Digital culture has shaped everyday lives in significant ways
Today business landscape is evolving due to the advances in technology which is giving opportunities to the employees to innovate and derive new ways of performing the job roles.
The digital transformation is bringing many advantages to the business and industries in terms of cost reduction, performance improvement and operational efficiencies at an organization level (Demirkan et al., 2016) and is also redefining the workplace culture.
But at an employee level, the transformation from non-digital to digital culture has affected the working people life both positively and negatively. It is recognized that adoption of digital technologies by the small to medium to large sized organizations has developed a strong digital culture in the workplace which is contouring the professional and personal life of the employees (Buchanan & McCalman, 2018).
The thesis statement of this essay is to logically analyze how the digital culture in workplace has been influencing and shaping the lives of employees working in the different sectors in the United Kingdom. The slow emergence of digital culture in the United Kingdom is affecting the lives of the working individuals.
Thus, the purpose is to address how digital culture shaped daily lives in significant ways by focusing on the lives of working people. To address this, the essay will put forward the implication of digital culture for the UK employees as in the country the digital culture is slowing developing, it also discusses the influence of digital culture platform on their lives and drawback of digital culture on people lives.
Significance and Implication of digital culture for the employees
The prime implication of digital culture for the workforce is towards the mode of operation where it has changes the way how the work is being performed. In addition, the digital technology culture it has also interfered with the place of work where employees have been given power to work anytime and anywhere (freedom of place) (Cegarra-Leiva et al., 2012).
It is analyzed that the digital culture is significant for the employees as it has given them power towards freedom of place and work which is contributing them to achieve work-life balance to some degree.
The digital culture revolution has given the workers to balance the family and personal demands without compromising on the work with flexible hours and ease of reporting with email and apps and also ease of attending meeting through video chats/ conferencing (Kossek, 2016). Thus, it can be analyzed that the major implication of digital culture is seen on the efforts to improve the work-life balance of employees.
The digital culture has also impacted the way in which employees interact with managers, colleagues, customers and collaborate with them to achieve their performance targets, business goals and objectives. According to Buchanan & McCalman (2018), the digital culture adoption in banking sectors has affected the employee performance and their job satisfaction.
Similarly, it was found that in banking sectors the digitalization has easing out the payment and other bank processes making the life better for the employees and their customers (Cuesta, et al., 2015).
It can be analyzed that digital technology culture is significant for employees for their performance, motivates them and ultimately leads to their satisfaction from their job. It can be understood that digital culture is significant for the employee motivation, job satisfaction which is responsible for their overall well-being in the workspace and personal life (Kossek, 2016).
It is evaluated that effectiveness of digital technology culture in organization can develop into a significant competitive advantage.
In support of this, Microsoft workplace survey examined the employee empowerment, employee innovation and employee productivity under three different digital environments (weak, moderate and strong) and found that under the strong digital culture there was 20 % – 36 % increase in employee empowerment, 19% – 25% rise in employee innovation and 7% – 15% productivity increase (Heinz, 2018).
From this, it can be conferred that strong digital culture is positive for employee performance and employee engagement with their work and work environment. It can be recalled from the prior learning, that employee engagement positively related to the job satisfaction of employees (Karanika-Murray et al., 2015).
The digital culture adoption in several organizations has been effective in making job flexible in relation to when, where and how to work which has increased the level of employee engagement with work and making them more satisfied with their work, job and work culture.
This digital culture in adoption has developed an environment to gain more knowledge and skill development to making the employees more competent in their professional areas via employee development which is also positive for their career development. Thus, it can be stated that digital culture has been significant for the UK employees in achieving this job flexibility and making them more competent as a digital/ technical professional in the digital business enviornment.
Influence of digital culture platform on employees lives
The impact of workplace digital culture on the life of working people is direct and immediate. The influence is more positive than negative in the digitalized era (Shifman, 2013).
The digital culture has made the life of employees more comfortable in the context of how the employees are doing their jobs and given them tools to improve their work efficiency and accuracy.
This culture has been effective in keeping the employees motivated and committed to the allotted work and has created a high performing system (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2012).
This has also led to increase the level of employee empowerment which has increased the commitment in strengthening the professional capabilities in their role and responsibilities.
The increased satisfaction on job from their improved performance and achieving empowerment at work has lifted up the overall well being of employee in their professional life. It is considered that the life of working individual is supported by the digital culture with the aim to improve employee performance and efficiency while maintaining the work –life balance of the employees (Cegarra-Leiva et al., 2012).
