This article is from the February 2004 issue of Update.
‘Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labour in freedom’ — Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years, 1950.
Flexible working has transformed my life. I have got my family life back and I now have a social life as well. I have been able to introduce greater flexibility into my working life while not only managing to be more productive but also maintaining contacts and team working.
The key trigger for me was a serious illness in the family about three years ago. The stark choice was either to do no work at all or to find ways to do the work but without the commuting. I wanted to keep my job and I agreed with my boss that I should carry on. Colleagues clearly understood why I was not coming into the office.
For other people the trigger for looking at alternative work patterns may have been the national rail strikes in the 1990s when the rail networks ground to halt for days at a time. More recently, 11 September made travel by air an unpopular choice and there was also a marked decline in the use of the rail network within the UK. People began to take batches of work home and schedule meetings more carefully, possibly using voice conferencing over the telephone or even scheduling a web conference where slides, computer applications and programmes can be shared across the internet using Placeware.
The key is to establish your relationship with the client, supplier or collaborator — you need that initial meeting with your contacts. Go for a drink or a meal to get to know them.
The trigger for me may have been a family illness but the enabler was technology. Being able to use the telephone, printer, scanner, fax, email and have online access (both dial-up and via the network) at home gave me greater flexibility than the office-based systems. I used the technology that was available to me at the time and it was all fairly creaky. I had no access to ISDN lines, broadband or fast PCs. Now flexible working has got to the point where people are making lifestyle choices. Rather than commuting, employees have the opportunity to see more of their family, consider taking up a leisure pursuit or get involved in their local community.
The technology that is enabling new work styles to emerge is the internet-based systems that use the standard called Internet Protocol or IP. My professional interest is in the area of the overlap between traditional paper-based systems and the new IP-based systems. I can’t see paper disappearing completely but I do see greater integration between the IP-based systems, legacy material, whether on paper or electronic, and the day-to-day work of the information professional.
The award-winning LibraryOnline portal (or LoL for short) is a good example from within BT of how technology has succeeded in enhancing knowledge activities and facilitating flexible working. It offers:
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learning: learning resources and textbooks are accessible via LoL;
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creativity: the variety of sources suggests new approaches to problem solving;
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collaboration: the basis of LoL is to cut across teams and focus on practice areas and subject matter rather than on organisational structures;
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exploitation of the technology: news feeds are used to push information to those who need it. These news feeds include Legal, BT in the News, UK Telecoms Regulation and EC Telecoms Regulation; they can be accessed from the LoL front page.
Flexible working brings both benefits and challenges. The great advantage is that it throws the onus on to the individual to be responsible for their work. It also presupposes a large degree of trust within the workplace, both between individual members of the team and between managers and their employees. You show your output by results — and managers and colleagues trust you to achieve both individual and team targets. It is all about empowering the individual and trusting them. The downside for the individual is not having ready-made structures and timetables. Working from home would not suit everyone, as you need to be able to motivate yourself and have the discipline to keep work and home tasks separate and stop work at the end of the working day. The danger is that work could invade every minute of your day.
BT prides itself on developing and using its own technology to empower its staff. These initiatives have resulted in huge cash savings and allowed BT to streamline its working practices and provide enormous flexibility in how it operates.
Investment in buildings and networks has enabled BT to introduce homeworking, flexible working, hot-desking and web casting. It has also improved the ability to accommodate office moves and for teams and individuals to work from almost anywhere. This makes the business cheaper to run and simpler to manage and it also provides a platform for new e-services and the ability to experiment with technologies such as voice over IP (VOIP).
BT has created and managed what is now one of the largest intranets in Europe, with more than 100,000 users. Today, BT employees can access a range of services 24/7, from simple ones such as directory enquiries (1.5m per week), to claiming expenses and training and information portals such as LoL.
The online learning system, BT Academy, has created savings of 40 per cent on the training budget, giving BT staff access to more than 4,000 online training courses — everything from safety when climbing a telegraph pole to teaching yourself French! Online learning fits very well with our policy of mobile and home working as it allows people to learn at a time and pace that suits them.
This is important for BT because, across the company, there are 55,000 mobile workers — the largest mobile workforce in Europe — who can access our systems, through the firewall, wherever they are.
