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Beginners
How To Guide
eWork Guide
FOREWORD
Mr. Noel Treacy T.D., Minister of State for Science
and Technology and Commerce
The
recent spectacular success of the economy has created
new expectations among Irish people. We are seeking
improved quality to our lives, while preserving and
growing the wealth creating capacity of our people. But
sustainable growth requires flexibility and openness
to innovation and change. Already we are witnessing
the logistical and labour pool bottlenecks created
by the sudden acceleration in our economic growth. If
we are to overcome these, we must exploit every technological
opportunity that presents itself. Electronic
working (eWork) is just such an opportunity.
Irish business, in common with many of its European
counterparts, has been slow to realise the potential
of eWork. The United States, on the other hand,
has seen its economy transformed by the new opportunities
presented by modern information and communications
technologies, and the enhanced flexibility that electronic
working has provided to its workforce. The US,
with an unemployment rate at levels that would normally
be associated with full employment, has continued
to expand and grow because of the efficiencies that
these processes provide. The Irish economy, with
similar low rates of unemployment, must begin to accelerate
its take up of the opportunities that eWorking provides.
1 . eWORK AND BUSINESS
eWork
is a subset of teleworking, which also covers other
activities like telesales, businesses operated from
the home and mobile working (for example, in sales
or service). The term eWork has been used throughout
this guide as it more accurately reflects its primary
purpose - to encourage Irish businesses to make
this kind of working an everyday business practice.
If
you have never given much thought to eWork before
you might be surprised to find how much is already
going on in Irish companies. Consider this scenario:
- It's
been a busy day at the office, and you still have
to prepare a presentation for a business conference
in two days' time. It needs a lot of thought,
and you're not getting the uninterrupted time you
need, so you take the files home. You find
you need figures from the accounts database, so
you use your laptop computer to log on to the company's
server. There's a message from Helen, the R&D
Manager who's in Germany on a site visit, which
you reply to. After completing a draft of
the presentation, you email it to your office for
comment from colleagues.
- The
following morning, you're on the road early, heading
for a meeting with some key clients. After
the meeting, you check your messages again, plugging
your mobile phone into your laptop to make contact.
You read your colleagues' suggested changes to your
presentation, accept some and then email the final
presentation to the conference organisers.
- Next
day, you spend the early morning practising for
your presentation at home on the laptop before driving
to the conference, where your emailed version has
been pre-loaded by the conference organiser. The
presentation is also available online from the organiser's
web-site and, by the time you reach the office,
over a dozen email comments have been forwarded
to you from potential clients.
Such
scenarios are increasingly common in a wide variety
of job functions. While the people involved
might not describe themselves as eWorkers, much
of what they do fits within the description of eWork:
-
Working
for substantial periods outside the office;
- Logging
on to their company's computer remotely, or to the
Internet;
- Sending
and receiving email, data or files remotely;
- Developing
ideas, products and services remotely.
Our
notions of how and where work can be done, and how
it can be managed, are changing. Work is no
longer confined to specific locations or timeframes
- it's a flexible process, limited only by our ability
to imagine new ways to deliver.
The
impact of eWork
Companies
that introduce eWork generally do so for four main
reasons: productivity improvements, cost reduction,
staff retention and reducing time spent travelling. Research
shows that companies find they exceed their own
expectations in key areas such as higher staff retention
rates and productivity improvements. Indeed,
productivity often increases to the point where
eWorkers require guidance on how to avoid overworking
and burn-out.
Although
the vast majority of eWorkers do not work away from
the office full-time, eWork techniques allow many
jobs to be based from home or on the road, so staff
can complete their work more effectively without
frequent trips back to the office. The results
can be better interfacing with customers, greater
efficiency and less time wasted on the move.
In
most companies, there is already a lot of activity
that fits comfortably within the definition of eWork. The
question is whether you can build on that by moving
from the current informal arrangement to a planned
experiment. If successful the next step would
be a more formal pilot, thereby systematically capturing
the added value that can be gained from the process. And
if it works on a pilot scale, should you consider
extending the arrangements even further?
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