It is pointed out that 'the productivity of internal experts has declined due to the introduction of computers'

by rawpixel.com

Introduction of computers has been said to have greatly improved the productivity of workers and it is difficult to advance work without using computers in the 21st century. Calvin Newport, who is an Associate Professor at Computer Science at Georgetown University , pointed out that introduction of such a computer was "a factor in reducing the productivity of professionals within the company."

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Mr. Newport is conducting research mainly on how technology such as computers have influenced society. Mr. Newport was interested in the research that Peter G. Sassone , a researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology in the middle of the research, conducted in the latter half of the 1980s.

In 1985, Mr. Sassone conducted a survey on labor productivity for 20 offices in five major US firms. The initial purpose of Mr. Sassone's research was to measure "how much the computer that began to be introduced to companies in recent years has caused productivity improvement" in the past. However, Mr. Sassone was forced to change the research policy at once.

Sassone said, "With the data and analysis I gathered, I noticed some important insight into the cost of introducing computers to the office." In measuring office productivity, Mr. Sassone measured not only the overall productivity of individual workers but also the skills to carry out their duties. In conducting the survey, Mr. Sassone said, "In order to handle skilled task professionals and manager-class talent inside the company, a huge amount of time is a" simple task that can be carried out even by workers with lower job skills " It is said that they have noticed the fact that they are spending on ".

On whatever reason this phenomenon is occurring, Mr. Sassone has identified various factors. And it is said that there was introduction of "computer system introduced for improving productivity" as a major reason why experts in the company have been pursuing simple tasks.

With the introduction of a new computer, experts and managers can now perform small administrative tasks that traditionally required specialist support staff, without the help of support staff. As a result, the introduction of computers brought cost cuts to businesses by reducing the employment of support staff, while the experts and managers increased the time spent on administrative tasks. In other words, less time is spent on work that skilled workers should focus on, and instead they have been doing some of the work that the support department had done so far.

Mr. Sassone noted that experts are doing business that does not require skilled skills, "Marketing department experts spend more than one day a week on charts and graphs for presentations" "We are spending more than 25% of the working hours of the day to process routine tasks that bankers have occurred with customers."

The proportion of simple tasks that deprive the professionals of the time they can work on their jobs is increasing from the time the computers were introduced to the company. In addition, Mr. Sassone took a step forward and considered from a financial point of view whether the trade-off between reduction of support department by computer introduction and reduction of time to concentrate experts on tasks is appropriate. As a result, Mr. Sassone concludes that "Reduction in the support department has a loss in terms of cost".

Certainly, savings in support staff can somewhat save labor costs, but lowering the productivity of high-level employees seems to have a loss that outweighs the benefits of support division cuts. Mr. Sassone discovered that it is possible to produce the same output as it is now, even though the number of personnel in the experts and manager department is reduced, while increasing the number of personnel in the support department for the office that was studied.

It is possible to reduce the proportion of experts and managers with high salary levels by increasing the number of personnel in the support department and by increasing the time that experts and managers can concentrate on professional work. In contrast, employees in the support sector, which are increasing, have relatively low salaries, so even if the total number of employees increases due to employee restructuring, it will result in cost savings as well. Sassone said, "In a typical office, we can cut costs by 15% by reorganizing our staff and improving professional productivity."

Mr. Newport says, "The introduction of developed technology is not enough for organizations to be streamlined, it is important to create an organization that considers how important the owner of professional skills can focus on important work I claim it.