Last week I had an out-patient appointment for a cataract operation. On the previous day, someone from the eye clinic telephoned to confirm that I was still able to come. She addressed me by name.
I found this reassuring for two reasons. First, modern computerised record-keeping makes it easy to store information, and use it effectively, which had clearly been done. Secondly, the hospital staff member avoided the all too easy tendency to treat information as if it were detached from the people to whom it refers. I was “in the system”, but I remained an individual.
A few days earlier I had a telephone call from a firm with which I had placed an order for three tables. The caller had telephoned to let me know when the tables would be delivered. On this occasion, too, I was addressed by name. Reassuringly again, for this firm, my order was in the system, but I was a person, not just a customer number.
Hindrance ?
These examples are worth mentioning because they certainly do not reflect an approach that can be taken for granted. Too frequently sophisticated systems are used not to help people do their jobs more efficiently, but rather to take over from them. There are plenty of instances of this. How often do we find ourselves pressing button after button in response to multiple choices – and then discover that the employee we thought we were reaching is unable to take our call?
When this kind of thing happens, it is obviously frustrating to us as customers or users. I suspect it is equally frustrating to the employees operating the system. If they are intelligent, and at all interested in the goods or services which their employer supplies, there must be moments when they wonder why they are employed at all. They would be perfectly capable of providing information, understanding the queries raised by customers – and, perish the thought, making decisions, Instead, they are simply the servants of the system, charged with reading a script rather than using their brains.
Some people will argue that I am a Luddite, looking back to some ideal era when pen and paper and old-fashioned telephones were all that was available. I emphatically deny that charge. Modern technology has removed drudgery by transferring the mundane elements of many tasks to sophisticated machines, and making it possible to perform those tasks more efficiently – in short, to install effective systems.
That is what is possible. How sad it is, therefore, to see how often those possibilities have not been exploited. There are far too many cases where complex systems have indeed been installed, not to enable intelligent people to employ their time and effort by using their intelligence and judgment but rather to submerge them. Too often, “the system” has taken over. It is seen as a substitute for human judgment, not a means of setting that judgment on a firmer base. The result has been a serious dumbing down – which in many cases leads to boredom and apathy for the employees, and a bad service for the customers.
Why is this allowed to happen in organisations where the bosses are clever and intelligent, but apparently content to submerge their initiative, and weakly accept that there is nothing that they can do to change priorities, and ensure that people control the system rather than the other way round?
Status quo
I do not believe that enough people address these issues. Too many simply accept that this kind of change is inevitable, rather than recognising that such acceptance is an abdication of judgment and something likely to make the performance of the organisation worse, not better.
This, I believe, is part of a much wider tendency to belittle human judgment, and accept a situation where people themselves are belittled. Let me point to one manifestation of this: the ever-growing use of the term “human resources” as a substitute for people. Of course it makes sense for an organisation, when thinking strategically, to be concerned with all elements of the resources available to it. It makes no sense at all to handle recruitment, and conditions of employment, in a “human resources department”. The result is to perceive people not as people but as units of resource. I know this is now so common that I am probably arguing a lost cause. I can only say that I do not know anyone who thinks of himself or herself as a “human resource”. We are people and would like that to be recognised.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, UK.
Email : bill.kirkman@gmail.com
