In this article, I aim to show how to:

Save huge sums

Make more profit

Be more productive

AND

Help the planet

Now there are obvious things we can immediately see the benefit of for the environment - you remember - last one out the office close the door – and today it’s turn off ALL the lights including the sockets at the wall...

So this page is about making the benefits of the technology as easy to appreciate. You may then want to do your bit. But you will have to be patient – so this is a newspaper style column for a reason – you are used to newspaper features with lots of text – so I am sticking with what is familiar to take you to places that simply – well - they aren’t simply anything, but I will try.

The answer to the [Technology = Ecology] equation is in how we apply technology directly to meet people’s abilities in new ways. I use “abilities” rather than “needs” because we are in new space and a need is only a need if you know you need something… If no-one wears shoes how does the first person know how much easier it is to walk on rough ground without hurting oneself? You COULD do it because you are able, but you are going to have to change your thinking first.

I have identified a whole new toolkit of largely untapped opportunities to control, reduce and eliminate costs for my customers and help increase their profits.

There are three areas of modern working life that can be loosely grouped together:

Mobile workforce

Flexible working and

Home working

If you don’t do any of them yet you will want to in a minute! For one large company - BT - home working delivers:

60% productivity improvement

£6,000 saving per person per year

BT have 10,000 home-workers so this is more than a single isolated case – it is a very long study – and a huge sum of money their shareholders receive.

Like all very big companies they measure. So 62,000 more of their staff also work from home part time – now there’s some application of best practice! There’s more - 30% of BT managers are now “Virtual Managers” That means they don’t see their staff very often or at all together. But get this – some of these teams are 200 strong – as large as some top 10% UK businesses…

I have to guess that it wasn’t easy, but it clearly works. The next question I asked myself was, why aren’t we all doing it?

The answer shouldn’t have surprised me – we all have a love affair with the office!

We like office banter and lots of other things about our office so much we are hooked on it! But can we really afford the cost!!!

I deal almost exclusively with businesses and I run one. We all ruthlessly pursue profit. My business delivers “profit” to my customers, not phone systems and ancillary technology.

My entire questioning process with customers is about business planning, profitability, activity, methods. How do you do things now? What plans have you made so far for the future? – All for profit! But if I can also deliver something good for the planet – that’s a bonus, isn’t it!

So now I am asking you to think about profit first and only. OK, you don’t do any of mobile, flexible or home working – or it is haphazard and for an occasional convenience maybe – so now let’s explore it for big bucks.

This article won’t do it on its own, but later we can help you with workshops for senior management to sort out what will work best for you.

I am going to take you on a three legged journey – as there are three travellers here – the individual, the manager and the technology (or me as its provider).

Before I go on, I want to get something straight. Political correctness has the capability to drown out debate of these areas in various ways and I am going into this underwater PC chasm. This is your best reason to opt for our workshops – there are lots of unexploded mines down this chasm!

I make a very strong distinction between discrimination – something I don’t do - and determination of a problem by looking at individual circumstances, coupled to the application of technology to meet the detailed circumstances – and that is what I do.

Communications technology changes so fast, the latest product news will fly, unheard, past your ear. This will make it nigh on impossible for you to go alone from your present experience of modern offices, to imagination of the application of the right new technology for flexible or remote working that most closely matches what your people could achieve. But it is political correctness that causes the problem, because that’s going to block the conversations that need to take place.

This is a telecommunications equivalent of a disability ramp – this is there to help disabled people in wheelchairs isn’t it? So in those terms that is a statement of positive discrimination. Well in my book, when I wanted to push a pushchair up one when the children were in one; or now, a trolley full of equipment; or shuffle up and down one more easily than using a step when my back’s gone…. Or lift heavy objects between two or more people when nothing else works when my back’s not bad and I have my back support on, obviously! then a ramp is also pretty good.

This is all self-evident – but political correctness in discussions about say Flexible Working can loose a time bomb because employers can agree to or refuse a request from an employee. So let’s start here.

Why would an employee ask for flexible working? They can, they might, but many won’t. The “flexibility” could be anything from a change to the same number of working hours or a reduction. Our culture is to stick our hand in the air and say “Present” from when we start in school. However good our reasons, this type of thinking may stop an employee asking for flexible working.

Infinitely preferable for most is leaving more “safely” to a job advertised with flexibility in its specification.

This is a lost employee and added cost of replacement and training.

Consider this alternative…

The same employee may have worked out that they could almost do five days work in three at home without interruption. Their offer could be:

“I want to go part time and work from home – you will save 40% of my salary AND I will still be almost as productive. I can come in occasionally too.”

As a Manager – you may think this is a good deal but be concerned that the extra productivity will happen? Will all the work get done? Can the person be trusted to get out of bed? Would you dare agree?

As an Individual the person in question may be like the customer of a bank manager I spoke to recently, who walks out of his front door in the morning and walks in the back door, to demarcate home time from work time.

For both parties technology can be set to measure productivity later – it will almost always confirm the win.

The multiplier of this thinking has major potential for addition to profit and lowering recruitment overheads when applied to people taking a career gap. This euphemism for parenting that woefully underrates the time parents need to give to their children can now be built positively into the working curriculum.

The needs of a mum during pregnancy and childbirth can be expressed irritably as an illness and treated by the mum and the employer as such. As dads can’t yet have children I am on safe-ish ground so far – this is all about mum. But what if mum has a vile pregnancy? Say she is ill in the morning until 11 and tired after four, but perfectly OK between those times. What if both the mum to be is bored and the employer is desperate for the work she can deliver?

So if the office phone system could have an extension connected to the employee’s broadband at home… I see … I’ve lost you already.

Llet’s try it this way… if you could call this mum to be on the same extension number you use for her when she is in the office next door? If the call were free? If you could speak to her when she is available and get a relevant “Do Not Disturb” message and maybe leave a voicemail for her to get back to you?

Of course that is what the technology can do… and more with computer links. The costs are really quite small compared to the loss of a person.

Following parenting decisions to reduce hours – by either parent – where the employee works in an administration role, the employer can look at the loss of staff as a replacement of hours task. In the professions and many technical roles, where the individual is the product – that loss is to the top line of sales and an unacceptable loss to the business in revenue, to the individual in income and to the economy in global competition. I want to look at how the effect of this can be reduced by implementing the best of the technology to seamlessly allow the individual to participate in the modern dispersed office.

How about this logical answer to this illogical question…

How can a 4x4 use less fuel than a small hatch for office travel?

If a person works from home for 4 days and drives in their 4x4 to the office on the 5^th – the small hatchback of someone who goes into an office 5 days a week will use many times more fuel. Be a stay at home!

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