Does technology improve productivity?
Silly question, isn’t it?
Well no. If you could monitor what your staff are ‘working’ on all the time, you would find that many book holidays, contact their medical practitioner, look for theatre schedules – and so on … all in your time.
They work more productively on task perhaps but the time they gain they treat as their own.
I am not suggesting you put sophisticated monitoring software on their PCs – they would only use their phones… but that you recognise these unintended consequences of introducing technology.
The same is true of other technologies – what we expect to gain we often do … but we might lose other elements to the technology – and the net gain might be less than we expect. When you do the sums, factor in unintended negative consequences. If the sums still work, go ahead. if the negative consequences don’t arise – you get a premium!