IS and the Future of Work

1
IS and the Future of Work

• I am indebted to Ron Hulman and Carys Davies of
  IBM UK Limited for much of this material
• Hulman (2002) Dynamic Workplaces the Future of
  Work
• Davies (2002) Achieving Cultural Change
  Communities, Collaborative Working and HR Policy
  
• Their focus has moved on to how people learn in
  the workplace
• We all think about tasks that directly use IS,
  but...
• ..how does IS influence how we behave in other
  contexts?
• Social Factors
• Information Flows
• Managing Change

2
Learning at Work New Materials

• http//www.ibm.com/investor/viewpoint/podcast/pdf/
  27-03-06-1.pdf (part of a series of Future of
  podcasts and transcripts)
• http//www-1.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/summary
  /ites/ a1001600?cntxta1000413 The future of
  Learning
• http//www-304.ibm.com/jct03001c/services/learning
  /ites.wss/ zz/en?pageTypepageca0004012
  e-learning in the workplace
• http//www-1.ibm.com/services/uk/igs/pdf/global-hu
  man-capital-survey.pdf HR-based study
• http//www-1.ibm.com/services/uk/igs/html/on-deman
  d-workplace.html The on-demand workplace
• At the European Conference of e-Learning this
  autumn, Joan Burgess spoke on how e-Learning
  facilitated a Nurse-prescribing course

3
Public Policy towards Work is Changing

• Issues
• Environmental concerns
• Congestion on roads and in airports
• Speed, competitiveness
• Quality of life
• Resulting Policy
• Infrastructure spending changes
• Telework initiatives
• Incentives for work at home
  

4
The Dynamic Workplace

• IBMs term for result of IT reducing constraints
  on how we work
• Information available via information systems
• In the Office
• At Home
• On the Road
• Improved information sharing and communication
• Permits hot-desking without loss of context
• Major real-estate savings
• Need to be aware of territorial factors
• Can dramatically change how we do our jobs

5
The history of business interaction
6
IBM's eWorkplace Strategy

• Render complexity of company irrelevant for
  employees
• Scale of challenge represented by intranet
  statistics (2002)
• More than 8,000 intranet sites in IBM
• 680 "major" sites
• More than 11 million Web pages
• More than 5,600 domain names
• Used worldJam WebAhead programmes to
  coordinate
• Most large and devolved organizations have
  similar challenges
• Pure centralization is rarely a successful remedy

7
Technology Overview

• Dynamic Workplace uses PC to give access to
• Information private to the user
• Organization and Workgroup information
• Tool-set offered by Organization
• Contact Management
• Available over network from work, home,
  elsewhere
• IBM model works through an WebSphere Portal
• Integration of information from disparate sources
  
• Consistent appearance
• Devolved content management

8
IBMs e-Workplace
9
Journey to a single vision
The NHS is now moving in the same direction,
though my confidence theyll succeed is limited
10
(No Transcript)
11
From Communities to Rôles
12
My News

• Description
• Allows individuals the option to choose from
  various channels of information (300 channels)
• Personalization at main page level and
  application level
• 173,000 subscriptions
• Benefits
• Enhances individuals knowledge about their
  respective organization, industry or specialist
  area
• Delivers information that individual wants to see
  only
• Saved 50 (gt1M/year) with enterprise news feed
  licence

13
IBM's eWorkplace Strategy

• Render complexity of the company irrelevant for
  employees
• Bring the marketplace inside
• Equip employees for the journey
• Media Jukebox
• Instant Messaging
• e-meetings
• e-learning

14
Media Jukebox

• Description
• Experience audio/video live, or later via
  playback service
• Online presentation, authoring and publishing
• Benefits
• Enhanced employee efficiency and knowledge
  sharing and distribution
• Provides real-time access to knowledge anytime,
  anywhere
• Reduces event-related travel, lodging and
  coordination/preparation costs
• How much is relevant in our business?

