My last entry talked about the difficulty in trying to come up with a "one size fits all" productivity measure. I also promised to address how we measure "productivity" at Sun to know whether the company's getting more bang for its buck by enabling people to work from multiple locations. And isn't that really the point? It seems as if all the talk about measuring productivity improvements that result from a distrubuted work program is really just a surrogate for wanting to figure out whether the program is successful or not. So here's how we know:

1. We conduct surveys on the affected group(s) both before implementing a workplace change and 6 months after the change. We ask the survey respondents what tasks they typically perform and how long it takes them to do those tasks. The self-reported improvements are startling for both those that use drop-in or satellite offices and those that work from home:

- Drop-in/satellite office users report an average 26% productivity gain. In this case, the "productivity gain" is how much less time it now takes to accomplish the same task than prior to the workplace change. The number one reason for the ability to do the same task in less time: less distractions than in the primary office. Also, the people report increasing their work time by contributing 62% of the saved commute time back to Sun. So... the people are more productive with their time and they give more time to the company.

- Work from home users report an average 54% productivity gain compared to working in the office. Admittedly, this may be a bit skewed by the fact that a good chunk of the work involved writing reports or documentation, and this type of work is more quickly done when able to concentrate. The number one reason for the ability to do the same task in less time: less distractions than in the primary office. Oh, and the work from homers "gave back" 58% of their saved commute time (while a lesser percentage than the satellite office users, it's actually more time as the home worker commute time was typically far greater to start with).

2. We conduct an annual survey to determine employee satisfaction with the various components of the iWork program. As part of this survey, we ask for feedback on what can/should be changed.

3. We measure the Real Estate savings that have accrued to the company by not having all this extra office space that wasn't being used anyway. And it's in the hundreds of millions so far. See this San Francisco Chronicle article for the latest tally.

To sum up: People report they're more productive with alternative work environments, people say they're satisfied with their work environment, and we have the bottom line savings to boot. Sounds successful to me.

Now, we could get into a semantics argument about whether the extra time people say they have is "productive" or not. But I think we have to assume it is, especially in today's do more with less environment, or at least to assume that it is no less productive than the other time people put into their work. At the least, if the extra time available for work does nothing more than allow you to get your work done without always feeling rushed or behind, then at least you can leave work without worrying about everything still left unfinished if you didn't have the extra time. To me, that's one of the key ingredients to feeling like I have a decent work/life balance.