Because BT has a very geographically dispersed workforce, excellent use can be made of audio and web conferencing. It’s a fabulous way to impart knowledge and enable employees to be involved in decision-making processes from any location. It is estimated that web conferencing saves BT more than £2m per annum in travel.
With 110,000 employees in BT — nearly half of them mobile workers — the need to communicate immediately and effectively is paramount. Two vehicles used to do this are the BT Today news desk and, for the corporate sales division, a knowledge management system called Infopower. Both of these sites are refreshed hourly with news updates, marketing information and stories of interest, forming an important way of empowering people, making them more effective and cutting costs for the organisation.
But it is important not to lose the personal touch — the inspiration that comes from hearing a message first hand. So, a combination of media is used to keep staff informed — to make sure they know what is happening, as it happens.
The recent launch of the broadband campaign is an example. At 7.30 am all BT staff got a text message telling them that broadband had arrived and giving the web address where they could find out more. Those with PDAs (personal digital assistants) could access the intranet campaign pages there and then; others, when they logged in or got to their desks.
All BT news desks and personal homepages — for example, BT Today — carried the headline story and previews of the advertising.
Then Pierre Danon, Chief Executive Officer BT Retail, held a live web cast, which was broadcast to 25 BT buildings around the UK simultaneously. Finally, there was a broadcast email to everyone in BT.
Taking a slightly broader view, it’s not just our employees that we should be thinking about when it comes to empowerment. Customers (and suppliers and partners) want to be empowered too.
Today, customers are more demanding than they have ever been. They want personal service, whenever — day or night — and however they choose. Because of the increase in mobile devices and PDAs and the growth of digital TV and the internet at home, customers are taking control of the way they interact with companies, suppliers and organisations.
Many of the systems that we use internally can be opened up to external users to empower them to interact more effectively with our business. This often leads to fewer repetitive transactions, allowing employees to focus on more productive activities.
Most people will have some degree of flexibility in their working situation. Examples are as varied as part-time working, flexi-time, time off in lieu, paternity leave, maternity leave, increased hours in term times, paid or unpaid sabbaticals etc. However, the culture of the workplace does not always allow the full benefits of that flexibility to be realised. Work cultures may be quite prescriptive in how managers and employees use flexible working. There may be very good legal and organisational reasons why organisations feel unable to let their people take a more creative approach. It is much easier to retain control rather than to trust.
Specific work styles will not suit everyone and not all information work will lend itself to every type of flexible working. What does seem to work well is when the organisation is providing distance learning or telephone enquiry and research services. If many of the organisation’s resources are electronic then the link with a specific physical location can be loosened for users and staff.
Attitudes towards homeworking are at best ambiguous, according to a Management Today survey published in June. The vast majority are still keen to maintain a clear separation between home and work. The social interaction and face-to-face networking of the office are still highly valued — and the dominant culture at work has not absorbed the idea that you do not need to be present in the workplace five days a week, eight hours a day.
Other flexible work styles, such as hot-desking, continue to generate hostility among employees. The Management Today survey found that nine out of 10 managers preferred the security of their own designated workspace.
Practical suggestions for greater flexibility
Just do it! You will need to be sensitive to team dynamics as it will be even harder for others to visualise your work. This is a particular challenge as how you are judged when you work in the virtual work environment will be based on your approach to work in the office.
If you work from home you will still need to travel to the office for those specific project meetings, team meetings and supplier/customer interactions that work much better face to face than via web, telephone, email or video conference.
Communication is vital with any job and this can improve with homeworking. A visit to the office becomes a real highlight and face-to-face meetings become more significant.
To be able to show you are being productive, you need clear personal and team objectives and scheduled reviews and self-monitoring processes. For example, if you review budgets each week and check website statistics at the start of the month, put entries in your diary so that you have a structure and team colleagues and customers can see the shape of your activity through your shared diary.
A flexible information structure within an organisation is the key to building your technology around your staff and providing access to information anytime, any place, anywhere.
Improve the way your people work — they’ll improve the results they give you.
David Byrne is Head of Information, BT Group Legal (david.f.byrne@bt.com). This article is based on a paper prepared for the CILIP Umbrella 2003 conference.