Remote Intelligence And Its Impact On Leadership And Management

Remote Intelligence and Leadership

Management functions of Remote Employees

Discuss about the Remote Intelligence And Discuss The Leadership And Management Approach.

Today the world has become truly globalized with the use of technology and internet. There has been a change in the management style due to globalization. Today, the employees of large companies like Google, Amazon, etc. are spread across the globe. It needs a great deal of leadership to manage the employee. It would be correct to say that remote intelligence has shaped the management and leadership functions to be more open and flexible. Today, more and more organizations would want to focus on remote intelligence due to its cost benefits (Allen, Golden & Shockley, 2015). The objective of this paper is to discuss various aspects of remote intelligence and discuss the leadership and management approach required to take maximum benefits of remote intelligence.

The management functions would also differ if the leaders and managers have to manage the people across geographical separated locations. The typical management function of control may not work as it would not be easy to control employees without any direct communication (Arnott, Lizama & Song, 2017). The key management function that would be required to manage the employees across geographical separated locations would be motivation, leading, and collaboration (Larson & Chang, 2016). Another key management function that would demand much more attention would be planning function. It is important that managers should be able to plan the work with employees who reside at remote locations. There would be a huge impact on controlling and directing activities as it would be difficult. It is important that leaders and managers should be able to motivate others to work.

The rise of telecommuting is observed in last 20 years or so. After 1995, there was an exponential increase in the use of telecommuting. The main concern associated with the use of telecommuting is cost and trust (Maher, 2014). It can take thousands and millions of dollars to develop a robot. In the traditional workforce environment, people would come to office and work. However, with time organizations and people realized that the key aspect of any job is productivity. Therefore, organizations do not want the employees to work with reduced productivity. This opened the door of telecommuting for organizations and employees. It was not easy for organizations to manage telecommuting in the early year of 1995 to 2000 (Ho, Budescu,  Dhami & Mandel, 2015). The main concern with telecommuting at that time was speed of Internet. People who work from home would need to remain connected with the organization and for that they would need high speed Internet. In fact, this is one of the reasons that telecommuting is used more in developed nations as compared to developing nations because the speed of Internet is better in developed nations as compared to the speed of Internet in developing nations (Allen, Golden & Shockley, 2015).

Rise of Telecommuting

However, the use of telecommuting was not able to provide the desired cost benefits to advantages. The organizations were required to pay the hefty amounts to workers. The only advantage with telecommuting was the reduction in the operations cost. With telecommuting, employees were not part of networked workplaces and they used to work in separated workplaces (Ho, Budescu, Dhami & Mandel, 2015). The use of telecommuting certainly increased the demand of separated workplaces as individual employees would need a dedicated computer and area to work. With this the demand of networking also increased as employees wanted to remain connected all the time (Maher, 2014).

In simple terms, remote intelligence is an extension of globalisation; it removes the arbitrage which protects high-skilled workers in western countries. With the use of remote intelligence, the companies can use the services of workers in the developing nations where the wage rate is low. A classic example of remote intelligence is in health care industry. There are various robots that can perform the surgery. With the use of remote intelligence, a doctor in India can operate a person in Germany (Arnott, Lizama & Song, 2017). There are various use cases and applications of remote intelligence. It is important to mention that remote intelligence is not the same as field surveillance or artificial intelligence. In fact, remote intelligence is much wider terms that would incorporate the use of technology to save costs for organizations.

With the use of remote intelligence, organizations can take the services of skilled employees in developing countries (Kojo & Nenonen, 2015). The skilled employees would not always leave the home country. There are personal factors and the political factors that can stop the people to leave the developing countries for better money and lifestyle (Narayanan, Menon, Plaisent & Bernard, 2017). However, with remote intelligence, people can actually work from a remote location and contribute towards the work. One of the key and easy to understand application of remote intelligence is drone management. Drones would need the support of some people who may be living anywhere. The continuous monitoring of drone is required, and it can be done from remote locations also. For example, consider that NASA has to manage a drone over the Arizona rain forest. Now, NASA can use the services of an American employee who would cost some 1000 dollars per hour, or it can use the services of somebody living in India with close to $300 per hour. In both the cases drone has to be managed at the work station only (Denkenberger, Way & Pearce, 2015). Therefore, with the use of remote intelligence NASA can save a lot of operational expenses.

Remote Intelligence in the Global Context

Remote Intelligence is a wider term that is different than telecommuting. With telecommuting, organization allows employees to work from home or work from remote locations. However, employees get same wages and salary (Raghuram & Fang, 2014). For example, the employees of Google would not visit office and work from home. However, at the end of the month, they would get the same salary as the employee who comes to office. On the contrary, remote intelligence provides a platform where organizations can actually save the cost as employees that works from different locations are at faraway places where the wage rate is less. For example, Google using the services of Indian employees (Denkenberger, Way & Pearce, 2015).

With the use of telecommuting, organizations provide added flexibility to employees and it results in high employee retention. However, it does not change any role of responsibility of employees (Chesley, Siibak & Wajcman, 2013). The maximum cost savings that organization get is the saving of operational expenses. For example, organizations would not need to procure a cubical for employees. On the other hand, remote intelligence enables organizations to use the services of people in different geographic locations to contribute towards organizational goals and objectives (Narayanan, Menon, Plaisent & Bernard, 2017).   

