Interactions in the digitalization of workplace spirituality at KUAS
| No. | Interaction | Context at KUAS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Workplace - Spirituality | Working in the educational sphere provides a tremendous sense of meaning to both the administrative employees as well as the associated teachers and professors (who usually also function as student’s supervisors). The same is true for the customers who feel that they can make personal progress in self-development. It is professed to be a satisfactory outcome to see how one’s students improve their skills and are better off after the educational experience than before. This defines the sense of belonging to the project of bringing others to excellence and defines the connection of employees to others, be this to the customers (the students) or other employees. The more meaningful this process is perceived to be, the stronger the organizational commitment, job satisfaction and the better the performance (to the degree as this can be gauged and influenced) |
| 2 | Workplace - Digitalization | In recent years, there have been several digitalization innovations that have tremendously changed the work atmosphere at KUAS
|
| 3 | Digitalization - Spirituality | Being constantly plugged in to the digital world means that one is non-stop potentially connected to others and to information. This can foster digital identity creation (i.e. Instagram or TikTok avatars) and meaning-making (i.e. “you are the content you produce”), and it can also increase access to spiritual features (e.g. sermons or pep-talks on YouTube). As for KUAS, it was found that there might be a dual impact: (i) on the one hand, it enabled employees to both work from home as well as from abroad while still being connected to others from the workplace, (ii) but at the same time, it also meant that one carried work and the associated relations wherever one goes |
| 4 | Psychology - Digitalization | Some of the IT infrastructure at KUAS was very old and employees were frustrated with them, so there were strong incentives to modernize the systems and at the same time to implement new work modalities to become much more adaptive and agile. This led to the implementation of novel platforms and technologies (cf. no. 2), but also led to even greater frustration since the implementation came along with significant challenges. Many of the online teaching platforms like WebEx often did not work or the personnel had difficulties with them, which provoked negative evaluations from the students, further exacerbating a frustrating circle. Depending on the connection, Citrix for remote work only responded very slowly, which increased work times for the same number of tasks. Perhaps most detrimental for employee morale was the integration of the new student administration platform called CampusNet. Many things in the system did not work, which led to a tremendous increase of work for all employees and technical tasks that would usually not be in their job descriptions. This led to a step-by-step onboarding of this system, which had the negative side-effect that many tasks had to be stalled and could not be processed right away. The main mode of online communication, apart from e-mails, occurred via Skype for Business. One could also install the app voluntarily on one’s personal phone (with positive and negative consequences). However, the main challenge was this solution was that there were a lot of technical difficulties with Skype and thus, at the time of this writing, the KUAS technical team decided to switch the business communication from Skype to MS Teams. This means that employees are now eager to find out whether this will increase or decrease their daily technical problems |
| 5 | Psychology - Workplace | Psychological outcomes at the workplace are, amongst others, tightly tied to features of the workplace design and work modalities. In the digitalization efforts of the past years, there have been strides to become more flexible with remote work but also with having flexible work spaces, which entailed that employees did not have a specific desk they could call their own, which came along with more mental flexibility but at the same time with more logistical and IT-infrastructural problems (i.e. desktops and docking stations that did not work with certain laptops). The digitalization pressures in work and workplace designs came from different digital demands
|
| 6 | Psychology - Spirituality | Spirituality is a personal construct and thus there are various individual factors leading to people having a stronger or weaker access to spirituality. In order to instantiate a solid level of wellbeing, motivation and health both in private life as well as at work, some levels of spirituality in the form of purpose in the job, connection to others, and self-transcendation is ubiquitously necessary. Although there is a natural inter-individual variation, the digitalization pressures at KUAS had a paradoxical effect, namely an increase in formal connectivity (i.e. more meetings, more e-mails, more calls, more online-events) but less personal closeness, which led to feeling more ostracized towards oneself, other employees, and the company, hence impacting wellbeing and motivation |
