A Case Study Into How Older Employees Acquire New Technological Skills

A Case Study Into How Older

Employees Acquire New

Technological Skills

S3246906

MSc BA Change Management Faculty of Economics and Business

University of Groningen

Supervisor: dr. I. Maris –de Bresser

Co-assessor: dr. J.F.J. Vos

January 2019

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In The Netherlands the population is aging and people have to work longer before they can retire. That means the average age of employees is rising. While at the same time more work is automated or digital. It is important that employees know how to with these technologies. This research is interested in gaining more insights in how different generations of employees prepare for new technologies. Here for 12 interviews were held at a hospital that implemented a new electronic patients dossier system. 6 nurses under the age of 35 and 6 nurses over the age of 55 were interviewed. These interviews showed that when employees get older they can view learning new technological skills as more difficult. This is strengthen when they have less interest in computers. It seems when employees get older, they become more critical about what they want to learn. If they do not see the benefit of it, they are more likely not to be motivated. This process can be reversed if they get social support from colleagues and managers. But when they have less motivation to learn new technological skills, they are more likely to put less effort in learning the new skills.

3 Abstract ... 2 Table of Content ... 3 Introduction ... 4 Theoretical Framework ... 7 Technological change ... 7

Learning and age ... 7

Learning new technological skills ... 10

Conceptual model ... 11

Method of Research ... 14

Research Design: a qualitative case study ... 14

Scope definition ... 14 Data collection ... 15 Data analysis ... 16 Quality criteria ... 17 Results ... 18 Interviewees over 55 ... 18 Interviewees under 35 ... 21

Differences between the groups ... 23

Discussion and Conclusion ... 25

Theoretical implications and future research ... 28

Managerial implications ... 29

Limitations ... 29

Conclusion ... 30

References ... 31

Appendix: Interview guide ... 34

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If you would ask a 15-year-old, a 30-year-old and a 70-year-old to draw a picture of the first phone they have ever used, they will give you three very different pictures. Because phones, as so many daily used objects, changed a lot the past decades. A similar development has been going on in the workplace. Technology, and especially computers, has changed how we work. The population is aging and the workforce gets relatively older (CBS, 2018). This puts increasingly more pressure on the pension reserves. That is why, in The Netherlands, the retirement age has been risen. This means that people have to work longer before they can retire. At the same time, compared with a few decades ago, less young people start working; the current generations of people in their twenties and thirties are much smaller than previous generations were (CBS, 2018). So combined, these factors cause a shift in the average age of the working population. At the same time, ICT use is increasing rapidly (Tams et al., 2014). A lot of routine tasks and physical work are taken over by machines. A lot of businesses adopt new technologies and innovations to stay ahead of the competition and to provide better and/or faster service to the customer (Wade, 2015).

During the adoption of new technologies, one of the biggest challenges is to make a ‘fit’ between the new technology and the existing organization (Leonardi, 2012). Part of making this fit, is preparing the organization for the new technology. This includes educating the employees who will use the technology. For this purpose trainings and manuals are often created with the goal that all employees use the new technology as efficiently as possible, so the technological change adds value to the business process (Williams and Edge, 1996)

It is important to include all employees in all aspects of work, including being able to work with the newest technological innovations. How employees will use the technology is crucial for the effectiveness of the technology. Therefore it is interesting to get more insights in how different generations of employees prepare for new technologies and how they use the training sessions and manuals that they have been given.

Currently, literature shows that older employees do not adopt new technology as easy as younger employees do (Zickuhr and Madden, 2012). As far as I could find, there is no literature to explain this difference or what to do about it. However, research does suggest that older employees perform less after a training in computer software skills compared to their younger colleagues (Gist et al., 1988)

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To understand these differences the first objective of the present study is to understand how older employees learn differently and to what this is related. Studies suggest that this could be because of a lower willingness to learn (Ziefle and Bay, 2005). Lukianova (2016) found that motivations has a significant impact on learning and is therefore of importance when acquiring new skills. That is why the second objective is to find out if and how older employees are motivated differently to learn new skills compared to younger employees.

The third objective is to gain an understanding of employees’ self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is part of the cognitive function (Bandura, 1993) and is defined as “how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations.” (Bandura, 1982, p. 122). A lot of research is done into self-efficacy related to ICT, this is called ICT self-efficacy. This particular concept is valuable for this research because ICT self-efficacy determines how much effort an employee is willing to put into the acquiring of new ICT skills (Hobfoll, 2001).

The perspective of this study is that the main reason older employees react differently to new technology is related to the way older employees acquire the new skills they need to adapt to these new technologies. How they learn is related to their motivation to learn and how confident they are in their ability to acquire the new skills necessary to use the new technology. The present study does not go into the topics of resistance, leadership and communication of technological changes. Even if these topics can be related to learning, they are not in the scope of this research.

