Apps in Managing Work and Personal Life

Question: Discuss about the Apps in Managing Work and Personal Life. Answer: Introduction: Usage of different working skills with the help of supportive apps has all changed the nature of work at the work place (Landy and Conte 2016). Different technological advances to enhance the level of work to create a work life balance have dominated the nature of work. Work and the effect of different apps such as Cloud Computing have all changed the perspectives of a job nature. Moreover, it has created a matter of significant public debate in recent years (Lawrence, Leca and Zilber 2013). Some believe that the work nature is changing rapidly and this has created sufficient reasons for us to feel proud of being the part of such a changing era. However, some believe that the inceptions of technologies at the work place have created a threat to job security by allowing cyber attacks to the private data of the Company (Landy and Conte 2016). The never dying debates on the subject have created ample of curiosity about the implications of these changes on the organizational behaviour (Shore, Coyle-Shapiro and Tetrick 2012). However, implications of such a complicated issue may not find its foothold in front of employees, HRM, leaders and managers. Moreover, the coming future might produce significant implications of the changed nature of work. Implications for Employees There is a framework, which says that numerous forces are driving the nature of work (Shore, Coyle-Shapiro and Tetrick 2012). These forces are effectively bringing the change in the behaviour of employees. Technological advancement and the implementation of the same in various organizations across the globe have brought in a revolutionary change in the nature of work (Stuart et al. 2013). The framework clearly supports the fact that the technological advancement has revolutionized the work nature. The framework seeks to grab on the forces that are driving the inflation in the nature of work in employees. Various external key factors are influencing the nature of work. However, technology comes out as the most effective driving force to the changed nature of work (Blustein 2013). Technology is the one, which has always influenced the nature of work and the past years very efficiently support the fact. In the beginning of the 20th century, the inception of typewriter brought a revolutionary change at that time (Wattis, Standing and Yerkes 2013). It changed the manual mode of data entry to an electronic mode, which helped in reducing the burden from the shoulders of employees significantly. However, the inception of typewriter created the necessity of incepting the relevant knowledge skills in the organization (Levine and Sanchez 2012). It required an additional workforce, which can provide and educate employees on the application of typewriters. It also added an extra burden on the financial part of organizations. The inception of the typewriters has given way to the purchasing of the same in a huge amount to satisfy the need. However, it only covered a notable place in organizations across the globe. Manual working was still in practice but to a reduced level. The invention of computer and the inception of the same in organizations across the globe brought a revolutionary change in the work behaviour of the employees and the organizations (King et al. 2012). The inception of computer across the organizations produced a significant result, which is indeed observable from the open eyes. It created a huge drift in the manual type of working in the organization. Gradually, organizations started to adopt the technology to reduce work errors with efficient work in a comparatively lesser time span (Levine and Sanchez 2012). However, usage of computers has also allowed some unwanted access to the viruses. These viruses are extremely harmful for the organizational operations as it has the potential to corrupt some important files stored in the server. However, with the gradual passage of time, the technology has helped in structuring a force, which can counter the effect of those viruses by enabling the scan mode to check the available virus. These are anti-viruses, which help in finding out serious threats and then destroying them (Wattis, Standing and Yerkes 2013). The technological advancement is again changing its face and has shifted to the cloud computing and many more like this (King et al. 2012). These apps are changing the nature of organizational behaviour by bringing flexibility to the nature of work. Cloud computing is the one of those apps, which is revolutionizing the nature of work. However, few companies are there who have still not adopted the technology. The implementation of cloud computing in some organizations across the globe has brought some significant changes in the nature of work. Cloud computing refers to a process, which enhances the job experience by establishing a remote access in between the remote server and the local server (Levine and Sanchez 2012). It simply narrates the fact that one can handle the project by being anywhere other than the office premise. This is just a matter of building a relationship in between the local servers and the remote servers. The technology has taken the nature of work to a next level where employees can have freedom of working (Levine and Sanchez 2012). Employees can now work from home or from any other place with the help of cloud computing. The pressure of going to the office may minimize to a substantial level. However, technological advancement has also produced threat to the job security and to the confidential data of the Company (King et al. 2012). Cloud computing have widened the scope for the work nature but it has also allowed some serious access to the hackers. Hackers can now illegally establish their access with the confidential data of the Company by just cracking the secret key. It is very easy to conclude about the forces, which are driving the change of work nature. However, it is comparatively hard to calculate the implications of employees with the inception of technologies such as cloud computing in the organization (King et al. 2012). The inception of technologies with the help of apps might potentially give rise to the part timer or a freelancer kind of jobs (Levine and Sanchez 2012). These changes might produce a significant change in the work nature of the employee. Those who are working in the organization as a full time, they might feel fatigue at some point of time due to the workload. They might think of changing their job domain to a freelance kind of job, as it is also a potential source for earning money. However, doing a freelancer job might produce a potential threat to the job security. Organizations offering freelancer job might fool employees by not paying them for their hard work (Levine and Sanchez 2012). Part time job format do provide ample of options to the organizations as it enhances the work domain by adding dimensions with the help of part timers. However, for an employee, the part timer option might not produce a handy result. The process lacks the longevity, as the natures of work do not allow employees to settle with the organizational requirement (Wattis, Standing and Yerkes 2013). They might feel like working just for the sake of money. They might not find sufficient time to make themselves adjustable with the culture o f organization. This is indeed a threat for both the employees and the organization. Implications for the HRM Gradual changes in the work nature of employees have also influenced the work nature of the HRM (Hashim and Hameed 2012). If the implementation of changing technologies has helped them in making their operations easier, it has also added certain burden on their shoulders. The changed nature of work in the organizations across the globe have generated ample of necessity of hiring fresh talents to cope with the changed requirement (Chitrao 2015). Those who are already serving the organization, they need to be trained on the changed nature of operation across the organizations. For this, fresh hiring of the trainers to train the available workforce on the newly incepted technologies, finds a foothold position in the organization (Thite, Wilkinson and Shah 2012). Apart from that, it has also the responsibilities to maintain a work balance in between the various kinds of employees such as full timer, part timer and the freelancer with the help of some ethical guidelines. They need to educate the employees on the adherence of the ethical rules and regulations of the Company. Specifying the roles and responsibilities to various kind of employees also fall under the responsibility of the HRM (Singh and Singh 2013). Nevertheless, it has created ample of opportunities to the HRM. However, there are certain challenges to the HRM, which is about maintaining the diverse work force with utmost success. HRM practices of an organization speak about the quality, which the organization does possess (Kumar 2014). To attain the expected outcome and mitigating any possible challenges have created a potential task ahead of the HRM. Nevertheless, it is an undeniable fact that loads of added responsibilities have provided a bunch of fresh opportunities to the HRM, which might create certain challenges to them (Lilani 2015). However, there are certain opportunities, which the HRM can adopt to tackle with the changed nature of the work. The HRM can indulge them in activities like employment evaluation, which is helpful in analysing the performances. Evaluation process helps in rewarding those employees, who have served the organization with their utmost dedication (Thite, Wilkinson and Shah 2012). This indeed encourages employees for the target achievement. However, this also finds limitations in its application as there are bunch of employees who never take their responsibility seriously. To them, the evaluation program is of negligible significant. Talent acquisition is another approach, which the HRM can adopt to hire fresh and skilled talents to cope with the enhanced work demand (Singh and Singh 2013). Talent acquisition helps in designing the job description in an attractive and educative way, which can provide a perfect glimpse of the requirement (Lilani 2015). This step might help in avoiding bulk falling of aspirants for the interview purpose as the job requirements have clearly been stated in the advertisement. However, this does not hold any guarantee for the success rate in employing the correct set of employees. Implications for leaders and managers Changing nature of work is affecting the management significantly (Hanna and Latchem 2013). It has created the urgency to have a flexible nature to compete with the changing nature of work to produce effective results. The changing nature of work has produced ample of opportunities to the management. However, to capitalise on the generated opportunities is a serious challenge in front of the management (Bagley 2015). There are certain factors, which can produce significant weapon in coping with the increased demand. There is a requirement to define a measurable aims to the stakeholders (Paustian-Underdahl, Walker and Woehr 2014). This might help in protecting any negative outcome of the proposed project. However, a measurable move is tough to define and this might produce an uncalculated result to the management (Higgs and Dulewicz 2016). The changed nature of work adds loads of operations monitoring responsibilities on the shoulder of the management. It creates the necessity of adding some new work force to enlarge the monitoring personals. However, this again produces an added load on the financial department. There are some organizations, which do not believe in additional investment to cope with the changed nature of work. To those companies, it becomes difficult to have an efficient monitoring on the enhanced number of work force. Moreover, changed nature of work might not produce a profitable result in favour of such companies, which have restricted thoughts in making the required investment (Burnes and By 2012). The major problem that lies in front of the management, which wishes to acquaint with the changed nature of work, is to change the nature of those employees who have the tendency to be in the state of inertia (Grossman and Valiga 2016). There are employees who work in organizations just for the sake of earning money. Their stagnant tendency limits the resources for the counter action of the management with the changed work nature. Moreover, a significant number of employees are just wasting their time to earn nothing. They are occupying significant places in organizations. The management has the utmost responsibility to identify such employees