15
e-meetings Real-Time Collaboration

• Description
• 65,000 Registered e-meetings users
• 47,000 person-hours in e-meetings each month
• Within/outside company
• Benefits
• Convenient to attend
• Easier to plan and run
• Saves travel costs, meeting coordination/ setup
  costs, and productive work time
• Cut opportunity cost of global meetings

16
How do we learn our jobs?

• Formal Training
• RTFM (Read the Fine Manual)
• Observe a skilled practitioner (Sitting by
  Nellie)
• Guided Trial and Error
• Key point is that we need to acquire expertise
• Some is explicit and formal
• Others may share implicit knowledge
• Much is not rocket science (e.g. how to fill in
  expenses)
• Sometimes you are breaking new ground

17
Global Learning Portal

• Description
• Web portal to learning environment
• Video, audio, and multimedia technologies used to
  enhance learning experience
• Browse and search integrated course catalogue to
  select functions for over 38,000 learning
  events
• Course completion tracking to log employee skill
• Benefits
• More than 200,000 employees use e-learning
  annually
• Just-in-time learning saves employees time in
  class
• 40 of training via Web annual savings over
  350M

18
HR Self Service

• Description
• Complete access to Financial, Health, Benefits,
  Life, Career, Expense applications
• Direct linkage to many of the Financial Services
  providers
• Dedicated call centre support
• Benefits
• Increased customer satisfaction from 40 to 90
• Moved ratio of Employees to HR staff to best of
  breed
• Reduced cost of HR processes, applications and
  centres
• Improved management information

19
Expense Account 2000

• Expense submission, tracking, and credit card
  payment
• Allows expenses to be directed to a particular
  charge code or defaulted to users department
  code
• Copies supervisor for approval step
• Automated matching against credit card expenses
• Automated payment of corporate credit card
• Benefits
• Reduced paperwork and expense coordination
• Enhanced efficiency of the expensed process
• Reduced operations costs

20
IBM's eWorkplace Strategy

• Render complexity of company irrelevant for
  employees
• Bring the marketplace inside
• Equip employees for the journey
• Tap into the company's collective knowledge
• BluePages/Personal address books
• Community-driven knowledge re-use
• Teaming / Collaboration tools
• HR programmes for reinforcement
• Redefine the manager/employee relationship
• Implies Cultural Issues

21
Company/Employee Relationship

• Best (credible, preferred, useful) sources of
  information about IBM to get job done

22
Cultural Issues of Dynamic Workplace

• Adapting to the virtual environment
• How do employees react?
• Managing the change
• HR Policy and Management Development

23
What do IBM employees think?

• Mobility has very favourable impact on
• productivity, morale
• job satisfaction, commitment
• work/life balance
• Issues with
• teamwork, communications
• career advancement
• Work-at-home responding positively
• Impact on productivity 90
• Job satisfaction 86
• on morale/motivation 84
• Impact on work 84
• Impact on commitment 83

2001 IBM Morale Survey
24
The Hidden Activities of the Office

• Communications
• Senior managers presentations, walkabouts,
  broadcasts
• Team individual communications, accidental
  meetings
• Formal, informal parallel tone, gesture,
  emotion
• Teamwork
• Most invisible often people dont even like
  to discuss it
• Knowledge and ways of working learned and
  created
• Career Advancement
• Visibility and networking
• Managers managingSee employees working, Can
  interact informally, Can see and manage issues
  discreetly

25
Social/gossip in office can have value

• Social/gossip includes
• Mentoring/learning
• Building the team
• Building trust
• Networking
• And during change
• Making sense of the change
• Creating new ways of working in the new
  environment

26
Cultural Issues of Dynamic Workplace

• Adapting to the virtual environment
• How do employees react?
• Maximizing the value of face-to-face meetings
• Adapting technology, adapting with technology
• Managing the change
• HR Policy and Management Development

27
Do we still need face-to-face meetings?

• Globalization is restructuring work on an
  international basis at least for some large
  firms but the nature of knowledge work and the
  importance of trust means that the need for
  face-to-face contact continues to grow
• While information and data travel the world
  effortlessly knowledge and understanding are
  largely contained in our heads.
• On the Move, Feb 2002, Local Futures Group, Kate
  Oakley and Tom Campbell
• In the wired world, physical presence counts
  more than ever
• Economist, 24 Aug 02 Press the flesh, not the
  keyboard

28
Using face-to-face differently

• Different outcomes, different styles
• Building relationships, increasing trust,
  resolving issues, creating shared language and
  context
• Interactive, small groups conversations,
  informal, intensive, productive
• Different space
• Starbucks
• Drop-in areas, bookable offices, literal
  transparency
• From accidental interactions to communities
• Maximize knowledge sharing, mentoring, expertise
  location through formal or informal communities
• Managing knowledge the next step

29
What do Communities contribute?

• Connections
• Intra-network clearing house who knows what
• Reference mechanism evaluate each others
  knowledge
• Connect outsiders to knowledge holders reduce
  learning curve
• Relations
• Test trustworthiness and commitment of members
• Develop norms and values
• Encourage empathy for others situations
• Shared Context
• Shape language used in everyday conversation
• Generate objects and artefacts that are used by
  members
• Generate stories that communicate norms and values

