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eWork Guide

3 . A STEP-BY-STEP eWORK PROCESS

The key steps in the eWork process are:

Establish a baseline of current activity;
Assess the suitability of your company's culture for eWorking;
Identify functions that can be eWorked (wholly or partly);
Select suitable managers;
Select eWorkers;
Build a business case for eWorking;
Implement the pilot scheme;
Monitor and evaluate the outcomes.

Baseline of Current Activity

Assessing existing eWorking helps you to identify possible champions for the activity and to select the functions most likely to be successfully eWorked. Try to identify:

Who is currently eWorking, and who is not, by grades and functions;
How frequently they eWork;
What tasks they eWork;
What training they've had;
What hardware and software have been used;
Who they report to;
What they think of eWork;
Whether eWork has been successful - and why;
What has it cost;
Whether there are any formal agreements.

It is also useful to monitor conventional (onsite) activity to establish a standard against which eWorking can be compared later.

The Company Culture

Successful eWork means combining suitable tasks, positive attitudes among staff and managers, familiarity with IT and a favourable organisational ethos. Until now eWork has been concentrated in high-technology companies where the ethos tends to be innovative, flexible and hard working, with a relatively flat management structure, accompanied often by family-friendly policies to encourage staff recruitment and retention.

More traditional, hierarchical company cultures tend to equate physical presence with work, and see the empowerment implicit in eWorking as an unacceptable loss of control and status. They face a more daunting task in addressing eWork, as do those companies where regular onsite meetings form a key part of the corporate culture.

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