Dave Desforges began piloting "Work From Home" solutions over 3 years ago. His role required identifying additional candidate requirements and necessary remote work practices for both employees and managers at Sun Microsystems. His current work encompasses blending appropriate technology, organizational practices, and workplace environments to support mobile and distributed teams.
Jim McGee is currently a Director at Huron Consulting Group. He has spent much of the last 30 years working to understand, design, and apply information and technology innovations in organizations. Before Huron, Jim taught at the Kellogg School and was one of the founding partners of DiamondCluster International. With Larry Prusak, he was the co-author of Managing Information Strategically (Wiley, 1993). Jim has both an MBA and a doctorate in Information Technology, Organization, and Strategy from the Harvard Business School.
Regina Miller has more than 18 years of experience in Organization Development, Human Resources, Leadership Development and International Operations. Regina recently launched a global consultancy called The Seventh Suite which assists growing companies bolster their competitive edge via aligned strategy and progressive people practices. Her last corporate job was as the VP HR/OD for Oskar (Vodafone) which has been dubbed “one of the fastest growing mobile operators in Eastern Europe.” More info here.
Giovanni Rodriguez - Through a combination of luck and persistence, Giovanni has worked in the company of some of the most interesting and colorful leaders in several worlds: the law, theater, and technology. Today, he is a principal at Eastwick Communications, a Silicon Valley PR agency, where he advises both emerging companies and market leaders on executive leadership, public speaking, marketing strategy and media relations. He has worked for, consulted and advised numerous businesses and organizations including HP, Stanford University, Fujitsu Computer Systems, Cadence Design Systems, VMware, the American Arbitration Association, and the Unified Court System of New York. He is a graduate of Princeton University (Religion and Anthropology), and he has done graduate course work at the Columbia School of Journalism and N.Y.U.
Jim Ware is a cofounder of the Work Design Collaborative and the Future of Work program. He has over 30 years experience in research, executive education, consulting, and management, including five years on the faculty of the Harvard Business School. He was the lead author of The Search for Digital Excellence, (McGraw-Hill, 1998), and holds Ph.D., M.A., and B.Sc. degrees from Cornell University and an MBA (With Distinction) from the Harvard Business School.
Just Released the 2008 Tribalization of Business study - an in-depth look at how 140+ organizations are managing and measuring online communities
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).
So I promised in my last entry to give my 2 cents on how to measure productivity of knowledge workers. Wouldn't it be great if we had some magic metric that we could apply to see if it actually improves when people are allowed to leave the cubicle farm and work from anywhere? I'll tell you the bottom line right now: I don't have the answer. But I have learned a few things, and I can tell you about that.
1. Gil Gordon wrote a great summary 8 years ago called The Last Word on Productivity and Telecommuting and I think it's just as relevant today. If you don't have time to read the whole thing, be sure to at least read Section 3 on using Effectiveness instead of Productivity.
2. We've tried to find an answer at Sun, too - both to convince ourselves that the investment was worth it and to be able to show our customers what it could do for them (especially as we offer a consulting practice designed to help other companies learn from Sun's scar tissue in establishing its internal iWork program and to more quickly establish their own alternative workplace program with the help of our knowledge, processes, and tools). The tough part is: for knowledge workers, there is no standard measure that can be applied to everyone, so you end up wanting to measure something that's relevant to certain job functions. Sounds great in theory - let's measure all the software engineers the same way or all the sales people in a same but different way. In reality, though, there is no agreement on whether those metrics are even valid. A couple good examples of functions and metrics that we have looked at:
Elizabeth Albrycht pointed me to this AOL/Salary.com report about the amount of time workers "waste" at work and the "cost" to the company. The part I found most interesting was the top reasons people gave for this time not spent working while at work.
Top Excuses for Time-Wasting
33.2% Don't have enough work to do
23.4% Underpaid for amount of work I do
14.7% Co-workers distract me
12.0% Not enough evening or weekend time
16.7% Other
So, one third say they do personal things during work time because they don't have enough to do. Is that the worker's fault, management's, or both? If the company isn't assigning goals and measuring you on accomplishing those goals, then maybe everyone needs to rethinkwhat they are actually being paid to do. In my opinion, the company is paying you to do certain tasks, not to occupy a chair. However, if management is not providing these tasks and/or goals, is the employee then expected to just "look busy?" Of course, the employees could also show some initiative and tell their manager they have some free time to tackle something else. More important (to me at least), as the report mentions, where do you draw the line between wasting time and learning from what you find/read, especially from a knowledge worker perspective? If some people can accomplish their tasks in less time, why is it a problem that they broaden their horizons by learning about other things while on "company time?" Especially if the company is likely to benefit at some future point.
