Every office has one—the holdout who sighs, “I’m just not good with technology,” then avoids learning to use the latest office tools.
Technological change in the workplace sparks tension between resistors who grumble and drag their feet and co-workers who rush to embrace new tools. One Luddite can hobble the work of an entire team. But bringing laggards into the fold requires understanding the psychological obstacles they face, helping them see the benefits of new technology and giving them enough time to learn it.
Attorney Paul Cannon was surprised when some employees at his Houston law firm fought his decision to replace obsolete software they’d been using. Some resisted watching training videos. Others turned subversive, continuing to store files on their computers instead of the cloud.
A few obstructionists blamed the new system for the tiniest of errors and insisted on dumping it. Others tried to use it the same way as the old one, only to find that importing an old address list into the new system generated so many errors that Mr. Cannon had to hire two helpers to clean it up.
“One thing I learned from all this is that a lot of people are afraid of change, because they’re afraid of making a mistake,” Mr. Cannon says. “They know how to do their jobs under the old system. Even if it’s cumbersome and inefficient, it’s comfortable. And comfort equals security.”
Sarah Boisvert tailors training methods in her Santa Fe, N.M., maker lab to suit the learning styles of users studying 3-D printing, robotics and other skills. Photo: Tira Howard
Some resistors blame new technology for piling on grunt work that should be handled by others. Doctors in a 2005 study of three hospitals had to start using electronic medical-records systems. They complained that entering prescriptions and treatment orders themselves, rather than relating them to nurses, was demeaning. The backbiting and power struggles with nurses led one doctor to resort to sabotage. He prescribed hourly blood counts on all patients in perpetuity until the system crashed.
Employees who resist too much risk getting fired. Adapting to new technology has become essential in most jobs.
Still, struggling with complex new technology can spark fears of looking incompetent or losing status among peers, posing a threat to the user’s sense of identity, according to a study published in March in the Journal of Management Information Systems.
“Some people are too embarrassed to admit they don’t know how to use the technology, so they don’t use it at all,” says Lindsey Pollak, author of “The Remix,” a book about managing a multigenerational workforce. Others attempt workarounds. Remember the early Mac resistors who found ways to install Windows on their Apple machines?
Age isn’t as big a driver of tech resistance as many people believe, says Gerald Kane, lead author of “The Technology Fallacy,” a book based on a four-year survey of 16,000 participants with Deloitte and MIT Sloan Management Review. Some 76% of people in their 50s say it’s very important to work for an employer that is a technology leader. That’s not much less than people in their 20s who say the same thing, the study shows. And older employees tend to outperform younger ones at seeing strategic ways to apply new programs, says Dr. Kane, a professor of information systems at Boston College.
Brian Thackston, who has trained dozens of employees to use new digital tools, says some young workers are too eager to disrupt things and embrace the latest tech fads. Photo: Maximilian Franz Photography
Persuading seasoned workers to add new gears to machinery that already works can be a tough sell. But younger employees can be overeager in attempts to disrupt the status quo. “They fall into a shiny-new-thing syndrome,” says Brian Thackston, director of marketing and operations at an Annapolis, Md., law firm who has experience introducing new software at a previous employer.
People learn in different ways and need to be introduced to new tech in ways they can grasp. Sarah Boisvert, founder of Fab Lab Hub, a nonprofit fabrication lab in Santa Fe, N.M., recalls a mechanic who wanted to use a 3-D printer but had trouble getting started. To ease him into it, she gave him a manual task, cleaning out clogs in the printers.
“Watching this guy’s hand unclogging things was like watching a dancer,” says Ms. Boisvert, author of “The New Collar Workforce.” He soon declared the printer a cool machine, and started learning to use it to make the truck parts he wanted.
Workers also need to see how new technology will benefit them. When senior executives at a Canadian company set a splashy rollout of a new system for managing relationships and interactions with customers, “all the leadership was super-excited and the tech team was geeking out over it,” says Larissa Lowthorp, a consultant who helped with the change.
The 85 customer-service employees assigned to learn it, however, had grown used to the 20-year-old software being replaced. “For them, it was like going from Jurassic World to the Jetsons,” she says. They were paid partly by the number of calls handled, and many feared the new system would slow them down. Only after the potential benefits, including the ability to see far more customer data quickly, became clearer to them did they begin to embrace it, says Ms. Lowthorp, founder of TimeJump Consulting in St. Paul, Minn.
If a peer is struggling with new technology, express empathy and ask if you can help, Ms. Pollak says. “You might say, ‘Hey, you seem to be struggling with this. I found this really helpful tutorial you might like, or I asked so-and-so for help.’ ”
What if your boss is the Luddite? Some managers still insist that employees print out emails and deliver them to their desks. Ms. Pollak advises treating bosses like clients, paying attention to their habits and comfort levels.
Make helping the business the focal point. “You can say, ‘I need to get this report to the client by five o’clock. I have this software that can do that. Can I show you how?’ Talk about the results you can achieve,” Ms. Pollak says.
When Employees Resist New Technology
* Show empathy. Resist any urge to criticize or label them.
* Offer to guide them step-by-step through the functions to allay anxiety or fear.
* Explain how the new tools can be helpful in their jobs.
* Suggest video tutorials, verbal coaching or hands-on practice tailored to their learning style.
* Arrange help with their workload to allow time to master the new systems.
* Expect productivity to slow down for a while until everyone learns the new tools.
Work and Family Mail
Q: Thanks for your April 8 column on how to handle rookie employees. You offered some interesting ideas on incentivizing people. However, I’ve also dealt with employers who are biased against millennials. Regardless of how hard we’ve worked or how much value we’ve added, they say we’re not experienced enough to deserve a promotion or a raise. How can a younger employee prove his or her worth?—K.K.
A: Assuming you’ve worked at a company long enough to qualify for a raise or promotion, based on its usual career tracks, being told you lack experience isn’t a good enough reason to deny you. Ask for more specific feedback on your shortcomings.
Make sure you understand the boss’s priorities and goals, and how your performance affects them. Ask your manager if there’s anything else you can do to help achieve them. Are you providing updates on your work in the way, and at the time, the boss wants them? Make it impossible for your manager to ignore the value you add by documenting your accomplishments and bringing them up in conversations about your performance.
If your company offers other opportunities, network internally to explore your options. Try to build relationships at all levels by showing genuine interest in others’ work and helping others reach their goals. Bosses respect people who have strong internal networks.
Tensions of the kind you cite sometimes spring from differences in style. A helpful book is “Please Understand Me,” a classic on personality types. To gain insight into how others see you, try “Insight” by Tasha Eurich.
If none of these strategies works, it might be time to find a new job.
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