Anything to maximize productivity and accountability would be positive from a leadership perspective. Data driven decision-making would definitely make it easier to keep tabs on worker performance, but it may have a negative impact on the workers because they may feel as if they are being judged merely on statistics or even worse, as a statistic. On the other hand, I feel that having technology in place to automate meticulous or repetitive processes would be received in a positive light because it could free up time for workers to focus on other tasks that require a little more cognitive ability.
Working for two different organizations that are grant funded, it is very essential to keep thorough records on where the money is going and what it is being used for. Monitoring the results or impact that the programs have throughout the course of time is also necessary to sustain funding. If I were to implement some sort of data driven system in my current workplace it would probably have something to do with monitoring clientele, satisfaction levels and organizing customer suggestions into categories where they could be analyzed based on different sets of criteria. If there were enough feedback registered into the system to substantiate some sort of change then adjustments could be made accordingly.
The positive use of this sort of clientele database would be that it could raise awareness as to the inefficiencies or room for possible improvement within the work system. With enough feedback we could discern what is and what isn’t working from a customer standpoint. A computerized survey developed to retrieve certain feedback from certain customers along with a smart database to sort and store the information would be preferred. The negative side to this type of system would be that customers might feel inconvenienced by these types of surveys. It would be up to leadership to develop questions that would generate the most useful feedback and decide from whom to request the information. It would also be in there best interest to develop different sets of questions for different customers so that the system could be automated in this sense. Another negative is there is no real way to know if the data that you are gathering is genuine or not. Giving the customer some sort of incentive to participate in the survey could increase the amount of feedback you receive, but could skew the data if that is the customer’s sole motive to participate.
I agree with your comment where you said, "Anything to maximize productivity and accountability would be positive from a leadership perspective. Data driven decision-making would definitely make it easier to keep tabs on worker performance, but it may have a negative impact on the workers because they may feel as if they are being judged merely on statistics or even worse, as a statistic. I think technology is giving us new ways to collect,analyze, and interpret data, but at what cost? I often feel like I am a statistic. Can you imagine how our students feel when you put a number to their humanity? Don't get me wrong, I think technology has done wonders for education. I think the use of data to drive decisions is important as long as there is specific goals are in place for its use.
ReplyDeleteTechnology could greatly improve slack time in any system if it is implemented correctly. I couldn't have agree with you more about the tedious work that people have to do, such tasks sometimes could demoralize employees. Nice post!
ReplyDeleteI was most interested in your comment about not knowing if the data was genuine. This is a huge problem in some systems. There has to be a way to validate the data in cases where there is room for doubt.
ReplyDeleteGood post! How can we tell if the data is genuine? I was reading the comments and Prof. Newberry stated "there has to be a way to validate the data in cases where there is room for doubt". I always wonder with people fill out customer surveys, how honest are they? I believe that certain people can have a horrible effect on businesses because there surveys were filled in with false information.
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