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Is remote working an infallible concept?

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

With Work Wise week underway here in the UK, many are extolling the virtues of smarter travel and more flexible working.

Now, remote working evidently has its benefits for the business – greater flexibility leading to happier employees and productivity boosts being two notable ones. For the environment too there are plenty of pros – less power consumption in offices and fewer cars on the road meaning less toxic emissions to burn holes in our atmosphere.

At first sight it seems like remote working is an infallible concept. Are there any downsides at all to businesses offering this kind of flexibility?

Well, of course, it depends on the company. Too often we lump all industries under that one umbrella term of ‘businesses’ and claim something is beneficial for them, disregarding the different needs of different industries.

For example, would remote working be applicable to customer service employees? And what about telesales – can that be done while on the move? Every firm needs to consider how much they need people in the office before offering remote working – it is simple common sense.

Allowing employees to work while on the go also brings with it extra problems for management, particularly when dealing with a large team. Who do you offer remote working to and when? How do you prevent discrimination between employees and keep everyone happy? These are serious questions and if they go unanswered could damage employee morale. No one needs that.

Then there is a security issue. We’ve all heard of workers on the move losing devices containing sensitive data. Do you let workers use their own laptop, thereby placing corporate data at greater risk? Do you give them a corporate notebook with adequate safeguards? And what devices do you allow employees to take away from the office? Of course, similar key questions now apply to smartphones as well.

Solutions are emerging to help answer such questions, such as functions that allow workers to separate usage on their devices between work and personal operation. This is seen in the new BlackBerry 6 OS, with the Dual Persona feature. Exploring avenues such as this can help firms save money and stay safe.

These considerations need to be taken into account before organisations dive into remote working and its indisputable benefits. And here I will generalise with that umbrella term: all businesses need to answer all conceivable questions surrounding any project before implementing. Planning is essential, especially in precarious times such as these.

Posted in: Green, Management, Security

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Documentation and Sherlock Holmes

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Did you see the excellent Sherlock Holmes on the Beeb the other night? Did you spot the references to the original? Der, yes he’s Sherlock a consulting detective and Dr Watson is, er a doctor – ex army and often called upon to pack his “service revolver”. Sherlock, famous for his “three pipe” problems applies a nicotine patch when he already has two on and refers to it being a “three patch problem”.

Most people should have got that much, but you may have had to have read the books to spot that the original Watson was wounded in Afghanistan (the “second Afghanistan war” according to Conan Doyle – what version are we up to now?). However, you might need your anorak to notice that the current Watson has a psychosomatic limp and near the end of the episode the joke is he was wounded in the shoulder. In the book (A Study in Scarlet) about page one we discover Watson was wounded in the shoulder but about page 46 (my copy) we find him massaging his “wounded” leg – presumably a gaff by Conon Doyle but beautifully picked up by Steven Moffat.

What’s that got to do with documentation? Well, Holmes is also famous for not letting on what he knows, dropping super obscure hints and then exploding the answer in everyone’s faces so he can take a bow to a stunned audience.

That’s not the way to do it. What if Moriarty did mange to finish him off? No one would be able to pick up the trail. So it is with coding (and project design, and …). We shouldn’t keep it all to ourselves, we should be documenting and commenting our code and procedures. Being indispensable probably won’t keep us our jobs (bosses are too stupid to notice what we do and will never believe someone else can’t do it – even if no one else can). Being co-operative, getting things done (even when someone else does them) may just get us a promotion. Or is that madly optimistic?

Oh, and BTW how did I notice the leg / shoulder thing? I have a second hand copy and someone has made notes in the margin of all the inconsistencies – information shared!

Posted in: Management, Off Duty, Random

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Celebrating independence day in the UK

Monday, July 5th, 2010

Although most of the time I moan about having US bosses It’s an ill wind etc.

The biggest problem is not the time gap - ”I have rescheduled our call from the morning to afternoon”, no you’ve re-scheduled from Your morning to afternoon, from My afternoon to evening – when I wasn’t planning on being at work.

or the language gap – written (color), pronounced (alooominum) or semantic (I sometimes wish I hadn’t stopped smoking just for the pleasure of telling Americans “I’m only happy with a fag in my mouth”).

but cultural. All those self congratulatory didn’t we do well talks (with everyone clapping like trained seals) – it is just not the done thing old boy. A self deprecatory “I think we did pretty well” with a slide showing we stuffed all comers is the Brit way. And I still believe American business culture believes the hardest workers are the ones that hold the most meetings and spend most time in the office. I side with the EU working time directive and actually doing as much constructive work as possible within 37.5 hours. It’s a different mindset and I prefer mine thank you.

But the world’s a big place and we can do things differently and who’s to say who is right?

Why this magnanimous mood? Do I not usually assume I’m right and everyone else is wrong? Because Sunday was Independence Day and Monday is a US National Holiday and my bosses decided to make a long(er) weekend of it and give everyone Friday afternoon off – even us non-Americans, that’s why. So it’s an ill wind as I say.

I had a very pleasant long weekend thanks – happy 4th of July to us all.

Posted in: Management

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The social media age gap

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

As part of the first global Social Media Day, the world “met up” this week to discuss, collaborate and celebrate social media face-to-face on a local level.

Online social media guide Mashable acted as host, however – unsurprisingly – only younger generations attended the Social Media Day event in London to talk about how they are using social media for professional purposes.

The event itself was organised through MeetUp – a social networking site – by Kim Crolla-Younger, a young professional with a passion for social media.

Crolla-Younger said she is concerned about the “age-gap” issue with social media because she thinks older businesspeople will soon be left behind. She mentioned this to event attendees, who seemed to agree with her and told her about the older individuals in the office who avoid social media.

Perhaps the older generations are in fact using social media for business and I would have loved to have heard their take on it. Mashable is planning to hold monthly MeetUp events, starting this month to keep the conversation going.

After all, as Croll-Younger told me, communication “in the flesh” about such a broad topic as social media is vital for all walks of life, so we all can understand it and use it for what it is truly intended- as a means of connecting.

Here are some suggestions she gave for business people, especially those in the UK, on how to view social media differently, in this video.