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Tags: Workforce
Telework, Silver Bullets, Black Holes, and a Dog Named Cheeto Josh Sawislak |
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Tags: Workforce
What Can We Learn From The French? Josh Sawislak I’ve started about three different columns since the last one I wrote about Alan Greenspan and knowledge workers. No, your email alert is not on the fritz, I have them all in a state of near completion and you will be seeing them soon. I’m not sure why I wasn’t happy with them, but they weren’t quite ready for prime time. So, I was catching up on some reading over the Thanksgiving holiday and I came across a piece in The Economist that got me thinking. The column, written under the Schumpeter pen name (or nom de plume if we are getting all français), focuses on management issues. This one was entitled The French Way of Work, and asked the question, “Are French workers lazy?” I was expecting the usual tirade on how French workers have contests to see who can do the least work and the ilk. Having spent some time in France, I was always troubled by this depiction of French workers, as I am often dismayed by broad generalizations of American government employees in the same light. When I was in France, I found that people were incredibly proud of their jobs, and not just doctors, lawyers, and bankers – but farmers, computer techs, shop clerks, and railroad workers. The column shed some light on why this never made sense. The author cited a report on global competitivenesspublished by the World Economic Forum (they do other things than just ski at Davos with Bono and Brangelina) that showed that French workers actually have a stronger work ethic than American, British, or Dutch employees. However, the French still lag in the top line competitiveness score behind all three. So what gives? Well, it seems that French workers really don’t like the people running their companies. According to some other survey research cited by The Economist, while two-thirds of US, UK, and German workers have good relations with their managers, less than a third of French workers report the same. And forty percent of French workers actively dislike top management. So are the French workers lazy or do they just have a really poor labor-management relationship? The column goes on to postulate it’s a systemic problem caused by the way French companies choose managers and top executives. If you are interested in this issue, you should read the column, but let’s bring it home as they say. So what can we learn from the French? It seems that they have more passion for, well, work, but lack the management tools to capitalize on that passion. We Americans are great on ideas and innovation, and apparently better than the French in employee/management relations (but we have some room to grow). I think we have lost some of our national pride in our work, so while I won’t ask you to eat organ meat and stinky cheese (leaves more for me), let’s take a page out of the French playbook and bring back the pride that used to be an American hallmark. If you have been following me for a while, you have heard me say this is not a column about telework, or office work, but rather it’s about the nature of work. My thesis is that work is definable and measurable. Knowledge work is harder to define, but it doesn’t have to be harder to measure if the employee and the manager work together to set expectations, define performance criteria and metrics, and most importantly communicate issues and concerns. The nature of work comes down to people. In the US, especially at the government level, we tend to measure those people by criteria that are not effective at predicting positive outcomes (e.g., attendance, effort, pure output). We need to teach our managers to manage, our employees to focus on what is really important, and get them both to work together. While we are still better off at the top line in competitiveness than the French, we went from second in the world to fourth. This is not a trend that will serve us well in our efforts to climb out of this financial crisis. |
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Tags: Collaboration, Workforce
Alan Greenspan Think I'm on to Something... Josh Sawislak |
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Tags: Workforce
Working Hard or Hardly Working? Josh Sawislak I've heard this question before – is telework a scam? Sometimes it’s not even a question, more like a statement. Do teleworkers actually “work”? Last month, a jobs web site called CareerBuilder.com published a study that found that 17 percent of the teleworkers they surveyed said they worked an hour or less a day. Another 8 percent reported they worked 2-4 hours a day. The data show one quarter of their survey population is working less than half of the nominal eight-hour workday. That got a lot of people in this space spun up, so let’s look at the numbers and the bigger picture. The folks at CareerBuilder.com hired a reputable survey firm, Harris Interactive. As far as I can find on the web, they only released a press release and a graphic representation of their survey results, so I will have to make some assumptions here. I am going to talk about some math and statistics below, so if that freaks you out, skip to the next paragraph. One point I find curious is that none of the respondents apparently work between 1-2, 4-5, or 7-8 hours a day, but I will assume this is an error in the graphic, not the survey methodology. What I find even more curious is that less than half (48 percent) of all workers (office and home) claim to work eight or more hours a day on a typical day. So I went back and looked at the American Time Use Survey from 2009 (most recent) published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). BLS found that the average working American spends 7.44 hours per day “working”. Stay with me here. CareerBuilder.com’s press release says that they only surveyed full time, non-government, non-self employed workers. So if BLS’ data includes part time workers, shouldn’t there be a whole lot more Americans working over the straight eight? If the data are suspect for all workers, I’m not sure how much I trust it for teleworkers. But let’s pass by these issues and assume that 17 percent of teleworkers are only working one hour or less a day. And that they are not all devotees of “the four-hour work week” management guru Tim Ferriss. Lets also welcome back the people who skipped the math section above. What I want to ask the 17 percent is “how many hours a day did you work when you were in the office?” And I want to ask their managers what type of performance criteria they use to measure these employees? Here is my unscientific guess to the answers to these two questions:
This is easier to do in certain jobs than in others. Sales people never have a problem defining success. As Alec Baldwin’s character in the film version of Glengarry Glen Ross says to the assembled salesmen (they were all men), “first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado…second prize is a set of steak knives, and third prize is you’re fired.” I’m not suggesting a Darwinist approach to all management issues, rather some clear direction from manager to employee as to what is expected and what constitutes success. This is equally important for the office worker, as it is the teleworker. No matter how many hours someone works a day, the question we should be asking is “what did you get done?” If you want to continue this discussion, I hope you can join me next week in Washington D.C. for the Telework Exchange Fall Town Hall Meeting at the Ronald Reagan Building on October 18th. If you can’t join us at the Town Hall, you can write your thoughts below or e-mail me at jsawislak@teleworkexchange.com. |
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Tags: Collaboration, Desktops, Laptops, Printers, Mobile Computing, Networking, Project Management, Security, Workforce
Where Will You Be When The Lights Go Out? Josh Sawislak There’s an old joke about a lost tourist asking for directions in Boston and being told, “You can’t get there from here.” Like any good saying, this one mixes a little humor and a little truth. But on a really bad day – a day that will be long remembered because of a catastrophic event such as a major terrorist attack or natural disaster – it may not just be the lost tourist who is stuck at the end of a one-way street. In the past we operated on the assumption that we would have some warning to get key people out of harm’s way. We thought in terms of moving the people who need to make decisions in the immediate aftermath of the incident from one place to another. This is the type of thinking that led to the creation of empty buildings often called “alternate” or “COOP” sites. But today, the threat has changed and, as we have learned, our enemies attack with no warning or need of provocation. It can happen at any time and in any place – and we better be ready with more than a building stocked with computers, phones, and packaged food. Let me acknowledge that the people who work in the intelligence, counter-terrorism, law enforcement, and military communities in this country are among the smartest, most committed, and courageous people I know. They dedicate their careers and risk their lives every day to protect you and me from the very real dangers we face at home and abroad. But – and I say this with all possible admiration for their efforts, and trust in their abilities – we would be foolish to assume that the bad guys will never get past them. They have, they will again, and we must be ready – every day. The professionals who think about these worst-case scenarios are continuity planners. Their job is to weigh risk acceptance and mitigation as they strive to produce a system – processes and personnel – resilient enough to withstand any threat and maintain the critical functions we need to keep the country going. The key assumption must be that prevention measures will fail, and that we must deal with the consequences of those failures by creating an organizational structure that is inherently resilient. This approach ensures critical mission capabilities when our nation needs them the most. Understanding the threat and implementing a risk-based strategy will reduce the effectiveness of our enemies – especially those intent on targeting our systems in a deliberate effort to prevent us from supporting recovery efforts. And this we cannot allow under any circumstances. Last month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), an arm of the Congress whose job is to review and report on the effectiveness of government programs, issued a report on continuity and telework. They found that there was no consistent, government-wide guidance on how to incorporate telework into agency continuity plans, as required by the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010. They cite guidance from DHS, GSA, and OPM, all relating to telework and continuity planning, but our friends at GAO seem to feel that something is missing, and apparently that is more guidance (i.e., paperwork). So this is where I take exception to that finding and upset a few people in the Legislative Branch (they should be used to it by now as they seem to be getting the stink eye from an entire nation for their handling of the debt ceiling issue). I don’t think we need more guidance, what we need is some action and maybe some leadership. If you want some clear, consistent, and broadly applicable guidance, I would refer you to a document issued in August 2007 by President Bush. This plan was reviewed and reconfirmed as national policy by the Obama Administration soon after they took over in 2009. It’s called the National Continuity Policy Implementation Plan (NCPIP),and it’s pretty clear on the issue of getting people out of the office on a regular basis. It doesn’t mention “telework” by name, but read the