A study on the technostress of the social welfare officials

Abstract

Social welfare officials have to use the information systems for the welfare benefits administrative tasks. The government promoted the systems for more efficient administrative works. By the information systems, social welfare officials are able to discover the welfare recipients in the blind spots. Purpose of the information systems is to increase the efficiency and productivity of the welfare administrative process. However, some points out that the workload of social welfare officials has increased due to the information systems. They are experiencing psychological difficulties due to the indispensable use of unstable information systems. This psychological difficulty is called technostress. The purpose of this study is to comprehensively examine the experiences, cases, and perceptions of the technostress-related personnel in charge of social welfare who use the information systems in the field. To clarify this, technostress experiences were analyzed of the public officials in charge of social welfare and of the workers in the welfare facilities. In addition, the perception of technostress among the social welfare personnel was investigated. Firstly, this study found out that the personnel in charge of social welfare are also suffering from overload. Using the information systems makes the work busier and the officials feel oppressed in the process of work. Secondly, it was found that complicated information systems make the social welfare officials experiencing technostress due to various systems for similar tasks. In spite of the advanced systems, the social welfare officials are experiencing technical overload stress because they have to do the computer work and the handwritten tasks at the same time. Thirdly, although the information systems have been developed, the officials are complaining of inconvenience in using the systems, and they have low trust in the information systems because of technological uncertainty. Fourthly, the social welfare officials are dissatisfied with their roles and feeling skeptical about their jobs because they must be more focusing on computer work rather than welfare counseling. Lastly, the social welfare officials have become more depending on the information systems, with less reliability in the welfare recipients. Information systems are becoming the ends rather than a means for the welfare delivery processing. Welfare officials were observed to suffer from the side effects of technocracy. This study is significant in analyzing the technostress of the social welfare officials from various angles. In addition, the technostress experiences of the social welfare personnel were categorized and analyzed. In order to alleviate the technostress of the social welfare officials, it is necessary to design a system based on the user engagement.