Chasing management buy-in
Despite overwhelming evidence pointing to the benefits of telecommuting and the ongoing success of globally-integrated operations like Dell and Oracle, workforce virtualisation has its fair share of critics.
Gerard Florian, chief technology officer with technology integrator Dimension Data, says companies contemplating process automation should spend more time planning for the cultural change inherent in the implementation process.
"Knowledge management is a major cultural issue. When people bump into each other on a regular basis, you naturally fall into conversation and often discuss work issues informally," Florian says. "With a virtual workforce there needs to be a lot more discipline when it comes to getting people to talk to each other."
Having implemented virtual workforces since the early seventies, Nilles describes concerns surrounding knowledge management as "marvellous fiction".
"Saying that people who telecommute are some how cut out of office communication is a great excuse for people not to do it," Nilles says. "If you train people properly and make sure they maintain communication with their work team you will find informal communication still occurs."
Nilles also points out that the ability to operate virtually does not mean workers disappear altogether from the office environment, but simply means that they have a choice to operate from a location which best suits the task at hand.
"It is important to decide which part of your job requires you to do some serious thinking and concentration, and which part requires face-to-face interaction," Nilles says. "After virtual workers get some experience they tend to prefer telecommunication-mediated interaction rather than face-to-face meetings - they become comfortable with both."
However, not only do managers operating in a virtual environment have to deal with human challenges, they also need to be aware of the potential technical challenges.
"Personal VPNs and dealing with encryption on notebooks all sounds pretty mundane, but it an important management role for any organisation which is attempting to run a large mobile workforce," explains Florian.
However, having observed the field in the context of how it affects the end users, the UTS's Robertson says there are broader social issues which could facilitate or disrupt the process of workforce automation.
"A lot of computing is designed to automate the procedurisation of work and fulfil tasks which the bureaucracy was created to do. There is definitely an underlying push to keep the workforce untrained, casual and easy to replace or automate," Robertson says. "People designing the systems and the work practices surrounding them have not necessarily been taught how to think about users."
However, Robinson believes the winners of the computational revolution will be those companies that are capable of achieving improvements in productivity and human resource allocation.
"The real economic payback will come from companies which use technology to realise the creative input their employees bring to an organisation," Robinson says.
Hi,
Working as an IT contractor i've worked for quite a few clients on jobs that easily could have been done remotely.
The unfortunate reality i have found is that bosses want to see you sitting at a desk in their offices otherwise they don't seem to consider the work being done.
Just my 2 cents..