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Your Staff With You |
Consider eWork as a positive option
eWorking is a way of using new technologies to enable work to be carried
out independent of location, with modern communications and information
technologies. eWork is not a job but a method of working. Teleworking
is an older term, which usually referred to working from home. With
today’s technology eWorkers can be anywhere you want them to
be - on the road, at a customer premises, or at home.
eWorkers can even be in a different country. One company, for example,
uses proof readers in India so that work continues while its employees
in Ireland are asleep. This contributes to increased productivity
and reducing the cycle times for clients, as article preparation can
be undertaken around the clock, due to the time zone differences.
Jobs that are suitable for eWorking tend to have:
- a
high degree of information processing
-
clearly defined or individual work
- clear
objectives and measurable outputs
- minimal
requirements for supervision.
 For
example, professional business managers, IT specialists and
clerical support workers, customer service agents and sales
workers all have jobs that can be eWorked. In general, eWorkers
should spend at least one day a week in the office, and in
fact the most popular arrangement is one or two days per week
out of the office. Full time homeworking is unusual. The most
common benefits of eWork are improved productivity, reduced
costs, improved customer service, better use of facilities
and savings on infrastructural costs, improved staff retention
and more successful recruitment of workers, and improved change
management.
Most eWorkers
work from their homes in Ireland. For example, a member of staff at
Dublin based Reprographic Systems requested that he be able to eWork
for the company, as he wanted to relocate to Wexford. The company
was eager to retain him, as he was an experienced graphics operator
and a key member of staff who had been with Reprographic Systems for
five years. Until that point, it would not have been possible due
to the technical constraints of the systems being used in the company’s
studio. An operator could only get access to the software through
the office network. The introduction of new technology by Barco Graphics
(the design package being used by the organisation) meant that this
could become a reality and the operator started working from Wexford.
The system also facilitated the location of staff in key customer
premises.
Frank Greene, Technical Manager said that “Knowing your people”
was one of the vital lessons learned by Reprographic Systems from
the introduction of eWorking. It was important that the team in the
Dublin office had 100% trust in the operator working in Wexford. “You
need to think differently about the type of person that is - and you
must understand their strengths and weaknesses,” said Greene.
Also
available on this CD
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