Need to find an extra 196 extra working hours a year? Mobilise!
More effective working hours and greater team efficiency are both
factors pushing more employers towards mobilising their workforce.
Mobile phones, Smart phones, PDAs, Blackberrys and other devices
are all changing the way in which we work and, inevitably, the ways
in which we communicate and learn. A study by Ipsos Reid found that
Blackberry users produce an extra 56 minutes of effective work a
day, that work teams with mobile communications found themselves
to be 29% more effective, and that, shockingly, the same teams processed
just less than 3,000 emails and more than 1400 calls per year, per
person.
Firstly, this means that organisations must be aware of the nature
and working patterns of the mobilised workforce in order to maximise
the clear operational advantages. In an example with a negative
impact, one organisation amended a daily report with over 50 line
items into individual emails. The resulting individual communications
produced a timely, but ultimately fractured, picture of what was
going on ‘back at the office’. On a more positive note,
synching a disparate team’s ongoing appointments centrally
meant one organisation could double the number of intra-team communications
– everyone was able to know what everyone was doing and thus
informally converse and support each other.
Secondly, organisations need to effectively mobilise their messages
and materials to better enable their staff. However, let’s
take a moment and make sure no-one is seeing mobile as a ‘simple
step’. Screen size and usability of data are just two of the
many considerations with regard to mobile devices. Some ground rules
can help you avoid simplistic assumptions:
- Don’t assume technical uniformity. Higher management
tiers of the organisation may well have different devices than
other areas and just because a ‘fleet’ of devices
all look the same, they may not be the same.
- Stick to your goals. Don’t start changing your tactics
simply because mobilisation has promise.
- You can’t precis everything. Can you get complex, sensitive
information like a company report into an SMS message? Clearly
not, so why try?
- Don’t forget audio. Our new, amazing mobile devices may
be able to play golf games, take camera quality photos and video
conference, but they can also allow people to listen to local
or remote audio sources. Audio is a very powerful form of communication.
Finally, let’s take a moment to consider the human factor. It’s
great that people have their Blackberry so they can stay in touch,
but do they have time to think do they have time to create effective
work, and do they have quality time with their clients, family and
friends? Just because we live in an ‘always connected’
environment doesn’t mean that humans are necessarily effective
when they are always expected to be available. Encouraging a ‘twitch
culture’ where everyone responds to everything immediately,
way into the evening, is no fun and your workforce should feel you
encourage a culture that knows there’s an ‘off’
button on mobile devices too.
Dominic Mason, Consultant
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