The research question to answer in the study is as follows:

What leads to the differences in learning new technological skills between young and older employees?

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In the next chapter of the thesis, the theoretical framework is laid out. Then, the method of research is explained, followed by the results of the research. The thesis is completed with the discussion and conclusion.

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Technological change is not successful as often as managers want it to be. Of all technological changes, Aiman-Smith and Green, (2002) estimate that not even 50% of the projects are successful. Thus a lot of potentially beneficial innovations are not utilized to their full potency. To find out more about how to implement new technologies, and what the best way is to get employees to accept, adopt and use it, scholars have researched this a lot.

Technological change

Murphy (2006) argues that it is hard to define technology because it is a broad term and often context-specific. For the present study, technology will refer to computers and the software they use. A technological change is an organizational change triggered by the implementation of new technology. The implementation of technology is always a punctuated change, unfortunately this eliminates the possibility for an incremental change (Lyytinen and Newman, 2008). In practice, this means that employees who are affected by the implementation of the new technology have to change their work routines overnight. This could be why it is so hard to have a successful technological change and why so much research is done into this subject. It is also not easy to acquire new skills from one day to the next. It takes time for employees to learn new skills.

Learning and age

Niessen (2006) did research into the differences in continuous learning between different age groups among unemployed people. This research showed that there are differences between older and younger people. A given reason for this might be a lower motivation to learn that some older employees have (Kanfer and Ackerman, 2004), because they are at the end of their career and might have a lower return of their investment in terms of time and energy, while learning how to work with yet another new computer system. Kanfer and Ackerman’s (2004) research concludes that differences in learning and developing among different age-groups at work can be explained by cognitive, motivational and social factors. For this reason, further research is done into the relations between both motivation as well as self-efficacy and how they relate to learning new technological skills. Because self-efficacy is one of the factors that relates to cognition, self-efficacy is a crucial part of this research (Bandura, 2001).

8 Motivation to learn

Motivation is a complex concept and relates to many different fields of research. For the present research, the focus is on motivation to learn. It is described by McCombs (1991) as “…an internal, naturally capacity of human being that is enhanced and nurtured by quality supportive relationships, opportunities for personal choice and responsibility for learning, and personally relevant and meaningful learning tasks” (p.120).

Kanfer and Ackerman (2004) described a framework on how aging affects work motivation. They found that age related changes in motivation are the most important factor influencing work outcomes. They suggest that there are multiple ways in which aging can affect work motivation. When people get older it takes more effort to sustain the same level of performance, while at the same time extrinsic rewards become less attractive when people enter midlife (Kanfer and Ackerman, 2004).

Most theories about motivation can be divided into two groups; intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is motivation triggered by a personal reward, while extrinsic motivation is accomplishing something for an external reward, or to avoid some form of punishing. One example of extrinsic motivation is doing something because someone else demands it. Ropes (2013) noted that managers do not like to invest in older employees and try to ease them out of the organization. He then continues to say that older employees themselves do not see the value of trainings and developments and therefore are not very motivated to learn more.

Hickey (1997) writes about Vygotsky’s view that the improvement of mental functions is a result of one’s social life. This means that motivation has a strong social aspect. Related to learning to use new technologies, Chi-hung Ng (2007) continued on this theory and found that, especially related to older adults, socially engaged adults develop a higher motivation to learn and use new technologies compared to peers without social engagement. He therefore suggests to provide an alternative for older adults to, what he called, the one-shot intervention. This could be a social collective to learn new computer skills. Howitt (1994) points out that the social process that changes by the commissioning of new technology, is an important factor and if it is not managed right, it might cause the change to be unsuccessful

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technological skills that are required for one’s work, is not an autonomous decision one can make, the boss makes this decision. But it is a possibility that the culture of the workplace is related to how motivated employees are when it comes to learning new skills.

Classical achievement motivation theory says that people always try to experience pride in their own competence while minimizing the shame of failure for themselves (Rheinberg et al., 2000). This is therefore also an instinctive motivation theory and it also relates to the next aspect of the present study. To maximize one’s chance of achieving a goal, one has to estimate if a goal is realistic, simple or (too) difficult and determine how much effort needs to be put into achieving the goal. This is called one’s self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is defined by Bandura as "how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations" (1982, p. 122). It is a person’s believe in his capabilities to perform a specific behavior (Bandura, 1997). If one wants to change his behavior, self-efficacy is an important aspect because it determines how much effort one is willing to put into it (Bandura, 1997). This could make the difference between a successful or failed change. Self-efficacy is also related to how difficult a activity seems to be and the way one thinks and feels about it (Bandura, 1997). Self-efficacy can give people the strength to overcome obstacles in their way (Bandura, 1997). So, self-efficacy is an important aspect of behavior and motivation to change, it can have effect on all aspects of one’s life (Bajaj et al., 2014).