Thus, it is also being understood that the digital culture influencing the employee life by making an effort to maintain a balances between the professional and professional areas of employee life.
The digital culture is also evaluated to have a major impact on the professional life in terms of making employee more competent in the this area as slow but growing digital culture adoption in majority of Small medium enterprises and large organisations in the UK have given them open culture to form external partnerships.
In addition, use of digital technologies has improved the collaboration among the cross–functional teams leading to more learning, knowledge development, and exposure and performance optimisation by the employee in its professional life (Kane et al., 2017). Thus, it can be considered that employee growth and development in such workplace has positive effect on its well-being which brings improvements in the quality of employee’s personal life.
On the other hand, it is also important to mention that technology has also taken a prominent role in the life of working people in the UK by increases use of smartphones and other gadgets and tools which has been gradually transforming the lives in a negative way by making the lifestyle of working people less active by providing comfort of work from home and also affecting the level of physical activity.
Different, it is also affecting the working individual’s life by creating pressure on them to develop their skills and knowledge for technical competence in order to keep their job secure in the digital culture revolution (Mohammadyari & Singh, 2015). Thus, concerning these negative impacts it is essential to identify, analyse and discuss more drawbacks of the digital culture that are in direct or indirect ways affecting the employee’s life.
Drawbacks of digital culture on the lives of working people
Though digital culture has high significance and positive implications for employees yet many organizations do not succeed in maintaining a balance among the digital culture and employees exposed to that culture. As a result of it, the employees are influenced and highly overwhelmed by strong digital culture.
It is analyzed that digital culture pose negative effective on the employee professional life as it is affects the relations among the employee, can affect employee performance if technology is not effectively utilized or is being misused (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2012).
Thus, employees who are weighed down by the digital technology culture in their workplace get easily dominated by technology (Spencer, 2017). Also, the technology can make the employee to spend more time with technological tools and make the employee addicted to its use in its personal life (Shifman, 2013). This behavior has reduced the focus on personal relationships by being connected with technology/ internet 24×7.
Several studies on effect of technology have also criticized the digital culture transformation in reducing the work-life balance (Kossek, 2016). On the different side, the job flexibility brought by the digital culture revolution is criticized as the employees have developed their habits of working in their comfort zone and in their set timeframe which is affecting the organizational etiquette and employee work quality in long term.
Researchers have also reported the difficulties towards the adoption of the digital culture in relation to the declining cohesiveness among the organizational members, risk of reputational damage, security of data risk and compliances to the workplace technology policy and related issues (Spencer, 2017). On the same side, it can be analyzed from prior learning that that digital culture poses certain disadvantages in relation to employee attentiveness, technology overpowering employees, technology misuse and affecting (tapering) employee relationship area.
On the other hand, some of the employees who are not overwhelmed by digital culture but may feel or be bothered by the use of technology in work tasks which is perceived to be non-receptive by them (Nimrod, 2018).
This is because technological changes are perceived to make their work difficult and efficiency under the digital revolution culture as changing old habits is difficult for them and developing new technical competence requires additional training and also increases their risk or fear of failure. Thus, there is difficulty for some group of employees to adopt the new technology behavior.
In totality, it is understood that the disadvantages of digital culture is both and direct on the lives of the working people. The dominance of technological driven digital culture has impacted on the physical life in terms of reduced physical activity and poor sleep pattern.
The digital culture is indirect affecting the employees’ life as it is gradually isolating from the work environment due to job flexibility and also affecting their engagement with their co-workers and other colleagues. In long run, if the employee does not learn to manage and balance its digital work culture and its self –control then this culture can lead to depression and anxiety which can affect the employee both personal and professional life (Nimrod, 2018).
Thus, it is evaluated that digital culture poses certain serious and negative effect on the working people life. It has modified their work behavior, decreased feeling of self-control and attention, interaction and work collaboration with other colleagues and has declined the effectiveness of technology for the notion of work-life balance.
It can be summarized that the dominance of digital culture is high on employees that is influencing their professional life in positive aspects in terms of their performance, work efficiency, job flexibility which is having positive outcomes like employee positive motivation, job satisfaction, and employee engagement and empowerment.
The improved professional life brings improvements in their quality of personal life. However, with positive aspects, there are also negative impacts of the digital culture on the lives of these working individual which is considered to affect the balance of work-life to a certain extent.
It is concluded that digital culture is supporting the employees to maintain a healthy and balanced association among their work life and personal life but to achieve this balance the working people needs to develop self-control so that the digital culture in the workplace do not disturb or overpower them.
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