Coakes explains that knowledge management enables employees to manipulate data under their control, including “the ability to acquire, document, transfer, create and use knowledge” (2006, p. 581). With so much information coming to employees, information overload is a real problem that puts the institution into two problematic situations for workers: worker limitation – the need to successfully store and retrieve vast amounts of information; and workers' ignorance—.
The lack of time within the office was mentioned as one obstacle, “(previous leadership) used to ask if there was anything we wanted to have a training, but I don't know, we don't have time, it's like every minute in the office is important to work on my own Excel and my own stuff.”. The office staff who understand how Google Workspace manages data feel the positive impact on their work efficiency and effectiveness when managing information. Under new leadership, the focus on professional development for the office staff is a top priority.
One of the things that should come out of this (quality improvement project) is what kind of professional development is needed for people in the office. Some of it will be position specific… the whole structure has to be looked at in terms of what we are. However, internal office communication was explicitly mentioned by ED as an issue the organization hopes to address quickly, “the real issue, I think, is communication…help us see what we have and what we don't have in basic communication terms, clear communication, two-way communication.”
And they're in the directory, and I can look and see who the principal is, but if I want to make sure that everybody on that list is still the right principal, the right name, I can't do that. Employees who are making it work have greater access to information and understand the digital tools at their disposal that put them in a position to create ways to positively impact their work while leaving the rest of the office to confused. A practical document management system improves the time and productivity needed to find information if the characteristics of retrieval needs are met (Zantout, 1999; Nastase et al., 2009).
10 reasons why Google Workspace is worth the upgrade,” the third reason mentioned is the employee's ability to collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and slides in personal, remote work environments, or the combination of the two (Holland, 2021) . Having the right technology for this collaboration is half the battle, as the owners of files must provide access to their peers within the office. In years past, when dealing with hard copy documents, knowing where to look for these documents was limited to at least one general location, the physical workplace; even though technology has increased, employees still had to visit the office computer to gain access.
He happily shares it when his colleagues ask, saying, “I'm not sure if my colleagues are happy with this workflow, but we still use it in the office.” Finally, the webmaster, probably the most digitally savvy person in the office, shares his thoughts on why there is a need for Google's collaboration tools within the organization. In 2005 we only had 98 (delegates)... in comparison to this time; we already had 193. This employee refers to the office's use of both American and British English standards for writing the date.
Zorn (2002) suggests that a critical variable in the successful implementation of an ICT system within an organization is the emotions of employees towards the technological tools and training offered. An employee's attitude toward using tools in the workplace evokes both positive and negative emotions, depending on the employee's previous and current experiences with the ICT tools (Day et al., 2012). The extent to which an organization supports its employees with its IT design, which includes training, good IT support, input on the technology tools and rewarding employees for using the technology, determines the level of job satisfaction and improved attitudes towards compared to ICT (Patrick & Laschinger, 2006; O'Driscoll et al., 2010; Day et al., 2012).
What are the goals that drive the technology processes and tools in similar organizations that affect communication externally with their members and internally with their employees. Choosing technology that is compatible with existing office technology allows it to quickly streamline current work processes. There is this balance between the people using the technology and the technology.
If an employer wants their employees to use the ICT tools in the way they were developed, formal training and technical support must be provided to all office staff (Damodaran et al., 1980). A user's ability to operate the technology effectively includes understanding of the ICT tools (Maguire, 2014) and greater awareness of the knowledge that drives those tools (Nastase et al., 2009). Organizations must develop a team that will continue to evolve with the technology and the organization's expectations in an exponentially changing digital world.
I really believe in educational leadership, and you don't just say we're all doing it because everyone else is, but you have to take it into account. And you know what the impact will be on the health and well-being of your organization. This interest and background allowed him to be very hands-on with AISA's IT design, looking for software tools that would allow employees to achieve results when they were not always in the same office.
And we're going to do it." This self-awareness allowed her to hire someone who would stay aligned with her vision when a. And we'll be able to quickly see what's effective, you know, because the data is there, and the data is easily recoverable, and it's going to save human hours in terms of input and all those things that wasted human hours. well. Essentially, this requires leadership to empathize with the employee as they embark on a new way of working while providing the technical and work-related support to be successful.
The foundation of the STS framework encourages organizations to place equal value on an organization's social and technical factors. The employee will accept it if the training is robust enough to focus on how, why, benefits and time to reflect on the technology and its impact on their overall workflow (Peansupap & Walker, 2006). The recommendations follow the socio-technical theory in its flexibility to meet the needs of the EARCOS office.
Each of the four nodes of the STS framework (goals, people, technology and processes) that I focused on was prevalent in the five findings. This will allow the organization to focus on its long-term organizational goals of increasing communications to member schools and marketing to potential new members. However, the goal of new technology in the office should not focus solely on what the organization wants to achieve; it should also include how these technological tools will contribute to employee workflow.
The frustrations that EARCOS personnel have without these protocols puts them in a position to expect access to be shared and demand access to the information they need to complete their work. Finally, the identification of standard information retrieval and storage practices prevents an organization's knowledge from developing into separate islands of information (Heath, 2003), resulting in employee ignorance of not knowing that information exists or employee finitude. not knowing where to find it (Zantout & Marir, 1999). Standardized office practices place great emphasis on an organization's information, data, and knowledge within an organization “ensuring that they are segregated and maintained” (Heath, 2003, p. 189).
They should be provided with a detailed timeline that holds leaders accountable for delivering this professional development opportunity that also includes expectations of the employee to learn and implement their new skills. Therefore, the training should be offered over several months, or throughout a year, to prevent any. Peansupap and Walker suggest that once leadership has committed to an ICT adoption or development decision, "there must be an ICT implementation process for providing personal learning and both technical and organizational support must be instigated simultaneously" (see Appendix D).
Employees should be provided with training on updated technology tools and given a say in ensuring that devices and software are compatible with the user's workflow and expected results. It must always be remembered that a socio-technical approach requires that the social be given the same importance as the technical. In addition, the design should increase all employees' access to information and improve their understanding of the value of the information they hold.
Information relevance is achieved when all employees who manage this information have knowledge of the data. And so these generational things are really, I think, going to affect schools in the next decade. The next open position at EARCOS must not be one of the current IT or webmaster positions currently filled.
Complete insight into the settings, preferences and options within ZOOM that promote collaboration with office colleagues and EARCOS members when working remotely. There are three major limitations when evaluating the effectiveness of ICT implementation within the EARCOS office. Second, I wonder whether an anonymous survey of all nine office members would have provided a fairer and more accurate picture of EARCOS members' feelings about the effectiveness of internal communications processes and their impact on their work outcomes.
In retrospect, now that the Philippines has implemented one of the strictest and longest lockdowns in the world, I can only wonder how tense some office members were during our Zoom interviews due to the personal and remote restrictions. A theory of the effects of advanced information technologies on organizational design, intelligence, and decision-making.