A lot of research is done into all kinds of aspects of self-efficacy. For instance, the relationship between self-efficacy and learning strategies. Learning new things can be seen as doing new activities and research has shown that there is a positive relation between one’s self-efficacy and being able to adapt to new learning strategies (Weinstein et al., 2000). Even one step further Schunk et al. (2008) found that being able to adapt one’s learning strategy has a positive influence on one’s achievements. So, in an indirect way, self-efficacy has influence on the outcome of a new learning task.

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other hand younger employees will make a less accurate assessment and this will influence the result.

Besides general self-efficacy, there are more specific types researched. For the present study, ICT self-efficacy is interesting. ICT self-efficacy is a person’s judgement regarding his or her ability to use the computer and the internet (Torkzadeh et al., 2006). Studies have shown that domain-specific self-efficacy is a better indicator for developing new competences compared to more general self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997; Klassen and Chiu, 2010). Hatlevek et al. (2018) did research among students and they found that if students had more years of ICT experience, their ICT self-efficacy was higher, “Through working with technology over years, students may gradually understand how and when to use ICT.” (p.116).

Additional, they found that the most important aspects in explaining the variations in students’ level of ICT self-efficacy were autonomous learning and previous experience with ICT. Henry and Stone (1995) found that when the new computer system was user unfriendly, unreliable, dysfunctional and slow it had a negative effect on the ICT self-efficacy of the users. Another aspect related to ICT efficacy is anxiety. Anxiety had as negative effect on ICT self-efficacy. This effect can be reduced by managing it in a classroom setting ( Hauser et al., 2012).

Learning new technological skills

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line up. Zickuhr and Madden’s (2012) research shows that there is a negative relationship between age and ICT adoption. This is in line with other research that explains it as a result of a lower willingness in older adults (Ziefle and Bay, 2005). This research suggests that when employees get older, they do not like the complexity of change. This research also showed that there was no difference in performance between younger and older employees. This lead the writers to the conclusion that different age groups may respond differently to training to get familiar with new technology. In line with this reasoning, Ford, et al. (1994) found that different age groups react differently to ICT trainings, and that the trainings they studied had more effect on older employees and showed a bigger improvement on their computer use, compared to the younger age groups. Although the improvement of their performance might have been increased, contradicting research found that this age group showed lower overall performance after completing a training for software skills when it is compared to a younger group of trainees who complete the same training (Gist et al, 1988).

It looks like older research from before 2000 suggest a bigger difference in skill level between different generations, compared to research done in this millennium. It could be that a gap has been closed, or the older generation described in the former researches are retired and the next generation does not show this difference in skill level. Another explanation for this contradiction comes from Elias et al. (2012). They found a relation between the attitude toward IT and motivation to use it. When older employees have a positive attitude towards IT, it indicates a high motivation, whereas the same age groups with a negative attitude toward IT shows the lowest motivation.

Conceptual model

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Age

Motivation

Self-efficacy

Learning new

ICT skills

Figure 1 Conceptual framework

As previously mentions, age influences how people learn (Niessen, 2006), but it also influences people’s motivation. When people get older their motivation to learn new things, such as ICT skills, decreases. Age also has influence on how people estimate their skill level. When people get older they have a more realistic view on what they are capable of. This is part of one’s self-efficacy.

Motivation is a complex concept, influenced by many different aspects. Those aspects can be categorized into two groups. Social aspects have a positive influence on motivation (Ropes, 2013) and are an example of extrinsic motivators. The opposite are intrinsic motivators, such as autonomy to choose to learn something new (Remedios and Borehame, 2004). Classical achievement theory says hope for success and fear of failure determines one’s motivation (Rheinberg et al., 2000). When people get older, their motivation to learn new skills decreases, as well as the importance of the long term return of their investment (Chang, 2011).

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Research Design: a qualitative case study

To find the answers to the research question, a qualitative case study is done. Qualitative research is exploratory research to get a better understanding of a phenomenon in depth. That makes it a suited approach for this research, in which the goal is to provide a better insight into the process behind learning new technological skills. The strategy for this research is a case study. A case study is an opportunity to describe the real life phenomenon more extensively and understand it more deeply (Gustafsson, 2017). All the aspects of this research, learning, motivation and self-efficacy, cannot be truly comprehended without the real-life setting they occur in. Because the goal is to compare the results of the older employees to those of the younger ones, an embedded single case study is fitting for this research. This is a type of case study where one case is investigated. Within this case, there are multiple ‘units’, which are the different age groups in this study, that are given attention separately (Yin, R., 2009).