excerpt below and send me a note if you are still confused on the meaning. “…organizations should appropriately disperse staff elements and functions away from the main headquarters building on a routine operating basis to enhance the survival of key personnel and functions. With the continuing improvements in desktop teleconferencing and collaborative tools, the ability to conduct daily business from geographically dispersed locations is growing more commonplace and, if done routinely, will serve as a model for dispersed operations in the event of an emergency.” (NCPIP, Chapter 1, Page 9). Later in the NCPIP, it does specifically call out telework as a strategy and directs OPM to establish telework guidance for continuity. OPM did issue guidance and has continued to update that guidancebased on new statutes and regulations. As far as I can tell, nowhere in their 43-page report does GAO even mention the NCPIP. They discuss a group who was established based on its requirements (the Continuity Advisory Group); some of the issue-specific guidance from DHS, GSA, and OPM, resulting from direction in the NCPIP; and some best practices by executive branch agencies. But nowhere do they see how simply it describes the solution: routine geographic dispersion of key people and staff functions will enhance survival of those mission critical functions. Full disclosure, I served as one of many review editors of the draft NCPIP. Its pretty clear and concise, it addresses the issue, and its signed out by the President. So why do we need more paperwork? This is where I annoy people at both ends of the Mall. Government tends to work best when they have very narrow and clear direction. They seek out the belt and suspenders. Any ambiguity is seen as a reason not to do something, so in GAO’s view, more guidance is always better. While I understand their rationale, I disagree with the very premise. We need to empower federal employees to become more successful. We should give them clear and concise guidance on what we want done and then hold them accountable to do it. “We didn’t have clear guidance” should not be an acceptable excuse. You wouldn’t let your kid get away with this pedantic argument, “Well, I wasn’t sure how you wanted me to clean up my room,” would you? Maybe the language of the NCPIP is confusing some folks; so let me try to summarize the basic guidance on continuity and telework. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Just keep some eggs at home even if its only one day a month. Join this discussion and read other blog posts here. |
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Are We Farmers, Factory Workers, or Ideas People? Josh Sawislak When I started writing this blog last year, a friend asked me what I was going to say. Of course, I told her I was planning to write about telework. “You know, working from home or someplace other than your office,” I said. It’s becoming a big deal in the government and lots of private companies are already onboard, I told her. She gave me that smile that friends give when they are happy that you are happy, but they don’t really understand why anyone would pay for whatever it is you are buying or selling. “No really,” I said, “this is big.” To read other blog posts and join the discussion visit, www.teleworkexchange.com/news-and-resources/blog.
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Tags: Collaboration, Desktops, Laptops, Printers, Mobile Computing, Project Management, Security, Workforce
It's Tuesday; It Must be Denver Josh Sawislak Welcome back to the inside of my head. If this is your first visit, get ready for a bumpy ride because we are going to do a little traveling this week. I just got back from two weeks on the road and it was a very busy trip. With my great Telework Exchange colleagues Cindy and Brittany, I made a guest appearance at GSA Expo in San Diego. Before you get jealous, we were working pretty hard and we did not win the good hotel lottery. But I promised the ladies I wouldn’t talk about the ghosts, so no more on that… Visit www.teleworkexchange.com to share your thoughts and read other posts. |
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Where do we go (to work) from here? Josh Sawislak Have you ever stared at a blank page, with no idea how to start writing? It sucks, doesn’t it? I know I am not the first writer to experience this, because people have written books about not be able to write (funny, isn’t it?). It's not really writer's block, because I have lots of great things to tell you about. It’s more of a feeling of uncertainty as to where the whole telework discussion is going. |
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Tags: Collaboration, Workforce
Show me the Savings Josh Sawislak OK, the government didn’t shut down last week. Yes, there was a lot of drama and brinksmanship in Washington over the past few weeks, but cooler heads did prevail and my former colleagues and other friends working for Uncle Sam are still at their desks…or are they? A lot of them are not at their desks because they are teleworking, like they do on a regular basis. Join the discussion and read other blog posts at www.teleworkexchange.com. |
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Butts in Chairs and Fingers on Keys Josh Sawislak The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. This is probably the most famous English language pangram (a sentence using all 26 letters in the alphabet). By the way, that sentence consists of 44 keystrokes and nine words and it took me about 10 seconds to type. So why am I telling you this? As a regular reader of this space, you are probably aware of my penchant for useless trivia. But no, I make this point because it has come to my attention that there are a bunch of folks out there who think that the silver bullet for managing teleworkers is the keystroke recorder. To join this discussion and to read other posts visit, teleworkexchange.com/news-and-resources/blog-detail/894.