From Eric Lesser and Larry Prusak, IKM 1999
30
Adapting technology to teams side talk

• e-meeting may include shared presentations and
  parallel voice conference
• Private side-conversations using instant
  messaging can range from from comments (reducing
  interruptions!) to managing questions or
  interventions
• Probably wont involve live video of participants

31
Adapting technology to communities
32
Doing this builds trust in the source
IBMs Best sources of information (credible,
preferred, useful)
33
Cultural Issues of Dynamic Workplace

• Adapting to the virtual environment
• How do employees react?
• Maximizing the value of face-to-face meetings
• Adapting technology, adapting with technology
• Managing the change
• HR Policy and Management Development

34
Key to successful change
always consider users frame of reference
For example
The systems support for our community
How we work in our community
Any change must be put in context
Overall company culture
People dont separate systems from the way they
work
35
If you forget this, change can do damage

• Example Southampton abandoned X-ray films
• Advantages
• Image available anywhere on demand
• Reduced materials cost
• But
• Didnt match theatre processes, where multiple
  plates were displayed on a bank of light-boxes
• Resolution poorer, despite expensive displays
• Images viewable only one at a time hard to make
  comparisons
• Operations cancelled when infrastructure fails

36
Deeper change needs careful management

• Dynamic Workplace will
• include multiple, sometimes parallel initiatives
• across multiple departments, units, geographies
• Fundamental change to how people work for
  example
• How they talk to other people in the organization
  
• How they know they are working effectively
• Change management approach must be tailored to
  each initiative and unit, recognizing
• Units or teams have different experiences and
  start points
• Buy-in from the people is key Dynamic Workplace
  requires a collaborative effort
• Change will be ongoing with each initiative,
  with each group brought into the Dynamic Workplace

37
Deeper distributed change programmes

• Responsibility for Change programmes over
  multiple initiatives and organizational units
  must be delegated
• To be effective
• To be cost-effective
• Major change programmes need additional
  techniques
• Top level sponsorship is necessary, but not
  sufficient
• However fast you start you have to wait for
  results
• Teams need to adapt programme to fit their local
  culture
• Actions speak louder than words
• Think global, act local
• Communicate vision and tools, not plans
• Build skills for managing change within the teams

38
Examples of additional change techniques

• Publicising real stories to reinforce the new
  culture
• Creating central and local change teams with a
  common approach
• Change team itself must model desired behaviour
  in all interactions with virtual teams

39
Cultural Issues of Dynamic Workplace

• Adapting to the virtual environment
• How do employees react?
• Maximizing the value of face-to-face meetings
• Adapting technology, adapting with technology
• Managing the change
• HR Policy and Management Development

40
Managers have to adapt

• Real work gets done in different ways and in
  different places not just the traditional
  office
• Managers cant assume that people who take
  advantage of our flexibility options are less
  committed to their careers or our business
• Lou Gerstner - Think Magazine 1998

41
Fundamental Change for Management
Old
New

• Management power
• Fixed style of work
• Functional silos
• Fixed place
• Space ownership
• Space boundaries
• Status offices
• Mine to have

• Leading, sharing, empowered
• Life style choice
• Teaming
• Any place
• Team spaces
• Flexible spaces
• Shared assets
• Ours to share

How does this fit into a highly hierarchical
environment?
42
HR Management Policy must reflect change

• Example from 1995, IBM
• Developed new core management competencies needed
  
• Identified new management style portfolio to
  match
• Tested managers against styles
• Support for key new styles eg coaching
• New development models future focus, focus on
  skills, not job
• 17 Key Experiences to support development
• Delivered through
• Executive development support staff
• Management development training programmes
• Increasingly online learning tools

43
IBM Management Development home page
Not in handout
44
Big evolution Big Pay-Off

• Benefits to IBM
• e-learning over 350 million in 2001
• Customer self-serviceover 700M
• Blue Pagesestimated 10M
• Consolidating News Sources 2M
• HR Process Reengineeringreduced costs by 40
  and increased satisfaction to 92
• e-Workplace Key tool to changing the culture of
  IBM

• Benefits to Employee

45
How can we apply these approaches?

• Be aware of differences in scale and culture
• Were unlikely to have 300,000 cats to be
  herded
• Health sector probably more authoritarian (but
  this wont make a single, central solution work)
• Reflect on where your enterprise stands in the
  spectrum
• And the similarities
• Both sectors are highly federal with local
  seats of power
• Existing investments cannot be ignored
• Core resource is information and knowledge
• How would you exploit an intranet portal in your
  environment?