An online monthly research publication by the Ivey Business School 

Previous Issues of Impact | Register for Impact

Volume 15, Number 7
July 2009

e-Competent

Nicole Haggerty finds that an important new work skill is emerging in the virtual workplace

In May 2007 Ontario Government employees were surprised to find that they were unable to log onto Facebook. The government, like a number of other organizations, had decided to ban the use of the popular social networking site at work.

Ivey Professor Nicole Haggerty knows that employees can waste a lot of time on things like Facebook, but her research shows that online activities and resultant skills are important in the workplace. “When an organization bans something for short term productivity reasons, it may be stifling the development of capabilities that are valuable in the long run,” she says.

Just about everyone today works in a setting that involves some degree of online communication. Even when the communication is with someone across the hall, less and less of it is being done face to face. Employees are coping with a growing array of technologies, and organizations are investing huge amounts in virtual work arrangements.

In her research Haggerty explores the intersection of technology and learning. In one stream of her research, she and her collaborator Dr. Yinglei Wang look at the skills and abilities that people need to be effective in the virtual workplace. In a number of studies, one just completed and the others published in Information Systems Journal and Information & Management, they have developed the concept of “virtual competence.”

Virtual competence is a new skill set that’s emerging as employees engage with the technologies and collaborative tools now found in the workplace. It first requires a high degree of self-confidence in one’s ability to use technologies and communicate with people remotely. “If you have confidence in your ability then you are more motivated to persist through the challenges of working in online, virtual realms,” says Haggerty. “If you lack confidence in your ability to use the tools, you won’t engage in that kind of work, or you’ll look for other means.” Virtually competent people also have the technical ability to understand and use a rich set of features of the various technologies they’re faced with.

Online social skills are also important. Using all caps, for example, is the email equivalent of “shouting.” Those who are virtually competent know how to use punctuation and other techniques to make their communications friendly and effective. “Whether you intend to or not, the way you use technology creates social relationships,” says Haggerty. “People have different degrees of skill in creating an appropriate social environment online.”

Haggerty and Wang have examined the idea of virtual competence in a number of settings. One area is knowledge sharing among employees, an important challenge for most organizations. Her research shows that knowledge sharing happens more easily when people build up their skills for virtual competence. “As an employee I may have the desire to share knowledge, and I may even know what I want to say,” she says. “But if I don’t have the virtual competence to do it online, with distant collaborators using communication technologies, I probably won’t be able to share knowledge effectively.”

Haggerty and her collaborators, including Wang and Zeying Wan, have also found that students’ virtual competence will predict their success in e-learning courses. Students with low virtual competence tend to struggle in an e-learning environment and are less able to focus on the content. This came as no surprise to Haggerty, but she was surprised to find that students with a lot of prior experience socializing online became dissatisfied if an e-learning program offered no outlet for social interaction.

In another study Haggerty and Wang looked at a large number of managers, all Ivey grads, across a wide range of organizations and roles. She found that every manager in her sample had a job that required at least some virtual work. She also found that virtual competence had a positive correlation with both job satisfaction and job performance.

As companies invest more in technologies and collaborative tools, they need to be mindful of the kinds of employees and skill sets that are best suited for today’s workplace, says Haggerty. “Managers should take a more active role in understanding how work is getting carried out in the organization, and how to help people develop the skills to be really effective as much of their collaborative work becomes more virtual work.”

Managers should also recognize that the capabilities people develop using daily life technologies are often transferrable to the workplace. “Managers need to pay attention to these skills,” says Haggerty. “The interesting, collaborative, socially oriented things that people do in their personal lives may actually create a foundational skill set that’s valuable at work.”

Professor Haggerty's Homepage