Exploring and understanding innovative digital collaboration platforms in the workplace: a qualitative, comparative study

Abstract

COVID-19 brought home working for UK workplaces, necessitating rapid adoption of innovative online digital collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams©, thereby presenting challenges to workforces with little prior experience of such digital technologies. This research in progress considers the impact on diversely aged UK workforces and their working practices. A longitudinal study of two organisations uses qualitative data collection methods. Data collected between May-August 2020 indicates neither group of interviewed digital natives or digital immigrants are homogenous in their skills or attitudes, and despite a rich collaborative feature set, use was limited to video conferencing and ‘chat’ at the time. Long term flexible working may be offered; however, a lack of suitable IT equipment must not be the reason by which a digital divide is created in the workplace. The next phase of data collection will take place once enforced lockdowns have ceased, to identify changes that have subsequently occurred.