Twenty-first International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

The global pandemic necessitated real-time experiments in large scale changes to work and working environments, at a time workers and organisations were under unprecedented stress. Pre-existing cracks in many team cultures, and therefore their performance, widened under the weight of becoming fully digital workplaces for many working from home. Industry 4.0 technologies offers the promise of how work can be reconfigured in order to achieve the optimal integration of uniquely human talent and performance, and machines. Where employees are no longer a ‘human resource’ cog in an industrial era wheel, but a source of higher cognitive skills, such as communication, cooperation, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, decision making, and complex information processing. Research of employee performance during Covid-19 highlights, however, these critical success factors of team performance are profoundly influenced by remote, digital workplaces. This session showcases how the modalities of positive psychology, emotional expression, appreciative inquiry and trauma informed practice, optimise the holistic wellbeing of digital teams at work, optimising their performance, and that of their organisation.