Scope definition

The case is about learning new technological skills in an academic hospital. This hospital changed its electronic patient dossier system in the summer of 2017. This is not the only change that happened for the employees of this hospital. A few months before the new system, the pumps that are used to administer the right amount of medication were changed. And not even a year after the new system, the hospital moved to a new building. The lay-out of the building and how work is organized for all employees involved in the care taking has been changed due to the move. On top of this, the organization is slightly changed as well. The teams are smaller and there have been changes in management. For this research, the focus is on the change in electronic patients dossier system. This computer program is used to monitor the condition of the patients and to report all the necessary information for both the doctors and nurses. Therefore, it is a significant part of the nurses’ job to work with this program. This is the reason way it is interesting for this research to look into how employees of different ages have learnt how to work with this new program. For this research, 12 nurses that work on the intensive care unit were interviewed. Six under the age of 35 and six over the age of 55.

To prepare for the change in the software, the hospital provided a training for all employees. After this training, of half a day, all employees got the opportunity to practice with the new program at work. This was called the sandbox. Everyone was free to use it or not. When the

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software was implemented, the hospital took some measures to improve the smoothness of the transition. For the intensive care unit, it meant that every nurse had only one patient to take care of and that there were key-users present at all times. This are colleagues who had some more training to prepare to work with the new software. These key-users were extra, they were not taking care of patients at the time. Furthermore, the hospital provided hardcopy manuals, with the steps of the most basic actions.

Data collection

The data was collected by doing semi-structured interviews. This way there was room for the interviewees to give their input while staying at the main topic. The interviews were held at the hospital. The interviewees were asked during their shift if they were willing to answer some questions. This way, interviewees felt comfortable in a familiar place and had to put in as little effort as possible. Twelve nurses were interviewed, divided into two groups, each of 6 interviewees. The first group was 55 years or older and the second group was younger than 35. As stated before, all interviewees are nurses. This is because of two reasons. At first, if all interviewees have the same position within the hospital, they use the software with the same intensity and their view on learning to work with it and other aspects can easily be compared. Secondly, of all the employees that use the new software a lot, most of them are nurses. So within one division, there are enough nurses for the case study.

16 Table 1: Example question from interview guide

A few examples of the questions are shown in Table 1, the complete interview guide is included in the appendix. An attempt is made to ask the questions in such an order that they are not leading the interviewees in any direction. The interviews were recorded with the permission of the interviewees. The interviews lasted between 30 and 60 minutes. Afterwards, the interviews were transcribed. To keep the interviewees anonymous, the names were not included in the transcript. Instead, the transcripts were given a code name. For the youngers employees, the transcripts were named Interviewee A, up to and including Interviewee F. For the older employees, the same was done with the last six letters of the alphabet. This way it is easy to distinguish between the old and young group, while not knowing the name of the interviewee.

Data analysis

After the recordings were transcribed, the transcripts were all printed out. Then, the code books were compiled. The different age groups have a different code book. Most of the codes were deductive codes that were based on the aspects of the theory, just like the interview questions. During the coding of the transcripts, five more inductive codes came up and those were added to the code books, so most of the codes were deductive. For this reason, and because the basis of the code books was made before the coding itself was done, open coding was mostly left out. The focus was on axial and selective coding, to get all the information from the transcripts into the code books. The coding process was done by taking all the print-outs of the 55 and older interviewees and go over them, with a marker, theme by theme. Then, the codes were translated into English and put in the code books. Afterward, the same process was done for the transcripts of the interviewees under 35. After the code books were finished, both were separately analyzed, again theme by theme, and the results were written, as shown in the next chapter.

Category Example

ICT self-

efficacy

How would you describe your view on the automatization and digitalization that are happening in society?

Self-efficacy - experience

For what purpose do you use a computer at home? How much time do you spend on a computer, per week?

Motivation What is your general motivation to learn something new? Motivation -

social aspect

What was the attitude of colleagues toward HiX, before the implementation? Motivation -

autonomy

Did you experience autonomy, when learning how to work with HiX?

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Thereafter those results were compared between the age groups and the differences and similarities were pointed out, as can be seen in the final part of the next chapter.

Quality criteria

To ensure the quality of the research, three aspects are important; controllability, reliability and validity. The first one, controllability, is ensured by providing a detailed description of the method of data gathering, the outlook of the interview guide, the way the data was analyzed and finally, code books were made to make it possible for other researchers to replicate this research and come up with the same results.

