How Telecommuting Lets Workers Mobilize for Sustainability | Reuters

For U.S. businesses, making the transition to go mobile represents a triple win: It provides workplace flexibility for employees to telecommute or adapt other forms of telework, improves productivity while reducing costs, including reducing the amount of office space needed, and contributes significant environmental benefits in the form of reduced energy consumption and carbon emissions.

via reuters.com

While I don’t think the main reason companies should implement workplace strategies and technologies is so employees can work from home (I think the main reason is to support distributed teams), some studies and surveys around telecommuting (another common name for work-from-home) have come out recently.

• in a 2008 survey of 1400 CFOs, one-third said telework arrangements are the best recruiting inducement, while half said it was the second-best (after salary)
• since transportation represents about 26% of (Green House Gas) GHG emissions worldwide, telecommuting is the biggest way to achieve significant reductions in GHG, with a relatively small investment in technology and infrastructure

We are seeing lots of surveys telling us that telecommuting is not only one of the strongest recruiting tools, it’s also one of the biggest retention incentives. These are both good news in these tought economic times for cash-strapped companies, as well as now that recruiting is becoming a little harder again.

Of course, if a company invests in technology and infrastructure to enable its employees to work well together, and to work from everywhere, then these same investments already include what most people need to telecommute.

So why not take advantage of these investments you’ve already made, and use them to offer telecommuting as both recruitment and retention incentives?

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Completely Redesigned Evernote for iPhone and iPod Touch « Evernote Blogcast

via blog.evernote.com

If you are a mobile worker, use multiple devices (including a smartphone), and are a compulsive notetaker like me, then you should be using Evernote. It automatically syncs with all of your Evernote instances (I use the Mac, iPhone, and web versions; although they have versions for most other platforms), all by itself, with no prompting from you. All of your notes are always with you!

This new iPhone version makes it much easier to add a new note, including incorporating snapshots. This makes it faster to write your notes and include pictures of the speaker and presentation. I use this feature all the time, and the new version really speeds it up for me.

It's also much faster and easier to find your existing notes using tags. This is a huge improvement over the previous version, and best of all, it's free.

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Google Docs secrets: 20 power tips | Office | Working Mac | Macworld

via macworld.com

I use Google Docs (mostly spreadsheets) all the time to work on documents collaboratively. This top 20 power tips has some good information, but the best one is about sharing with others:
5. Share docs with non-Google Docs users

Google Docs is all about collaboration, and you can even permit people who don’t have a Google account to view and edit your documents.

To share a file, click the padlock icon alongside the document title at the top left of the window. In the dialog box that appears, select Change alongside the Private entry in the list. In the new dialog box, select either Public on the Web or Anyone with the Link. If you want viewers to be able to edit the document as well as just to see it, put a check next to Allow Anyone to Edit. Then click the Save button, and copy and paste the link into one or more e-mail messages.

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TELUS Talks Business - Flex Work Gone Wild

Research and analyst organizations around the world have given considerable focus to the topics of workforce mobility, distributed work and flexible workstyles.

 

Telus is a company playing an active role in industry research and in 2010 they sponsored a national study of the changing workforce dynamics (Harris Decima Flex Workstyles 2010.) The study was designed to look at the current state of the union in flexible work and get the pulse of employees and managers across the country on the benefits and shortcomings of flexible work options.

While I will use this one specific study to step you through the major findings, you should note that there is a substantive body of research that goes back 20 years that supports all of the general trends outlined below. So without further delay here are a few of the highlights:…

via community.telustalksbusiness.com

Although this series of articles is and data analysis has lots of interesting points, these two seemed the most significant to me:

• How does Flex Work stack up when employees/managers are considering a new career opportunity… Number 2 on the hit list right behind PAY…

• Almost 2/3rds of employees’ spend a significant time away from their desk but only 33% indicated that they have the tools to work effectively anywhere else…

I worked with Ian many years at Sun Microsystems, and he really is a pioneer in this field. And very good at looking at, and understanding, data and surveys.