| No. | Interaction | Context at KUAS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Workplace - Spirituality | Working in the educational sphere provides a tremendous sense of meaning to both the administrative employees as well as the associated teachers and professors (who usually also function as student’s supervisors). The same is true for the customers who feel that they can make personal progress in self-development. It is professed to be a satisfactory outcome to see how one’s students improve their skills and are better off after the educational experience than before. This defines the sense of belonging to the project of bringing others to excellence and defines the connection of employees to others, be this to the customers (the students) or other employees. The more meaningful this process is perceived to be, the stronger the organizational commitment, job satisfaction and the better the performance (to the degree as this can be gauged and influenced) |
| 2 | Workplace - Digitalization | In recent years, there have been several digitalization innovations that have tremendously changed the work atmosphere at KUAS Teaching online (via apps, WebEx and Zoom) Online-meetings (via WebEx, Zoom and MS Teams) Collaboration Tools (via Miro Boards) Remote work (via Citrix) New platforms (i.e. CampusNet, a new student administration application) |
| 3 | Digitalization - Spirituality | Being constantly plugged in to the digital world means that one is non-stop potentially connected to others and to information. This can foster digital identity creation (i.e. Instagram or TikTok avatars) and meaning-making (i.e. “you are the content you produce”), and it can also increase access to spiritual features (e.g. sermons or pep-talks on YouTube). As for KUAS, it was found that there might be a dual impact: (i) on the one hand, it enabled employees to both work from home as well as from abroad while still being connected to others from the workplace, (ii) but at the same time, it also meant that one carried work and the associated relations wherever one goes |
| 4 | Psychology - Digitalization | Some of the IT infrastructure at KUAS was very old and employees were frustrated with them, so there were strong incentives to modernize the systems and at the same time to implement new work modalities to become much more adaptive and agile. This led to the implementation of novel platforms and technologies (cf. no. 2), but also led to even greater frustration since the implementation came along with significant challenges. Many of the online teaching platforms like WebEx often did not work or the personnel had difficulties with them, which provoked negative evaluations from the students, further exacerbating a frustrating circle. Depending on the connection, Citrix for remote work only responded very slowly, which increased work times for the same number of tasks. Perhaps most detrimental for employee morale was the integration of the new student administration platform called CampusNet. Many things in the system did not work, which led to a tremendous increase of work for all employees and technical tasks that would usually not be in their job descriptions. This led to a step-by-step onboarding of this system, which had the negative side-effect that many tasks had to be stalled and could not be processed right away. The main mode of online communication, apart from e-mails, occurred via Skype for Business. One could also install the app voluntarily on one’s personal phone (with positive and negative consequences). However, the main challenge was this solution was that there were a lot of technical difficulties with Skype and thus, at the time of this writing, the KUAS technical team decided to switch the business communication from Skype to MS Teams. This means that employees are now eager to find out whether this will increase or decrease their daily technical problems |
| 5 | Psychology - Workplace | Psychological outcomes at the workplace are, amongst others, tightly tied to features of the workplace design and work modalities. In the digitalization efforts of the past years, there have been strides to become more flexible with remote work but also with having flexible work spaces, which entailed that employees did not have a specific desk they could call their own, which came along with more mental flexibility but at the same time with more logistical and IT-infrastructural problems (i.e. desktops and docking stations that did not work with certain laptops). The digitalization pressures in work and workplace designs came from different digital demands Students wanted more online access Students wanted agility and online education Employees wanted flexible work hours Employees wanted to work from home (remote work) Professors and teachers wanted to try new classroom concepts (i.e. flipped classroom) Supervisors and students wanted more informal meetings via Zoom for shorter sessions |
| 6 | Psychology - Spirituality | Spirituality is a personal construct and thus there are various individual factors leading to people having a stronger or weaker access to spirituality. In order to instantiate a solid level of wellbeing, motivation and health both in private life as well as at work, some levels of spirituality in the form of purpose in the job, connection to others, and self-transcendation is ubiquitously necessary. Although there is a natural inter-individual variation, the digitalization pressures at KUAS had a paradoxical effect, namely an increase in formal connectivity (i.e. more meetings, more e-mails, more calls, more online-events) but less personal closeness, which led to feeling more ostracized towards oneself, other employees, and the company, hence impacting wellbeing and motivation |
Source(s): Author’s Work
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