The second criterion is reliability, which consist of research biases, instrument biases and respondents biases. Because the interviews were recorded, the interviewer had also the role of observer during the interviews and could focus on the conversation instead of making notes. This also prevents the possibility that data gets lost or forgotten by the researcher. Instrument bias can be reduced by using different types of doing research. That is why theoretical research was done into the subject, before the interview guide was drafted. And because the interviews were held at the hospital, the researcher had a chance to see how the team members work together and how they work with the new software. Respondents’ bias was limited by using an interview guide, so all interviews would go in a similar manner. It must be said, though, that there is a possibility of a respondents’ bias because of the family bond between the researcher and one of the team members of the interviewees. It could be that some of the interviewees hold back or thought more careful about the words they choose.

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In this section the result of the interviews are discussed. First the results of the 55 and older age group are discussed, then the results of the younger group of interviewees. At last, the results of both groups are compared to answer the research question.

Interviewees over 55

Motivation

As shown in the theory, motivation is a broad concept that can be influenced by multiple factors. During the interviews a few of those factors were discussed. One of these factors is the experience of autonomy while learning new technological skills. All interviewees over 55 felt there was enough autonomy to learn how to work with the new system. "Yes, I did, we got enough time to get familiar with it.” Because the interviewees were free to choose if and when they practiced in the sandbox, three of them chose not to practice at all and two of those said that in retrospect, it might have been better if they had practiced a little bit more. The other three had practiced in the sandbox and were content with how they were prepared for the new software.

The next factor relates to the influence managers have on the interviewees’ motivation to keep learning and developing at work. Theory suggests that managers sometimes ignore employees that are getting closer to their retirement age, when it comes to schooling, because the managers feel that they will not see a return of their investment Ropes (2013). The older interviewees gave two different answers. Half of them have a very strong feeling they will determine it for themselves "Not at all, I will decide that for myself", while the other half says that their manager’s influence is “very much” important to keep developing at work.

Another factor that influence motivation are feelings of involvement, in both the decision making process, as well as in the preparation for the new software. Motivation is also influenced by view on general change of participants. The older interviewees state that they felt not involved in the preparation for the new software. This might be because the older group of interviewees feel not involved in the decision making process and when they were asked to be involved they felt like it would not matter. "Well, that is one of the setbacks, we were asked to give input, but if we didn't give the right answer, they said it couldn't be done." Because of the lack of involvement, especially after the suggestion that they would have some input, this group became more lean back and had a more wait-and-see attitude toward not only the new system,

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but also about the other changes that were happening. Related to their view on changes at work, they generally see it as exiting and necessary, although, because of all the changes over the past few years, it gets a little overwhelming for some (two) as well. "when there is so much coming at you, at the same time, you start thinking like 'okay, I don't know all of that." For the two interviewees who felt like all the changes were overwhelming, their motivation to learn all the new required skills was very low. The only reason they are working with the new software is that they do not want their patients to suffer because of them. But they still ask a lot of questions. When asked about their general motivation to learn in life, everyone gave intrinsic reasons. “To keep life fun”, “I am curious, how things work, how to deal with them.” When asked for extrinsic reasons, keeping up was important. "I have girlfriends, they have a luxurious life and a rich husband and if I compare myself with them, I think, 'I win', because I'm staying sharp." The interviewees were asked what their motivations was to start working with the new software. All interviewees over 55 said that it was because they had to. Two of the six said that they intended to make the best of it. “You cannot avoid it, so it is better to make the most of it.” And one of the interviewees asked what the alternative was. Because the new software is the way nurses report all the patients’ information to the next shift of nurses and the doctors. So, not working with the new software would only hurt the patient, because he will not receive the best possible care. This is nog an option for any of the older interviewees. So, even the interviewees who feel it is a lot to learn, do it for their patients.

ICT Self-efficacy

Besides motivation, ICT self-efficacy can also influence the learning of new technological skills. Again, this is a broad and complex concept. One aspect of ICT self-efficacy is computer experience. Except for one interviewee, they all have a computer at home and use it frequently for a variety of things, like e-mail, administration, googling information and booking a vacation. "Yes, I keep it busy, at home.” The older interviewees use a computer on average 5 to 15 hours a week. If they have a computer at home, they feel confidant while using it. They do not fear all the technological skills they might have to learn for the future, but they are aware of the pace things are developing at. "I think that if you miss the boat, it will be very hard to catch up." Two others agreed.

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you, makes that one of the interviewees scores low on ICT self-efficacy. Two other have moderate ICT self-efficacy, mostly due to their hesitation toward learning new technological skills and other new technologies, both at work and at home. The remaining three have a higher ICT self-efficacy, because they embrace more forms of ICT.

