How IT can help companies to do more with less
President Obama recently spoke in Allentown, Penn., about the economy, and more specifically the job market. He discussed reasons hat employers are hesitant to hire more workers. In an excerpt from the speech, he raised the issue of worker productivity as one of the culprits:
“… But part of what’s happened also among a lot of companies is they figured out how to squeeze more productivity out of the workers that they’ve got; they’re working people longer hours, they’re doing more overtime, or not, but either way they’re producing the same amount of product or providing the same services without hiring more people. And that’s something that we’re going to have to really work on.”
Doing the same or more with fewer resources is the mantra of any recession, and generally, the people who are working a little harder or longer are happy to have jobs when so many of their colleagues don’t. Of course, we all like to view this as a temporary situation because it’s unsustainable for individuals to work long hours with no pay increases (or even pay decreases) for many months or even years.
But the key here is businesses—unlike government agencies, educational institutions, or charity organizations—need to turn a profit. So increasing worker productivity will continue to be a hot button even as the economy improves, and IT will play a big role.
Business leaders have felt the pain of telling valued employees they have lost their jobs, they have increased their debt, and many aren’t profitable, so I don’t expect a major hiring frenzy any time soon. What I do expect, though, is they will evaluate information technology that will help existing and more limited future employees become more productive.
It’s up to IT leaders to position themselves as a strategic, must-have piece of any business decision. They need to engage business-unit leaders, understand the productivity issues they face, and demonstrate how IT products and solutions can help.
This could be something as straight-forward as improving the productivity of downtime. For example, consider traveling employees. By offering broadband wireless access on the ground and Internet access from airplanes, these employees can do more with the time that normally would have been downtime.
I get more done while I’m enroute to the airport in a cab or in flight 35,000 feet above ground than I do during the day because I’m connected, focused, and uninterrupted. But without connectivity, that work (which requires online access and research) would have to wait. That delay, in turn, could impact client deliverables, sales proposals, or new product evaluations—and all of that negatively affects revenue. The flipside is to hire another person to handle the items I address while on the road.
Salespeople equipped with mobile access to inventory and customer data can handle more sales calls in a day and close more deals because they don’t have to go back to the office to enter orders. This translates into needing fewer salespeople to handle the same number of customers.
Upon implementing a unified-communications architecture, many companies reduce the number of receptionists required. Why? Because UC systems turn what used to be isolated islands into fully integrated locations. One receptionist can handle inquiries for five or 10 locations, transferring calls, sending instant messages to find someone who can handle a call, or paging employees at different locations.
On the surface, these examples don’t do much to improve the job market. But, it is the reality of the competitive business market, and I don’t see any executives hiring just for the altruistic goal of improving unemployment figures.
That doesn’t mean there is no hope for this job market. It means the jobs are shifting. So, while there may be fewer receptionist jobs, there will be more application development or IT professional-services jobs. Training and education for the hot jobs will become paramount.
Employers will hire in required areas, and they will buy IT products and services that help productivity.
Moving forward, it’s imperative for IT leaders to become more strategic. They must make IT a revenue generator and cost cutter for the company, rather than simply a cost center. By expanding the IT resources available to solve business problems and increase employee productivity, companies will become profitable and more competitive again.
As that happens, companies will have more revenue to invest in new business lines (thus, creating new jobs while expanding the business), and the barrier for entry for startups will be lower (thus creating new jobs from completely new businesses).
Bottom line: Increasing employee productivity through the use of IT is a good thing, and one that ultimately will expand the job market and improve the economy.