The key enabler for remote intelligence is Internet. The success of remote intelligence can be attributed to good internet speed, networking and world wide web. Otherwise, a person living in Bangladesh may not be able to work for an American company. It’s true that there are trusts and credibility issues with remote intelligence. Moreover, there can also be a loss of productivity with the use of remote intelligence (Li, Mobley & Kelly, 2016). Therefore, strong leadership skills also act a key enabler for remote intelligence. It is important that leaders should be visionary in nature (Goodman, 2013). The implementation decision of remote intelligence would definitely be a big change for organizations and the leaders would certainly face resistance. It would not be easy to counter the opposition. However, the recommendations should be made from a long-term perspective. The long-term perspective would help the decision makers to make their points clear in front of different stakeholders (Narayanan, Menon, Plaisent & Bernard, 2017). It is also important that the decision makers should also anticipate the positive and negative consequences of the decision. One of the positive consequences of the implementation of remote intelligence would be improvement in productivity and cost savings. In the short term, the negative consequence could be the initial cost associated with the implementation (Tustin, 2014). In the long term, the cost could be the cost to sustain the operations. The regular opposition from different stakeholders can also be a roadblock. Moreover, there could be some amendments required in the use of remote intelligence policy that can be treated as unseen challenges (Maher, 2014).

In the last decade or so, the increased use of remote intelligence has been a threat for workforces in developed nations (Okoli, 2016). The large organizations have realized that they can save a lot of money with the use of remote intelligence. Therefore, it would not make much sense to pay heft wages to local workers. With remote intelligence, “tele-migrants” will be hired to control machines from abroad, work on business development or perform administrative tasks, adding value at an arm’s length (Maher, 2014). Service sector workers should be worried about the more immediate threat of virtual outsourcing, rather than that of Artificial intelligence. In a sense, remote intelligence has taken away a lot of jobs from the developed nations and it is expected that it would continue to do same. The wage difference is the key drivers for organizations to use remote intelligence (Larson & Chang, 2016).

It is important that organization and leaders should be aware of the various ethics of using remote intelligence (Gajendran, Harrison & Delaney?Klinger, 2015). The two biggest concerns with the use of remote intelligence is data privacy and data security. With the use of remote intelligence data is shared over Internet and there are always the chances of data getting leaked (Maher, 2014). Therefore, it is important that organizations should use heavy encryption when using remote intelligence. With the use of remote intelligence, the personal information of users can also get compromised. The ethics concern of privacy is one such concern that has been a road blocker for few organizations to use remote intelligence. However, these ethical concerns can be managed with the use of strong policies and guidelines towards remote intelligence (Li, Mobley & Kelly, 2016).

There are various use cases of remote intelligence. However, it is important that organizations must analyse both pros and cons of remote intelligence before making any final decision towards the use of remote intelligence (Weinert, Maier, Laumer & Weitzel, 2014). The advantages and disadvantages of remote intelligence for organizations can be discussed as:

The key advantage of remote intelligence is the cost benefits. With the use of remote intelligence, organizations can save a large amount of money by taking the benefits of different in the wages for employees in developed nations and employees in developing nations (Li, Mobley & Kelly, 2016). With the use of remote intelligence, organizations get access to huge talent pool across the globe. Today, the organization in UK can hire a data scientist in India who us not willing to travel to UK (Makarius & Larson, 2017). With remote intelligence, organizations can have multiple people working on a project along the 24 hours as organizations can take the advantage of difference in working hours (Narayanan, Menon, Plaisent & Bernard, 2017).

Difference Between Telecommuting and Remote Intelligence

The lack of control is one of biggest disadvantage of remote intelligence. With the use of remote intelligence, employees have to work in an independent manner and this results in lack of control from management (Kaplan, 2014). The issues associated with data and security is also one of the biggest disadvantage of remote intelligence (Makarius & Larson, 2017). The entire process can be cumbersome with the use of remote intelligence as there is no face to face communication between employees and leaders. Therefore, decision making can take time. Moreover, employees may lack the confidence as their work remotely (Narayanan, Menon, Plaisent & Bernard, 2017).

The enactment or the implementation of remote intelligence policy is always a difficult task. In an organizational setting, the implementation is better or easy when organization has a motivation attached to it. In the absence of motivation, people have the tendency to take the things for granted (Dahlstrom, 2013). Therefore, it can be said that organizations and leaders have a legitimate role in modifying, discouraging, burdening or even prohibiting behaviors that challenges the use of remote intelligence.

Leaders would need the support of people to manage remote intelligence. Without the active participation of people, the desired remote intelligence policy may not be able to achieve its desired objective (Grant, Wallace & Spurgeon, 2013). Off course, there are people who understand their responsibilities and understand the benefits of remote intelligence. However, there are certain set of people who would not understand the benefits. It is important that leaders should act to maintain a system of check and balances for the effective use of remote intelligence (Kaplan, 2014). Moreover, this system of check and balances has to be created by leaders only as there is no other stakeholder who can actually create the system of check and balances. Therefore, any check measures have to be implemented by senior leaders only (Narayanan, Menon, Plaisent & Bernard, 2017).

Conclusion

The above paper discusses various aspects of remote intelligence and the key leadership and management functions required to manage remote intelligence. With the above discussion, it can be said that it is important that the leaders must also realize their duties. It is important that every policy should be same for different employees working with remote intelligence in the organization. If the policies differentiate between populations then people would start to see the policies as burden. The bottom line is that any policy around remote intelligence should be taken happily by the employee. In fact, the support of employees and leaders would actually enable the organizations to implement the law in and effective manner.

Key Enabler – Internet and Leadership Skills

References

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