All older interviewees were asked what their expectations were regarding the difficulty of learning to work with the new software before they had used it. Some interviewees had a realistic view, but some were too optimistic. "I think, in the end, it is not that bad", "I thought, it would be more like the introduction of the previous system" Four of them compared this change to the introduction of the previous system. That was the first time computers were introduced in the hospital. Although that was a bigger change, people remembered it as more smoothly and easier to learn. "What I remember of the transition from paper to the first electronic patients dossier, was that it went a lot smoother that this change. That is why I had a too optimistic expectation" Because of the previous, smooth transition, the older interviewees who remembered this change, were expecting this change to be similar. The biggest disappointment, related to this comparison, was that the newly introduced software, HiX, much harder is to understand. Interviewees feel that this is not an logic computer program and in contrast to their previous system, it is not intuitive. This makes learning the skills to work with it even harder.

Age

The older interviewees were asked questions about how age affected learning. In variance ways the 55+ group said it gets harder to remember everything as easy as they used to do. "It takes more effort to remember things." When asked about their motivation to learn, at first they all answered it has not changed, but they also suggested that they need to see the purpose or benefit of something new to be really motivated to learn about it. "yeah, I think I only want to learn the things that are necessary"

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Interviewees under 35

Motivation

Just as for the older interviewees, the younger group answered questions about the different factors that can influence one’s motivation to learn new technological skills. These interviewees felt some freedom while preparing for the new software, but because of the set time for the training, they experienced it is a little bit limited. "Well, there was a pre-set training, but overall it was pretty free" The influence of managers on the motivation of the interviewees to keep developing at work is very much there, and it is important to the interviewees. "I think they have definitely influence, you need to get the opportunity" Because of this, the young interviewees feel supported to learn new skills at work, both required skill but four are voluntarily learning skills in work related field.

Except for one nurse, who was a key-user, the young interviewees felt “minimal” involved with the preparation of the new software. When asked about the general involvement in decision making, these interviewees answered both ways, two felt there was enough involvement in decision making, four of them said it was not enough. "It depends, sometimes some nurses are involved." All of the young interviewees view changes at work as something positive. From "I'm fine with it" to “I like it.” Although none of the young interviewees specifically mention it, it seems they expect their work place to constantly change and therefore do not put a lot of thought into every change.

The general motivation to learn is in most cases (five out of the six) related to their eagerness to learn new things. "I am always looking for more knowledge." In line with this, a lot of the younger interviewees are following courses of some kind of schooling. Still, none of the young interviewees saw learning the skills to work with the new software as an interesting challenge, but more as a necessity.

ICT Self-efficacy

Although all of these interviewees have a computer at home, it gets mostly used for the assignments and reports related to their schooling. The rest of their computer use is on average 2 hours a week. And while using a computer they all feel confident. This all indicates that the young interviewees have relatively high ICT self-efficacy.

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digitalization and automatization of society. They feel a lot of personal information is online, people lose sight of real life contacts, and we have become vulnerable to computer crashes. Related to the implementation of the new software, all interviewees were expecting that it would be easy to learn how to work with it and when they stared working with it, they said their estimation was realistic. "it was quite realistic." Reading between the lines, it seems that the young group of interviewees never had thought about the possibility that it could be difficult to learn new technological skills at work.

Age

The younger interviewees were also asked if their learning has changed when they got older. Surprisingly, they said the way they learn has changed. One had a better idea how to learn in the most effective way. Someone else is more devoted and puts more energy in it. There is even one interviewee who used to be a thinker and have all the knowledge before doing something new, and now learns more by just doing new things. "I know better how to go at it", "I used to learn by reading books, but now I learn by doing things."

During the interview these younger employees gave examples of what they see as a difference in age while working with or learning about technology. "most young people, we didn't have to help them. Only the 50+, and sometimes the 40+, they really needed our help, and some are still struggling with it”, " I see that older colleagues, especially those who work a little less, that they are less involved, they are still struggling with how to enter things, or where some of the buttons are", "I noticed a lot more negativity with older colleagues, but I can understand that. We grew up with digitalization, they need more time to make their report, to type it", "sometimes, when you take over a shift from an older colleague, some things are reported differently, and that is fine, because the patient's care comes first and the patient is taken care of just fine”, "At a certain point, I think it [all the changes] becomes more routine, but never fully in the ICU. Maybe there is a point where you think, 'here we go again..', but if that gets too much, you should have picked another job"

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The younger interviewees viewed the general motivation to learn how to work with the new software as quite high, among colleagues. "Yeah, everyone was motivated, everyone was active with practicing, especially during the night shifts." It was a popular topic of conversation, but the young interviewees have different recollections of what was said, during those conversations. "it went like, 'we have to start working with it in a while, I still have to practice', it was a popular subject", "Mostly negatively, because there are quite a lot of people having trouble with big changes." Because of the different recollections of the conversation about the new software, it is hard find the influence this part of the social aspect had on learning new technological skills.

