Topic 189

Employment: electronic employee monitoring, telecommuting, ergonomics and health, job obsolescence and retraining, online job search, employee surveillance by Roger

The modern working system depends a lot upon computers and modern technology in all sorts of areas as everyone throughout the world as come to know. It was not long ago that people were complaining about computers or machines taking over the workforce over from humans and performing not only the jobs but even better quality.

Employment in general during this “panic period” or the period where machines or computers in particular were first being introduced and people took a more dim view of it. Slowly society since those times has begun to realize and fully accept technology especially the role it came to play in helping the employment sector. Also employment in general has greatly been affected by technology in general and in all fields of employment affecting it both in a positive and negative way such as electronic monitoring where the employee might use security cameras to see what his/her employer has been up to during their working hours or their the employers activity especially on the internet on the sites visited.

This of course stirs up debate and mostly anger from the employers claming that it is an act of the invasion of their privacy and they take this as mistrust by their employees. It is common practice nowadays for companies to establish a guideline of some sort for its employers to follow by when working but these a just created to keep workers limited to an extent thus reducing many of the workers freedoms which they still have a right too despite being in the work area.

There is a lot of help that technology can bring to workers such as in business where they can choose to use telecommuting or teleworking where long distance traveling can be reduced through methods such as digital/video conference sent over from one party to the other without the need to travel saving traveling time and money.

Telecommunications was developed in the 1980’s and used by certain people to stay home instead of going to work by staying home to work and the telecommunications do the traveling by keeping the person home in constant contact. Other areas such as ergonomics and health are part of the somewhat negative aspect to the introduction of technology into the workforce area and employment itself for the human body was being affected here just as the work being performed.

But the effects ranged because peoples bodies were different in connection to their age so forth so that was studied more in detail to reveal the connection between the physical toll on the body while working especially using technology such as the computer where one is required to sit or be in a certain position for a while thus causing the body to react naturally for the overstressing of certain limbs over a period of time.

Despite these setbacks or negative truths behind technology, the generation that gave rise to the belief that computers or technology was a untrusting thing to include in the workforce or the employment sector were changing their minds or initial thinking patterns since there was fear of job obsolescence or losing their jobs to more skilled or workers with more expertise as they lacked it especially in the technological area where newer workers had more knowledge and experience working with these new technology so there was a lot of retraining of these workers who lacked the basics or knowledge so then it was easier to compete and at least have a advantage too.

Online job searching was a major gain for all workers of all sorts of fields for it provided them with the opportunity to search for vacant or wanted ads or just seeking employment almost anywhere on the globe by just looking it on the internet whether in the comfort of your home or elsewhere instead of the old way of searching through appointments or writing formal letters etc. that sometimes an online interview was necessary to get the job without the need for a physical interview where it is the contact of person-to-person contact between the employee and the would-be employer.

So during a span of years the computer in particular as a new technology emerged as a powerful tool in helping improve the employment sector in a large way that it not only changed the very nature of jobs itself but also the way jobs were being pursued. Employment took a huge leap but there were still setbacks or flaws that existed in itself that would still need improvement but still it stood out that employment had indeed changed from what it was known to be.

Through this boost or change in employment of course comes changes many other aspects of society such as trading/business, health, and other areas because employment is the key factor as it counts for all the workers who are working in their field of work. Thus the increase in one may also mean the increase or demand too so it also provides job opportunities thus it a demand in other areas besides the employment sector which benefits the nation.

The nation may not necessarily be affected by it but also other nations globally too since technology these days contain and spread information it may benefit nations worldwide too as we live in the age of information and the spreading often is really fast especially with the development of the new technological developments in all forms of electronics from computers (internet) to the express mail service or telegram.