Showing posts with label Facilities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facilities. Show all posts

December 17, 2008

Nanobots—Mobility Solutions Saves Organizations Money

Times are tough. The economy is in tatters. People have lost confidence, savings, jobs, and in many cases, even their homes. So, fear is pervasive among consumers, and they are cutting back on their spending.

And in an economy, where consumer spending drives 70% of the total economy, organizations are cutting back to save money too. One thing that they are doing is cutting facility costs and encouraging alternate work arrangements for staff such as teleworking, hoteling, and so forth,

The CIO is a major enabler for these alternate work arrangements and therefore for saving organizations money.

In teleworking, telecommunications is used for workers to link to the office, rather than have them actually commuting to work everyday, and in hoteling, workers have unassigned, flexible seating in the office, so their does not need to be separate office space allocated for every worker.

In these non-conventional work arrangements, IT creates for a far more mobile and agile workforce and this enables organizations to save significant money on costly fixed office space.

According to Area Development Online “as much as 50 percent of corporate office space goes unused at any given time, yet companies continue to pay for 100 percent of it. Yesterday’s ‘everyone in one place’ approach to workspace has become outdated in a business world where some types of work can be more about what you do than where you go.”

Moreover, “With laptops, cell phones, mobile e-mail devices, and high-speed Internet available on every corner — and the 70 million-strong Millennial generation entering the work force — some workers have little need to spend time at a desk in a corporate office. In fact, research group IDC expects 75 percent of the U.S. work force to be mobile by 2011.”

The Wall Street Journal, 15 December 2008 reports that “There’s a new class of workers out there: Nearly Autonomous, Not in the Office, doing Business in their Own Time Staff. Or nanobots for short…Managed correctly, nanobots can be a huge asset to their company.”

Here’s how to enable nanobot workers?

  1. Robust technology—give them the access to the technologies they need to be successful; to stay connected and be productive. Remember, the technology has to provide telecommunications to overcome both the geographical distance as well the psychological distance of not having the social contact and face-to-face communication with management, peers, and even staff.
  2. Clear performance expectations—It important to set clear performance expectations, since the nanobot is not planted in a cube or office under watchful management eyes. Without clear expectatiuons nanobots may either underwork or overwork themselves. Generally, “nanobots thrive on their driven natures and the personal freedom with which they are entrusted…while nanobots relish the independence that mobile technologies give them, they are painfully aware that their devices are both freeing and binding. In some sense, they set their own hours because of their mobile devices; in another sense, they can never get away from the business which follows them everywhere.”
  3. Different strokes for different folks—recognize which employees are good candidates for each type of work arrangement. Some can be very successful working remotely, while others thrive in the office setting. Either way, enabling workers with a variety of mobility solutions will make for a happier and more productive workforce and a more cost efficient enterprise.

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