Differences between the groups

When comparing the results of both groups, there are some subtle differences. First, the factors that the theory suggested that influence motivations to learn new skills will be compared. Both groups show mostly intrinsic reasons to learn new things in general. All 12 interviewees had a strong feeling they “had to” learn to work with the new software, but also all of them experienced autonomy while preparing of it. Younger interviewees feel more supported by management to keep developing at work, while some of the older interviewees value the autonomy to choose if and when they do extra schooling. So the difference in motivation to learn is nihil.

There is a notable difference in computer use. The older interviewees spend on average more than double the amount of time on an computer at home, compared to younger ones, who do more on their smartphone. Although both groups see some upsides and downsides of the digitalization and automatization of society, the older group spends more time pointing out the downsides, whereas the younger group did not. When comparing the ICT self-efficacy of both groups, the younger group scores much higher. Overall they have more confidence in their computer use and worry much less about having to learn new technological skills, both in general as well as related to the implementation of the new software at work.

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learning the required skills. While the younger ones did neither, but did not seem to be wrong in estimating their capabilities. They had little trouble learning the skills to cope with the new software, where some of the older interviewees did.

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To answer the research question “What leads to the differences in learning new technological skills between young and older employees?”, theory was reviewed that suggests that age, motivation and ICT self-efficacy all influence how people experience learning new technological skills, as shown in the conceptual model. To prove the validity of this conceptual model, interviews were held at a hospital that changed its electronic patients dossier system. Twelve nurses were interviewed, divided into two groups; six nurses over the age of 55 and six nurses under the age of 35. Transcripts were made of the interviews and those were analyzed. First by age group, then the groups were compared. The most notable difference was in how both groups have experienced how to learn to work with the new software. For the group of younger employees, it was easy to get familiar with the new software. With the older employees that were interviewed, their opinion of the difficulty of learning how to work with the new software varied. A few put in some effort and got the hang of it, while others still struggle, almost one and a half year after the implementation of the software. It seems that when older interviewees are interested in ICT, they use it more and for more different purposed, therefore they get more experience. This results in a higher ICT self-efficacy, compared to peer who might even have a minor fear for having to learn new technological skills.

Related to the small differences in motivation, this is in line with what Kanfer and Ackerman (2004) state, that extrinsic reward becomes less attractive when people enter midlife. While all interviewees have a mostly intrinsic motivation to learn, older interviewees indicated that they feel less motivated to learn new things related to work voluntarily and that they really want to determine what and if they have to learn and do not like to be told what to do. They see more value in learning new thing, when they personally see the benefits of it as well. Also related to motivation, it is important to note that having to learn the skills to work with this new electronic patients dossier system was something all nurses were compelled to do. And that is how all interviewees experienced this. But because of the nature of their job, taking care of patients, not learning to work with the new software is not an option, because patients will suffer as a result of it. This is not an option for the nurses. For this reason, all interviewees really had to learn the technological skills. Work-around are not an option and not using the new software jeopardizes the health of the patients. This might be why there is very little difference in motivation to learn the new skills. The same cannot be said for the attitude the interviewees had towards having to learn the new skills.

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Although it was not a big part of this research, the social aspect shows crucial to the success of the implementation of the new software in the case study. The knowledge that there are colleagues to help out or take over seems to have played a big part in easing anxiety toward the new ICT, especially in older interviewees. The social support is most likely there because of two reason. At first, it is the nature of the work to help each other out. If a patient is not doing well, nurses will work together to get him to feel better. During breaks, colleagues will monitor each other’s patients to make sure they are doing alright. The second reason is the social cohesion of this particular team. Observation in the hospital show that the team were the interviews were held, were more actively social compared to another intensive care team. This was apparent from the fact that they all sit together, in the middle of the corridor, because they like to spend time together. Where the other team sits more scattered over their division. This does not mean that the social support lack in the other team.

While preparing for the new software, all employees had to go to a mandatory training session. Both age groups viewed the usefulness of this training differently. The overall attitude from the younger interviewees was that it was a nice training, but they would have figured it out without it as well. Two of the older interviewees thought the instructor went to fast for them to follow, a third interviewee thought it was fast enough and the remaining three older interviewees were satisfied with it. As stated before, there were some different views within the older group regarding the training. This could be because of the different attitudes toward ICT, as suggested by Elias et al. (2012). Although it was not said during the interviews, but during informal chats, some of the interviewees have hobbies related to computers. These are the older interviewees who have less trouble working with the new software.