All this does make me wonder how this translates into productivity measurement. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says output per hour for business has increased by about 4% each year for the last 3 years. So people are more productive, yet they supposedly waste more time at work than their employers think. Makes me curious how productivity is being measured. Next time I'll give my 2 cents on that topic: just how do you measure productivity of knowledge workers?
After being on vacation for the July 4th week, I'm still catching up on my inbox. In between deleting spam and responding to folks, I read this Network World article about why every business should have a formal telework program, rather than an informal one, and must say I am in violent agreement. Of course, I may be a bit biased on this topic, as we have a formal program at Sun that does all these same things.
One thing briefly mentioned in the article as a business opportunity of a formal program, that I think deserves much more attention: the ability for companies to reduce the amount of office space they lease. How do you do that? Collect data on the work habits of the folks that occupy the space. If it's a normal office environment (meaning that the building has a good mix of several different job functions represented), I'd bet the people already aren't there 25-33% of the time. So if the individual spaces are empty at least 25% of the time, why not get rid of 20% of the floor space and furniture? And what do you do with the savings? Well, you fund the formal program, so it can, among other things:
- Implement the technology enablers for the remote workers, including an office reservation tool for when people are in the office
- Redo the remaining floor space to create more informal group spaces
- Develop remote management training for both managers and employees
- Make sure HR systems are measuring what people do, not where they do it
In essence, the real estate savings are the primary basis for the program ROI. Some of the savings fund the program office and the technology - the rest go right to the company bottom line. And this doesn't even take into account the productivity gains that will come from allowing and equiping people to work the way they want to work anyway.
Half Sigma commented on my last post to say that remote work is not a good idea, as client meetings should always be face-to-face and:
Work is not about doing the work, it’s about marketing the work. After all, we are moving to a marketing economy. People simply don’t pay attention to a voice over the telephone as much as they do to a person in front of them. If no one you work for is paying attention to you, don’t expect to get promoted. Don’t expect to accomplish anything that requires you to get other people to help you.
I don't believe working remotely, doing a good job, and making sure others know you're good are mutually exclusive. Even if you're in sales or direct customer support, you don't have client meetings all day, every day. And unless all those clients happen to be located right next to the office, wouldn't your time between meetings be more productively spent reading email over a cup of coffee at a WIFI hotspot than driving back and forth to the office? You can spend the face-time where and when required, but it doesn't mean you can't work remotely as well.
As for marketing time in the office when you ARE there - good luck finding others, because they're likely not there either. People working remotely (at least part of the time) is the norm today in most workplaces. Your boss may not even be located where you are (mine is 3000 miles away). Yes, it's much easier to work with others once you've met in person. Yes, you need to market yourself and your work. Yes, people need to be aware of what you do and the value you bring. The difference today is: we all need to learn to do it differently than in the past. It's not going to be a hallway conversation that gets spread by other hallway conversations. Maybe, instead, it needs to be an email to the entire team explaining this great new thing you developed, so they all know what you've been doing for the last few weeks. Being part of geographically separated teams is not going away any time soon. I figure it's in my interest to understand how to make that work best for me, and hopefully provide useful advice to everyone else along the way.
Well, according to Federal Computer Weekly, it's "employees who:
* Need little supervision and don't mind working alone.
* Have good organizational skills and self-discipline.
* Can be available, if necessary, to communicate with co-workers and customers via e-mail or phone.
* Have a place to work that is free of interruptions and offers a safe environment for government property.
* Live within commuting distance because they will probably continue to perform some of their work at the office.
* Are required to write or perform computer-related tasks."
I think they're right about every one except living within commuting distance. There's only 2 reasons why that would be necessary:
1. The right collaboration tools don't exist to permit effective remote meetings, or
2. Management still isn't comfortable with the fact that they would have to manage differently if they can't see you regularly.
And when you get right down to it, both of these reasons are false too. Unless you are part of a workgroup where everyone is located in the same place (and how many of those still exist today?), then chances are remote meetings and management are already happening. Maybe not perfectly, but well enough to allow people some degree of choice in their work location.
According to Office of the Future: 2020 there are 6 skills professionals will need to prepare for success in a future of increasing ability to work from anywhere:
- Analysis: Analyzing information and exercising good judgment
- Collaboration: Establishing rapport and facilitating team building
- Technical aptitude: Selecting the best technical tools and using them effectively
- Intuition: Identifying and adapting to the needs and work styles of others
- Ongoing education: Engaging in continual learning
- Negotiation: Participating in business discussions that produce positive results
While I find this to be interesting, I don't know that I'd call these skills, but categories of skills. To me, we need to much more concrete about the specific skills people need to have (or develop), in order to be as objective as possible when determining how much flexibility employees should or should not be allowed in choosing their work environment. We've done some reasearch on this topic in Sun's iWork program which I'll write about in a future post.
Giovanni Rodriguez
Elizabeth Albrycht
Dave Desforges
Jim McGee
Jim Ware