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Tags: Collaboration, Workforce
Running on Empty Josh Sawislak The other weekend I went up the mountains with my friend Larry; since he drove, I offered to pick up the gas. On the way home we stopped to fill up his car and the bill was over $50 – and his tank wasn't even empty. Nationally, the price of gas averaged about $3.50 a gallon this month and some experts predict that a gallon of gas will hit five dollars later this year. Those of you who drive to work every day and now composing comments to this blog that say, "tell us something we don't know!" We know that generally when the price of gas goes up that car usage is not significantly affected because most of us use our cars primarily to drive to and from work. But what happens when you telework, say, two days a week? On average, you will save about $900 a year at the current price of gas. That increases to over $1,250 when gas gets to five dollars a gallon. Anyone out there not interested in a little extra cash these days? Another way to look at it is that if you telework two days a week, you will pay less in gas costs even if gas prices rise to over five dollars a gallon. In fact, gas would need to get to almost six dollars a gallon before you pay more than you do today to drive to the office five days a week. So what happens if we reduce our use of gas? Economists tell us that lower demand increases supply and will result in lower prices. Oil prices are being pushed up right now by the unrest in the Middle East and a perceived threat to the supply. So can telework really bring down the price of gas? I'll leave that for the economists to argue about, but there is no doubt that it will definitely reduce the cost to the individual teleworker (see above) and will lower our dependence on foreign oil. We all know the supply of oil is finite, and that eventually we will need to find better ways to power our cars, ships, and planes. If you haven't heard this staggering figure yet, it's time you should. The U.S. consumes approximately 25 percent of the world's daily oil demand; however we only comprise four percent of the world's population. Let's face it; we are addicted to oil, and we are paying a huge financial and political price because of it. Conserving what we have left is a good way to ensure that we have the time to develop alternative sources and build the infrastructure to make them practical before we are forced to really ration this limited resource. Emerging technologies such as electric cars, hydrogen fuel cells, and bio-fuels are the long-term answer to our dependence on foreign oil, but we need strategies we can implement today. Oh, and if you want to talk some more about telework, join me at the upcoming Telework Exchange Town Hall Meeting on April 28th in D.C. The theme really speaks to our current climate – work smart and save big. More information is available at www.teleworkexchange.com/townhallmeeting. To join the discussion and to read other posts, visit teleworkexchange.com/work/?id=gas.
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Tags: Collaboration, Desktops, Laptops, Printers, Mobile Computing, Project Management, Security, Workforce
The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good Josh Sawislak How many times have you had an e-mail exchange with someone that went on for three, six, even ten back and forth messages, just to set up a meeting? Sure, you could have "had the meeting" via e-mail or even picked up the phone and called, but sometimes you need to look the person in the eye to get across what you need to say or hear from them. E-mail and phone are OK, but it's not the same. So, you finally get the meeting set for a week from next Tuesday and then your boss calls and says you need to go to Dubuque a week from next Tuesday and the scheduling dance starts all over again. The need to be physically proximate to people is programmed into our DNA. It's hard to get over and it's not a bad thing because it helps build one of the most important things in a business relationship: trust. Without trust, we cannot empower our employees and partners (even our clients and customers) to be creative and innovative. In their very informative and easy to read book, Managing the Mobile Workforce, Michael Kroth and David Clemons, have a whole chapter dedicated to why trust is especially important to the mobile worker. Kroth, a professor of organizational learning and leadership and Clemons, a tech entrepreneur, interviewed people ranging from Fortune 500 CEOs, the Federal government's head of personnel, and international leadership and management thinkers. They all said that trust is a critical factor in success for the remote worker. In their summary of this issue, Kroth and Clemons write, "trust is a source of sustainable competitive advantage." Its something you can’t succeed without. So how do we build trust between the teleworker and their supervisors, coworkers, and others? One way gets back to the inherent human need for personal contact. Even if you telework every day, you need to spend some time each month with your supervisor and coworkers. It builds trust and it reminds them that you are part of the team. It doesn't even have to be in the office. One GSA teleworker told me that he meets with many of his colleagues outside the office more now than when he was an office worker. Some managers (from government and industry) say that telework only works if it's a couple of days a week at most. I disagree. I know that if you address the trust issues and the personal interaction needs, you can be a successful teleworker every day. And technology has helped make this possible. Last week was National Telework Week (more than 39,000 people are participated) and as a fellow of the organization sponsoring the event, it would have been a little disingenuous of me to spend the week sitting in my office. I do work from home, but it's still my office. So, I told Telework Exchange General Manager Cindy Auten that I would spend the week working remotely from Colorado, at the base of Copper Mountain (elevation 9,712 feet). I had full