Autor: Stefan Süß

Transformative forces present companies with enormous challenges. At the same time, new forms of collaboration and new roles and responsibilities are emerging. Due to the risks associated with change, many employees hold on to old habits and work processes, which can slow down positive developments. The challenge for managers is to recognize this resistance, prevent it and turn it into acceptance or even proactive support.

As a result of digitalization, the dynamics and complexity of our work environment are continuously expanding, facing employees with increasing man-machine interaction and constantly changing work activities. This technical progress might introduces us to new or altered psychological strains for employees. Results of half-structured interviews show that digitalization leads directly and indirectly to new psychological strains. In order to prevent potential health consequences, it is crucial to consider new dimensions such as flexibility and monitoring in the work place risk assessment.

Steadily growing competition has induced business enterprises to look for possibilities of adjusting their structures to present market challenges. In this context the idea of “going-virtual” is constantly mentioned. That there are limitations to such procedures, however, it is shown by the fact that up to now the number of such virtual enterprises and departments respectively is minimal. The co-operation of 16 IT and multimedia firms serves as an example to show up the preconditions of making practical use of the “virtual potential” at least to some extent. Occurring problems clearly show that any decision for or against virtualisation can only be made in individual cases.