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28 Figure 2: Visualization of the results

Theoretical implications and future research

Very few research was found on the relation between age and self-efficacy. The outcomes of this study suggest that there is a very strong relationship between age and self-efficacy. The higher one’s ICT self-efficacy is, the better their attitude towards learning new technological skills. How this relationship work, precisely is interesting to research further.

In line with this research, it would be interesting to repeat the same study in 50 or 60 years. When all employees have learnt how to work with computers in school. This way it could be determined if the differences in learning new technological skills is related to age on itself, or the fact that employees over the age of 55 have a backlog when it comes to working with a computer. Most people under 30 have worked with a computer before they were 12, while it is possible that older employees did not work with a computer until they were 40.

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to get help when they get stuck, so they do not have to overcome every unfamiliar obstacle by themselves. The social aspect was not part of the scope of the theoretical research, while the case shows that is it an important factor. Therefore more research into the specific working of this aspect could be interesting.

Managerial implications

This research shows that the way older employees view ICT has a direct effect on how they learn to work with new technology. Therefore it could be a good idea to create different training for this group of employees, in which the pace is slower and attention is paid to how well they are improving. It is important that age is not the biggest criterion for this different training. If someone of 42 feels insecure or has much less experience working with computers he or she could also benefit from a more elaborate training. Furthermore, something that was well handled in the case that has been researched, is the communication. The direct manager communicated all the necessary information related to the implementation of the new software, as well as the other changes that were happening. Because most interviewees indicate to have a good relation with their manager, this could help prevent resistance compared to a top manager communicating all information.

Limitations

This single case study had some limitations. First, the case took place in a dynamic work situation. For some of the interviewees, the dynamic aspect is what makes their job so attractive to them. It is very well possible that when the same research is done in a place where the nature of the job is more routine focused, the result would be different. This could be because employees view change on its own as more difficult. For this reason, the results and conclusion of this research might not be generalizing into all organizations.

Another limitation is that the implementation of the new software was done almost 18 months ago. This means that the answers to some of the question were not as fresh as they would have been, if the interviews had been conducted sooner.

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Conclusion

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34 Introduction

I study business administration, in the direction of Change management. I am working on my thesis and do research into the ways younger and older employees differ in the way they learn how to work with new technologies. As an example, I choose HiX at your division. For my research, I have questions about HiX, but also some questions that are not directly related to HiX.

Questions

1. What do you do, here in the hospital? 2. How long have you been doing this for? 3. Do you enjoy your work?

a. What do you enjoy least, about your work? b. What do you enjoy mostly about your work?

4. What do you think about all the changes that have been happening at your division? 5. In what way are nurses involved in decision that are made for this division?

6. What is your general motivation to learn something new? 7. What is your inner motivation to learn new things?

8. What are external factors that influence your motivation to learn new things?

9. What influence has your manager on your motivation to keep developing in your work? a. How important is this support?

10. Did you experience autonomy, when learning how to work with HiX? a. In what way?

11. What motivated you to learn how to work with HiX?

12. In what way were you involved with the preparation for HiX?

13. What was the attitude of colleagues toward HiX, before the implementation? a. Was it a popular conversation subject and in what way?

b. What was your role in this conversation?

14. To what extent did you think your colleagues were motivated to work with HiX? 15. What was your expectation of HiX, before you had even seen it?

16. How was HiX introduced?

17. In what way did you learn to work with HiX? a. What did you think of the cursus?

18. Howe did you feel about this way of preparation?

19. To what extend were you prepared well enough to work with HiX? 20. For what purpose do you use a computer at home?

21. On average, how much time do you spend on a computer, per week? 22. Do you feel confident while using a computer?

23. What was you estimation of the difficulty of learning to work with HiX?

35 24. Was this a realistic estimation?

25. How did you go about learning working with HiX? a. Were you afraid to just try something?

26. Have you even experienced comparable changes related to computers? a. What did you think about this change?

b. Did this have an effect on the implementation of HiX?

c. Have you experienced other changed that influenced you view on HiX? d. Has the implementation of HiX influenced your view on coming changes? 27. What is your view on learning how to handle new technologies?

28. How would you describe your view on the automatization and digitalization that are happening in society?

29. Do you feel like you know enough computer terms, for your own computer use? 30. In your opinion, how do you think your learning is changed over the years?

a. Is the way you learn in changed? b. How easy it is

c. Your motivation to learn new things 31. How old are you?

32. Are there aspects of learning how to work with HiX that we didn’t talk about? 33. Is there anything else you would like to add?

Closing

Thank you very much for this interview. I will make a transcript of this interview, are you interested in reading it?

I will also make a short summary of all the interviews. Would you like to receive that?

When I have finished my thesis, at the end of January, would you like to read that? I have to write it in English?

Then, would you write down your e-mail address?