These are rough notes of day 2:
Keynote presentation
Distance work in public organizations: in the intersection between technology, organization and politics. Hanne Heen, Work Research Institute, Norway and Wiggo Knudsen, Norwegian Public Road Administration. Three case studies:
Sunnaas Sykehus: telemedicine, distance work, assistance to medical research. Hospital with 500+ employees, very specialized treatment of spine injuries, 1990 data revolution, various IT elements were tested, but not all of it worked, however simple things such as the use of internet worked. Collaborated with US and Swedish hospitals, constituted a revolution.
Returning the disabled to a work situation, treatment from a distance.
Labour inspection: 400 employees, inspectors follow the work-force work from home with very good results. Problems with security, tried firewalls. Too much focus on technical issues, too advanced, too much focus on technology. Mobile office inspector, use a laptop and a telephone, went round doing inspections in a systematic way, forms to be filled-out, then send to secretary who would finish the documents.
Evaluation of home offices in the public roads authority. Quite successful, but projects were not pursued or canceled. Of the 10,000 employees production department split off, and the remaining 6000-4000 employees would be slimmed down. Regionalization, as a result new ways of working, dispersed work modes explodes: in 2002:20% in 2006: 60% of the employees work in a dispersed way. Distant work should be used to obtain the aims of reorganization. Project was opportunity drive, later on became politically driven. Driving forces behind distributed organizations: new public management reform, to appear modern, willing to change, to develop new forms of management, development of impersonal control systems, technology push.
Remarks: Facebook (programme?) that should give visibility to tele and distance workers.
Stream 3A: User driven innovation in new workspace design: Eva Bjerrum and John Brøndberg Simonsen, the Alexandra Institute, Denmark.
People not at their desks but at home, traveling, in the city etc… New office design is not a change agent in itself, the concept of work is biased: the only real work is individual, by yourself, and result based.
Danish dairy board. Methodology: questionnaire, workshops towards attitudes and expectations and implementation of the new office design. 1year later post evaluation review.
Workshop: took pictures to talk with managers about these pictures and asked about associations with these pictures.
POE: 89% appreciate the new office design, 85% agree that the new office design support work better, 66% talks more to colleagues, 69% believe they become better at informal meeting.
Observation: a lot of light, a good atmosphere, empty spaces, many different materials, flexible rooms seldom used. Although these rooms were requested at the start of the project.
Methodologies:
Snapshots: register on a floor plan in 5 minute periods what is happening in the office,
Episodes: detail written descriptions of what is happening in a space,
Workshop 2: Unfreezing the organization
Use all the space, change behaviour, desk sharing, rethinking the space, more flexible IT and telephone systems.
E-working: the facility manager’s turn. Michael G.M. Geerdink, Kalchas BV, and Rosanna Lopes, The Hague University.
Focus on the function of the facility manager in the implementation of eWorking in an organization, due to the direct link between real estate and eWorking. Discussion on role and definition of facility manager. If HR takes the initiative the focus can be too much on the HR side, the IT department too much on IT.
Changes in facilities: desk sharing, clean desk policy, workplace supports specific activities, variety of workplaces, eWork leads reduction of individual workspaces. Change of perception of facility manager.
Stream 4A: Workplace design for distributed work: John Willy Bakke, Telenor research and innovation. What is the role of workplace design for distributed work? Why are companies still in workplace design, architecture and space solutions? Despite the dematerialization of organizations. Teleworkers are the digital nomads, heroes of the digital age. Wrote a handbook: a Nordic guide to workplace design. Thus the question what does workplace design mean for distributed work. The body of the virtual worker needs to be somewhere and that place needs to have certain qualities. Space matters for organizational processes. Workspace is not an empty container for activities. Ordering of space in buildings is about ordering of relations between people. “Buildings stabilize social life (Gieryn 2002), they give structure to social institutions, durability to social networks, persistence to behaviour patterns.” Building communicate with the environment all the time.
Mary Jo Hatch (book): distinguishes the difference between the location (communication, recruitment, transportation), lay-out (interaction, coordination, conflict & control) and design (style, décor).
What is the relation between distributed work and the physical workplace? Distributed work is not an exception that motivates a specific form of workplace design.
Stream 5B: Call centre-business model, Christer Strandberg and Olaf Wahlberg. Are all call centres electronic sweatshops? Call centres are not always an industry. Heaven or hell? growing sector, salient vehicle for customer service in a globalized economy with tougher competition, CRM.
Call centres come in many forms: outsourced or in-house. In reality more employees in in-house call centres than outsourced (80% in-house). Basic assumption of psychosocial work environment is important, key to job satisfaction, commitment, efficiency and customer service. Methodology: used QPS questionnaire for investigate psychosocial conditions, 123 questions and 26 indexes-scales. Data base with QPS data for more than 2000 Nordic organizations. Leadership is very important to cope with stress perceived at work, support from co-workers important. Outsourced call centres’ margin is 3%. Outsourced call-centres turn-over of employees is 1.5 years.
Psychosocial conditions, UK compared to Sweden, people are being taken care off, called the Swedish model. Team managers should be people orientated for success.
The impact of home-based telework on Work-Family conflict in the childcare stage: Wendy Spinks
Family conflict: a form of inter-role conflict in which the role pressures from the work and family domains are mutually un
Mainly woman homebased work,
Home-based work: place is at place of living, work autonomy is high, absence of commute.
Struggling for balance: the corrosive effect of consultant’s work and travel patterns on their home life: Donald Hislop, Loughborough University
Work and travel patterns: 2-3 days a week traveling, 1 day in office, 1 at home, often staying over when on the road. Work locations: client sites, cars, homes, own offices. Typical long hours work.
Work Family Border theory (Cambell Clarke 2000): people physically and psychologically inhabit a number of different “domains”, work and family are two important domains, each domain has its own
Domain borders play a key role in shaping inter-relationships: permeability, flexibility, blending, strength (border of domains either strong or weak).
Work domain has negative impacts for consultants non-work domain. Absence from home life, conflict on arrival home, impacts on hobbies and social life, impact on health and wellbeing. Work dominated the temporal domain, unpredictability of the work. Consultants spend a lot of time driving, paradox: travel intrinsic of work but was not regarded as a legitimate work activity (wasted time), partly explains why journeys commonly not during formal “work-time”. Consultant are border crosser but prioritize work when conflict exists.
Job engagement and quality of life: Liv Murud, Lillehammer University,
Job engagement and how it affects quality of life. Job engagement = energy + involvement + absorption
Quality of life=the relationship with yourself + relationship with significant others