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MPK16 in the Virtual World: Enhancements!

One of the coolest things about working with a virtual instance of MPK16 has been that we can add features that are hard, or even impossible, to do in the real world. Two areas that I'd like to highlight are the use of the MPK16 virtual space as a meeting area for many people attending from all different locations; and the ability to rapidly reconfigure a room into a completely different configuration, by rearranging chairs and tables in a matter of seconds!

Meeting Location

A virtual world such as Second Life, or Sun’s Wonderland product, can accommodate dozens, even hundreds, of avatars in one location. Although most people agree that face-to-face (in-person) meetings are the most effective and satisfying way to meet, these days it is getting harder to hold meetings this way, for both financial and time-consuming reasons. In addition, more and more teams, due to the desire to take advantage of the best source of expertise, now contain members who do not sit with the rest of their team(s). 

Video is an excellent substitute for face-to-face meetings, but it is most effective up to four or five locations (people); after that the images get smaller to fit on your screen, and the faces become correspondingly smaller. At some point, you will lose the benefits of video, as you can no longer read someone’s face, and you may not be able to even recognize them. In a virtual world, each person is represented by a single avatar, so adding more people doesn’t degrade the appearance nor performance of your overall meeting. Plus, your hair always looks great!

(comparison of video meeting in MeBeam with eight people, Second Life meeting with nine)

Reconfigurability (aka, “Rooms of Requirements”)

One great feature of the virtual world we knew we would be able to take advantage of immediately was the ability to quickly reconfigure a room. Currently, four of the areas in the MPK16 pilot space have multiple configurations, and we are able to use the tools of Second Life to just push a button and see a room rapidly reconfigure itself.

This gave us three quick payoffs:
1. it reminds the designers of new spaces of the features they need to keep in mind for their floor plans, and gives a visual representation they can use to explain these features to their clients
2. the layouts in buildings undergoing a next gen retrofit may not be easily reconfigured to satisfy the requirements of the space, so the multiple configuration views give a visual guide to show the actual requirements of that type of space
3. it gives “instructions” on how to configure the layout of the physical space

Here is an example of the three different configurations of the MPK16 Break Area space:
Break Area Configurations
  

1-Café Style

2-Theater or Auditorium Style
 

3-Classroom Style

(see video below; also at https://slx.sun.com/1179275712)

Download now or watch on posterous

Break Area RoR.mov (4471 KB)

I will continue discussing and demonstrating some of the enhancements we were able to show in the virtual world instance of MPK16 in the next post.

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What is a formal distributed work program?

Some companies, through acquisitions, telecommute options, and marketplace forces, may have a formal distributed work, or “work-from-everywhere,” program. Other names for employee-focused flexible work location programs are flexible working, hoteling, telecommuting, work-from-home, “digital nomads,” or “road warriors.” Usually, these programs have formal polices around the employee programs, but may not have any formal programs or tools for other distributed teams.

In upcoming entries, I will discuss some ways that companies may find themselves with distributed teams that were created "accidently," as well as some ways to improve the work flow, and with any luck, the work output, of these teams. These improvements may also increase work satisfaction, reduce frustrations, and improve relationships between workers. It may also give a company some new options for how to quickly enter a new market location, or how to integrate an acquisition.

What is a Distributed Team?

(note: I use distributed teams and virtual teams interchangeably)

When the members of a team don’t physically sit together, then they are a distributed, or virtual, team. In other words, their work together is done in a virtual setting.

Sometimes, only one person may be separate from the rest of the team; for example, the manager of a project who holds weekly calls with the programming team in Asia. The other extreme may involve every single person on the team being in a separate location. Most distributed teams fall in between, where some members may sit together, another group may sit in another place, and some individuals may be in their own unique locations.

In addition, some companies may have a formalized Distributed Work Program.