Mobile Networking
Come on in, the water’s fine
by Tom Knight, Managing Consultant
Excerpt from Strategy for Business, issue 16. - Autumn 2004
In just over a year since the government’s Flexible Working legislation came into being, thousands of employees – perhaps as many as one in seven, according to Mori research for the DTI – have asked for changes to their working patterns.
This has caused an explosion of new working arrangements, from flexitime or school hours working to part-time home working or other less obvious patterns, often tailored to suit single individuals.
This change has coincided with a growing awareness of the potential of new technology to improve people’s lives.
Powerful, lightweight laptops, combined with home broadband and virtual private networks, enable users for the first time to work from home without suffering poor network performance.
At the same time, increasingly robust high-bandwidth mobile data services – GPRS, 3G, wi-fi – together with creative use of mobile devices from laptops and PDAs to smart phones, are making geography almost irrelevant.
Customer expectations have also changed: on-demand, on-site assistance or support, or other individually customised services, are now the norm. While they might have waited a week or two for a reply to a letter, customers want an email reply instantly or at least within a day or so. Old fashioned service level agreements begin to look quaint in this new, fast moving world.
But is it working?
So what are we to make of all this? Well, there’s good news. A 2003 survey conducted for Fujitsu among companies that had introduced flexible and mobile working found that:
- 81% of firms expected productivity increases, but they were experienced by 95%
- 57% expected higher morale, but it was measured by 66%
- 26% expected improved staff retention, but it was actually experienced by 67%
- 57% found it easier to attract high-quality new applicants – nearly double the 27% who anticipated this. But what about more direct benefits to the bottom line?
- 32% of organisations experienced cheaper facilities costs. And customers?
- 81% reported increased customer satisfaction – nearly double the 41% who expected this.
Networks and nuts and bolts
Of course, a pre-requisite to achieving these benefits is appropriate infrastructure – robust remote network access, online availability of business applications, rigorous product selection and testing, suitable arrangements for asset management, security, backup and virus protection – all these should by now be part of the nuts and bolts of your IT strategy.
But business change of this magnitude isn’t just a technical activity. The management infrastructure also needs to be in place, appropriate to the kind of outcomes you require. Performance measurement – of teams, projects and individuals, reflecting a complex web of financial and non- financial measures – together with appropriate motivation and reward structures – are needed to ensure effective people management in a flexible working environment.
It’s what you know…
Mobile working also poses new challenges for your knowledge and information infrastructure: communications within and across the organisation (particularly of its values, aims and objectives); identifying and spreading good practice; reduction of re-work and re-invention through improved access to and sharing of information; access to know how; building and driving value from collective corporate memory – the knowledge management agenda – all these things become much harder if you are to be a mobile organisation, while at the same time increasing in importance.
Also important are the ‘soft’ elements of knowledge management: communities of practice, which bring people together both virtually and physically to share experiences and develop ideas for the future; creating roles for individuals who sift, reorder, prioritise and sometimes create new content to make it ready for future use (a vital editorial process); and leadership that both describes and defines the sorts of attitudes and behaviours required of 21st century knowledge workers, and also leads by example.
…and where you go
Allied to these practical, human aspects is the changing use of physical space. Take Fujitsu as an example: as more of our staff (currently just under half) become laptop wielding road warriors, Fujitsu’s accommodation needs have changed radically.
We need fewer buildings (giving us a 20% accommodation saving) but also fewer desks and more meeting rooms within the buildings that remain.
The nature of the workplace is changing from a place people come to answer email and write reports, to one where they come to meet and talk with other employees, team members and staff from partner organisations.
The future of working
This new, flexible working frontier brings many challenges for your business – in parallel with other factors such as changing demographics, and the impact of environmental measures such as road pricing.
The overall result will surely be radical change in how we all live and work in the coming decade, with remodeling of commuting patterns and establishment of new relationships between employer and employee, organisation and customer, supplier and partner.
But it works. And playing ‘wait and see’ will only give your competitors more time to pull ahead. So if you’ve been wondering whether to take the plunge, the answer now has to be: “Don’t hesitate – mobile working works.”