connectivity to everyone who I would talk to or see in D.C. Other than a need to acclimate a little longer, it was just like being home (except I could take a ski run during my lunch break). So what about that need to "see" people? Well, that where the technology is getting really cool and cost effective. Call it video teleconference, telepresence, VTC, or by one of the brand names, its virtual meetings. Live and (practically) in person. I can look the other person in the eye and get the kind of connection (and trust) that is missing in the e-mail and even the phone call. Low-cost, point-to-point and group videoconferencing is a game changer in addressing the cultural barriers to telework. The expression "seeing is believing" has basis in fact, and many supervisors and coworkers are more comfortable working with remote employees when they can see them. In addition, the remote employee feels more connected to the team. No, it's not the same as being there, but it's pretty darn close. Good enough is often good enough and if you search for perfection, you may get nothing. Or in the words of the French writer and philosopher, Voltaire, "the perfect is the enemy of the good." Visit http://teleworkexchange.com/work/?id=trust to join the discussion. |
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Tags: Collaboration, Desktops, Laptops, Printers, Mobile Computing, Project Management, Security, Workforce
Train as You Fight Josh Sawislak I've used this space to talk about a lot of issues related to telework, such as the personal benefits to the teleworker and the productivity increase it can provide to the employer. I have even talked about the sustainability and security benefits, but today I want to talk to you about how telework can be a hugely effective tool in the effort to create resilience in your organization during times of crisis. This is especially important as we head into Telework Week next month.
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Tags: Collaboration, Workforce
Is 2011 the Year of Telework? I believe this is going to be a banner year for a number of reasons. First, it kicks off the second decade of the new century. No, 2010 was part of the first decade because there is no Year Zero (remember the false millennium in 2000). So if the first decade was talking about change and a new way of looking at things, the second decade can be about implementing these new ideas. One of these ideas is certainly telework. For the last few years there has been a small group of us running around trying to get people to talk about how work is changing and the old concepts of management need to adapt to the new realities, but it was not always an easy sell. Visit, http://teleworkexchange.com/work/?id=newyear to join the discussion and to review more of Josh's blog. |
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Telework isn't Just for Breakfast Anymore Josh Sawislak Teleworkers are more productive, better focused, and still have more time to spend with their families and doing civic work. Studies have shown this, and even people who are skeptical often change their mind when they try it themselves. Yet, some in government have failed to embrace this tool as a way to gain efficiency, improve morale, help the environment, and save money. With his signature on the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010, President Obama joined more than 350 members of Congress in doing something which voters from both parties made clear that they wanted – make government more effective and less expensive. We congratulate the President and members of both parties in Congress who supported this critical legislation. To view this blog and join the discussion visit www.teleworkexchange.com. |
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How to Kill Telework: My Brilliant Plan Josh Sawislak I guess I should start with full disclosure that the anti-telework lobby is paying me $50,000 to come up with a foolproof plan to send telework to an early grave. Why? Clearly telework is bad and they just want it d-e-a-d. Oh, you mean why are they paying me so much? Not sure, but now their saying its actually going to be paid in Iranian Rials, so that's either $50 million or $5. Well, I'll be living large on the French Riviera or just having (one) grande soy latte when I get done with this. Manager:"Oh, he's on full time telework, so he doesn't come in anymore." Coworker:"What's he working on?" Manager:"Darned if I know, but he doesn't bother me anymore." |
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Tags: Collaboration, Workforce
Sily Season is Over, So Now What? Josh Sawislak Ah, election season. What a joy. It's a time when your television is full of ads about who is going to ruin your life faster, (pre-recorded) phone calls from national leaders "personally" asking you to vote for their guy or gal, and flyers, door hangers, and other collateral in lots of bright colors. It's OK, it's over and you can plug the phone back in, answer the door when someone knocks, and actually find the mail you were looking for in the stack again. Please join the discussion at www.teleworkexchange.com. |
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Secure the Perimeter Josh Sawislak Every time I sit on a panel, give a speech, or host a webinar, I invariably get asked about the data security risks of allowing employees to work from home or other remote locations. I find this to be a very interesting topic, but it has little to do with telework, per se. The issue of data security is very relevant and very serious. Groups ranging from pranksters on one end of the spectrum to foreign intelligence services on the other and a whole host of malicious actors in between are probing, testing, and, sorry to say, getting into your systems and data every day. |
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With a Little Help From My Friends... To comment on this blog on the Telework Exchange site, visit http://teleworkexchange.com/work/?id=IM. |
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What do Zoo Keepers, Pokenites, and Crowdsourcing Have in Common? |
