impacts technology can have if we are not careful with what we allow it to control. This has added to people’s concerns and anxiety toward becoming tech-reliant.[ix]

Technology and its impact on performance and personal lives

Technology benefits organizations in a number of ways. It facilitates communication and coordination across geographies, improves efficiency and productivity and reduces expenses.

However, there are consequences to our technology reliant lives. Although new technology offers a number of benefits such as increased efficiency, capacity and performance, those benefits are at least partly offset by the time users spend on learning how to use it. It requires people to learn new skills and change their behaviour, a process which is highly time consuming[x]. On the other end of the spectrum, certain technologies have become highly addictive and monopolize most employees time and attention.

According to a research study conducted by Pew Research Center on attitudes and impacts of technology, people in executive and managerial roles acknowledged the compromises that come with increased technology. These employees expressed that the increased connectivity that technology brings leads to longer work hours, increased job-related stress levels, and low work-life balance as they are unable to disconnect from work when they’re at home or spending time with family.[xi] Hashtags such as #NationalDayof Unplugging and #DigitalDetox are being used on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter to encourage people to take time off from technology.[xii]

So, while companies may benefit from tech-enabled increased productivity, it all depends on the employee’s acceptance and proper use of these new technologies. Simply releasing new technologies isn’t enough. Employees still need guidance on proper use and integration of these tools into their daily work. Additionally, the benefits that the technology brings need to be clearly communicated as technological change requires behavioural change which is only possible with employee buy-in. Without addressing these concerns, integrating new technologies will not result in improved performance.[xiii]

In terms of the impact of technology on people’s personal lives, Chris Koepfer, in his article in Production Machining Magazine says that we are facing a phenomenon called “heads down” where parents are face down in their devices while their kids are interacting with some other device that is created for them. He says that this is not a generation specific thing, and this trend is observed across baby-boomer, millennials and GenZ alike. He predicts that as time goes by, this phenomenon will be the new normal.[xiv]

Part 2 – Primary Research

This section of the report outlines the research methodology, the primary research findings and an assessment of the survey tool.

Methodology

1. Procedure

This research study was conducted between October 02^nd and October 06^th, 2018, using the Tech Stress Screening Tool designed by Lee Godfrey, Mindfulness & Wellness Coach and Managing Director, internet : intelligence Inc.

The tool was designed to classify people into one of the 3 following categories with regards to their use of, and attitudes about, technology: ‘anxious’, ‘avoidant’ and/or ‘addicted’.

2. Population

A sample population of 30 full-time employees in Canada was chosen to represent the Canadian full-time employment population and their attitudes towards technology.

2017 StatCan Labour force figures of Canadian full-time employment population grouped by gender and age were used in order to correctly represent the demographic groups present in the Canadian Full-time employed population.

According to this data, the break-up of the full-time employment population by age group and gender is as follows (estimates in thousands, rounded to the nearest hundred)[xv].

The following sample population was chosen to administer the screening tool in order to maintain high fidelity to the research population.

To improve the quality of responses from survey respondents, candidates were chosen from a diverse set of industries and backgrounds.

The industries represented are: