Learning at work in the future economyTurku School of Economics 7.10.2016Eveliina Saari, Sari Käpykangas and Mervi Hasu, FIOH

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The Cinderella story – A SkilledWorker´s New Chance in theDigitalized Era

Introduction

•New ways of organizing work and services emerge alongdigital development

•Manual service work disappears, new horizons of work open up

•How are service workers involved in designing new jobs in the digital era?

•Our study highlights job level consequenses and opportunities of digitalization in health care organization; employee-driven and human-centered perspective

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Theoretical framework; humanagency – as relational, social participation• Agency as a theoretical concept to explore emergent motivational state of

employees as ’scouting’ for the competence, responsibility and role. (Archer 2003)

• The relational expertise makes it possible to work with others to expandunderstandings of the object of joint activity. (as expert knowledge is distributed across systems). (Edwards 2010)

• Individual agency and its relational interdependency with the social world is to consider how individuals think and participate in their work. (Billet 2006)

• Changes in agency can be traced in speech, discussions and interactivesituations, as employees habitually perform previously unused voice oraction (Halford and Leonard 2005)

• As face-to-face servant role fade away, and the user takes more activeagency along technology development, new kinds of agency of employeesmay arise in services; employees may become innovators, enablers, differentiators, coordinators (Bowen 2016)

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Previous empirical studies

• A nurse and and doctor implementing the use of neuromagnetometer (MEG) in the clinical activities of a hospital laboratory (Hasu 2005)

• Social service professionals implementing mobile reportingcontradicting their primary motive of helping their clients(Stam, Stamton & Guzman 2004)

•Mobile technology in home care work (Vuokko 2004)

• Backstage workers roles not studied much, when their workis being digitalized

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Research setting and data

• Eighteen typists interviewed

• Two workshop discussions, in which

1) A shared vision was co-constructed for the medicaldocumentation

2) An inspiring story of typist’s future work was created

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Medical documentation service

•Unit responsible of internal support services for the largestspecialized medical care organization in Finland

•Word processing services for 5 hospitals

• Employs 300 typists

• Type 2 million medical texts per year

•Decentralized process replaced by centralized ’typingfactory’

• Speech recognition technology may replace manual typingand change it into editing

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Evolution of technology-aidedservice work

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Manual & analog

typing

in clinics Digitally

operated

typing in

’factory’

Automated

integrated

serviticed

documentation

2016-18 ?

Ward

Operating

room

EmergencyOutpatients

departments

Change horizons of the typistsTypist type Motivation Change horizon

Quality

control editor

Ambitious in terms of quality and rapidity of

the service

Appreciates independent work without

interruptions

Eagerness to learn and take part of speech

recognition projects, expects editing work to be a

positive and more accountable alternative to

typing

ICT-bridge builder Has good ICT skills and perceives

grievances in usefulness, likes independent

work, but is happy to guide others as well

May become a lead user or trainer of the speech

recognition system to peers and MD´s

Clinically oriented worker Is interested in contents of the dictations,

wants to learn more on medical details,

experiences herself as a part of the care

process

May potentially discover new work between MDs

and the patients, interested to specialize into

medical glossary, humanization of the current

typing factory

Efficient homeworker Thinks that mobile working is combined well

with hobbies or family life. Virtual

connections to peers is not a problem

Ergonomics and security could be improved and

social support at work

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A story of the future typist in action

John’s oral presentation: I do not need to bother the doctor Pekka. He can

continue playing golf. We have a trained editor who can immediately say that

this is up the spout (there’s a clear mistake). He can check out the original

dictation and find out that the speech recognition system has recognized it

wrong and it should be something else. He can correct it himself, without

bothering any other person. Probably he can consult his colleagues in the

case (wawing his hands back and forth) and ask for help. And the case is very

quickly taken care of without having to bother the doctor. If there is a bigger

problem then, in that context, he consults a doctor. Such relatively trivial

cases, but not trivial for the patients, but trivial in terms of using time for the

trouble, can be solved in this same utopia in a jiffy. (The audience gave a big

round of applause)

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Findings

• The task of creating a story of future typist in action, triggered employees to invent their future work; qualitycontrol editor, who is authorized to correct even MD’smistakes in the texts for the patients

• Intervention and outsider discussants may encourageinvisible workers to innovate

• Intervention became an arena to make future job chancevisible and explicit

•Managers asked employees to join development projectsafter the intervention

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Conclusion• Employee’s role as a potential innovator of his/her future jobneglected

• The backstage worker can and must be involved in constructing future service work

• Customer’s and employee’s future paths should be designedsymmetrically

• Participants became aware of each others’ resources, capabilities and relations

•Management needs to be alert to identify and provideservice workers opportunities to foresee new work and roles, although it is as fragile and difficult as in the story of Cinderella when Prince Charming had to search for theowner of the glass slipper

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Discussion

•Digitalization/ computerization is foreseen to replace humanwork, 47% of employment in the USA, 36% in Finland in thefuture (Frey and Osborne 2013, Pajarinen and Rouvinen 2014)

Three strategic questions follow:

• How will service organizations organize their work in the future, based on digital platforms, in which anyone may pick a gick, oron permanent jobs? (Kenney, M. 2016)

• Will the service worker be treated as an active agent to bepromoted, cared for and educated or just a cost to be replacedby robots and automation? (Zysman, J. 2016)

• How do we educate workers into new qualifications alongdifferent technological alternatives? (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014)

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KUMOUS and SWiPE

Revolution of the service economy – Human being at the core of digitalization 2015-2017 (SERVICE REVOLUTION)

The project consortium consists of Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH), Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), and University of Helsinki.

www.digikumous.fi

Smart Work in Platform Economy 2016-2019 (SWiPE)

The project consortium consists of Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH), Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), and University of Helsinki.

www.smartworkresearch.fi

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Thank you!Comments?

eveliina.saari@ttl.fiTwitter: @EveliinaSaari,

#kumous #SWiPEfi