who are just wasting positions in the organizations (Grossman and Valiga 2016). The management needs to take serious action against such identified useless employees. However, to trace out such employees is not easy as non-performance in employees may have some other reasons. Identifying non-performers is easy but identifying those who does not wish to perform is difficult. Nonetheless, management have a challenging task ahead and to meet with the increased challenge, it requires a serious action to mitigate the effect (Higgs and Dulewicz 2016). Recommendations: There are few recommendations for the improvement of organizational performance with the changed nature of work. The first point of recommendation is for Employees to produce a sense of responsibility into them towards the organizational values. The changed nature of work create an urgency for employee to acquaint them with the new technologies especially the cloud computing. They can achieve the same with the help of proper training on the application of new tools and the personality development on the ethical guidelines. The second point of recommendation is for the HRM to incept some training programmes into the organizations, focussing on the developmental skills into employees to cope with the changed nature of work. The third point of recommendation is for the Management to provide ample of support to all of the HR programmes with sufficient resources. Training programmes needs encouragement from the management. Management need to support the training programme with sufficient fund to encourage the HRM practices. Conclusion: The ever-changing nature of work affected by several external forces are providing bunch of opportunities to the employees, HRM and the management. However, this has also created significant challenges in front of them to cope with the changed nature of the organizational behaviour. Technological advancements with gradual passage of time have brought up respective revolutions to the organizational behaviour and the nature of work. The invention of typewriter has significantly changed the work nature of organizations. It replaced a notable amount of manual operating in organizations. However, the inception of computer technology in organizations has nullified the effect of typewriter largely. Now, the technology has taken a drastic change by giving birth to cloud computing. Cloud computing has widened the scope for a flexible work nature, which could produce a work life balance. It has enabled working from outside of the organization. However, there are certain glitches in the advancement of work nature. The modernised form of working might also attract some hackers who can actually theft the private data of the organizations. Nonetheless, the technological advancement has not only brought flexibility in work nature but it has also contributed in enhancing the threats for the organizations. Moreover, attracting hackers with the nature of its operation do provide supportive evidence in favour of the fact. The changed nature of work has brought several opportunities for the organization by attracting more dimensional employee to the organization. References: Bagley, C.E., 2015.Managers and the legal environment: Strategies for the 21st century. Cengage Learning. Blustein, D., 2013.The psychology of working: A new perspective for career development, counseling, and public policy. Routledge. Burnes, B. and By, R.T., 2012. Leadership and change: The case for greater ethical clarity.Journal of business ethics,108(2), pp.239-252. Chitrao, P.V., 2015. Strategic HR for sustainable business in technology driven 21st C.Indian Journal of Science and Technology,8, p.69. Grossman, S. and Valiga, T.M., 2016.The new leadership challenge: Creating the future of nursing. FA Davis. Hanna, D. and Latchem, C., 2013.Leadership for 21st Century Learning: Global Perspectives from International Experts. Routledge. Hashim, M. and Hameed, F., 2012. Human resource management in 21st century: issues challenges possible solutions to attain competitiveness.International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences,2(9), p.44. Higgs, M. and Dulewicz, V., 2016. Developments in leadership thinking. InLeading with Emotional Intelligence(pp. 75-103). Springer International Publishing. King, R.B., Karuntzos, G., Casper, L.M., Moen, P., Davis, K.D., Berkman, L., Durham, M. and Kossek, E.E., 2012. Workfamily balance issues and workleave policies.Handbook of occupational health and wellness, pp.323-339. Kumar, N.P., 2014. Human resource management in future an obstacle of champion of globalization.Human Resource Management,1(1), pp.49-57. Landy, F.J. and Conte, J.M., 2016.Work in the 21st Century, Binder Ready Version: An Introduction to Industrial and Organizational Psychology. John Wiley Sons. Lawrence, T.B., Leca, B. and Zilber, T.B., 2013. Institutional work: Current research, new directions and overlooked issues.Organization Studies,34(8), pp.1023-1033. Levine, E.L. and Sanchez, J.I., 2012. EVALUATING WORK ANALYSIS IN THE 21 ST CENTURY.The Handbook of Work Analysis: Methods, Systems, Applications and Science of Work Measurement in Organizations, p.127. Lilani, S.V., 2015. Human Resource Management-confronts in the 21st century.The Business Management Review,5(4), p.258. Paustian-Underdahl, S.C., Walker, L.S. and Woehr, D.J., 2014. Gender and perceptions of leadership effectiveness: A meta-analysis of contextual moderators. Shore, L.M., Coyle-Shapiro, J.A. and Tetrick, L.E. eds., 2012.The employee-organization relationship: Applications for the 21st century. Routledge. Singh, H. and Singh, B.P., 2013. Human Resource Management in 21st Century: Emerging Issues and Challenges.International Journal of Organizational Behaviour Management Perspectives,2(2), p.348. Stuart, M., Grugulis, I., Tomlinson, J., Forde, C. and MacKenzie, R., 2013. Reflections on work and employment into the 21st century: between equal rights, force decides. Thite, M., Wilkinson, A. and Shah, D., 2012. Internationalization and HRM strategies across subsidiaries in multinational corporations from emerging economiesA conceptual framework.Journal of World Business,47(2), pp.251-258. Wattis, L., Standing, K. and Yerkes, M.A., 2013. Mothers and worklife balance: exploring the contradictions and complexities involved in workfamily negotiation.Community, Work Family,16(1), pp.1-19.