Well after a week of snow and disruption it’s back to work today (or perhaps not as for some of the UK there is forecast for another day of snow).
The business headlines though have been full of the cost to the UK economy, quotes range from a general £1.2bn cost to the economy to a daily cost of £0.5bn due to absenteeism. The feeling from a lot of these articles is that it’s the employees fault for not trying or the local governments fault for not gritting the road, but it never seems to be the employers fault…no they’re the ones suffering.
Isn’t it about time we had a revolution in work days in the UK? A move from the practices and procedures in place to support an office in a city centre with set working hours? An abolition of the 9 to 5 … and for those who are about to say “if only” can I say we should also do away with the long hours culture too. Sure, work the long hours when you need to (finishing projects, completing deals) but not to impress your boss or worse, just to be seen in the office.
I mean this week how many like me have spent hours wasted standing on freezing platforms? Or struggling to get through the roads on buses and in cars? If you managed to get in at all, how many have been “late in”?
So will this cold snap finally kick start a new wave of forward thinking employers that shift to a flexible working model, not just in terms of working hours but also in working location? Law firms are ideally placed to take advantage as they don’t have the necessity of a set working hour like say retail.
The technology is there to enable lawyers to work anywhere:
- Remote access – how many firms don’t have some form of remote access to either connect your work laptop from your home broadband or even to use your home PC to connect through to your work environment?
- IM (Instant Messaging) – on my top 5 for 2010, IM has the ability to replace those adhoc chats in the office. Also bringing video to the desktop makes communicating more successful than with just the telephone. Also when you consider Skype’s recent announcement for their HD video it’ll be much better than the grainy pictures of old.
- Workflow – in dictation and other systems, workflow is built in. Meaning you can do your dictation or task, submit it and it can go on to a pool of people to complete (either in their home, another office or another country).
The benefits during this last week are so obvious!
Your employees firstly can get to work (no snow between bedroom and study and even if for whatever reason there is, then just use the laptop in your bedroom!). Your employees who got to work this week were probably late, cold and rather un-motivated due to expending all their energy on their commute!
The cost benefits are there too. By providing flexible working a percentage of the firm will always be working out of the office, this should enable firms to redesign their office space requirements to utilise less desks and less space. Less space = less cost, a big saving for a lot of law firms whose offices tend to be in prime real estate locations.
Yes there are the common complaints:
- People aren’t working, but having a “jolly” at home. This perhaps will require the most effort to resolve as it will require a shift in the way we manage people. But surely we should be managing for results/deliverables anyway, rather than by how long someone is at their desk or in the office? After all lawyers work with clients very effectively and they’re offsite, so surely it’s as easy if not easier to do that with colleagues?
- Missing the day to day chats. This can be alleviated with IM as previously mentioned, but I’m not advocating sole home working. So the adhoc chats will still happen when people are in the office. If there is a need for a team to keep in regular contact then the team probably needs to be together in the office but it won’t be all the time.
- Some people can’t due to the nature of their work. That’s right, but my answer is so what? Why should there be one policy for all employees? In Law firms more can. Take Legal IT departments as an example:
- Help Desk – there is technology to allow switch board numbers to be routed to any phone any where. The AA do this for their call centre operators, as do many other forward thinking companies.
- Server Support – a lot of firms utilise remote data centres anyway, so what is the difference if their “home base” is elsewhere?
So stop the complaining about the cost of the snow and do something about it. It’s time for a flexible working revolution. Let’s get rid of 9 to 5 and get rid of the concept of needing a permanent desk in an office to do your work!
Agreed. It’s time!
It almost amazes me that this needs to be a revolution. It makes good business sense from every perspective. The commercial case is undeniable. And the technology is available.
I appreciate that required scale and costs would have once meant certain solutions were the preserve of the FTSE-100. But that’s no longer the case. The solutions are now within reach of most.
So why the hesitancy to get on board?
With ever increasing pressure on billable hours and all the upcoming regulatory changes, I would have thought it imperative to leverage every competitive advantage possible.
I’m curious. If you’ve not yet adopted these practices, what’s blocking you/your firm? If you have, what were the key drivers and approaches used for approval?
One of the best posts I’ve read on this subject, its not just the legal industry that has the problem of viewing home working as suspicious I rather think its a deep in-grained culture in the uk that penetrates from lower right up to senior management in the majority of firms in this country, the fact people are not in the office and are at home = its a jolly… I whole heartedly endorse your attitude in calling for more flexible working arrangements, especially in an IT environment, I have never been in a position in IT where I have to be physically located in an office yet people insist I am there, why… peace of mind… If I can see him I can control him (wrong anyway).
Other countries embrace this sort of working more freely but in this country we are held back by attitudes that basically belong in the late 70s.
Great Post Jason, wish I’d written it! I’m with you on many if not all of your points. I think you can also throw into the mix other emerging technologies such as Twitter and Facebook to augment IM in re-creating the office experience. And collaborative platforms such as Google Sites, Zoho and the soon to be released MS Office 2010 are getting so much better that companies can make real benefits to their bottom line if they embrace them. We’re doing a lot of work on this internally at my company and, as you say the way in which we manage people and treat staff needs to change. Surely in most (or at least many) environments staff can be trusted and / or measured on results and deliverables as you mention. One element that also seems to need addressing is security. I put up a post on that (http://thebig2o.wordpress.com) as I think that is also a bit of an education battle than a real issue. But congratulations on a great post. Let’s hope companies wake up to this in 2010!
I think one of the issues not mentioned so far is that home-working is just not suitable for everyone. It requires a degree of self-reliance (in various ways) that many people just don’t have, and for any individual it may take a while for that to be recognised – both by the employee and the management.
Also some people prefer to have a complete physical separation between the home and work environments.
But probably the single biggest factor why it isn’t an option for more people: It requires more effort to manage than having people sitting at desks in an office.
Time to change our culture and we are doing it!
A great post Jason and I’m pleased to say that the only way we were affected by the severe weather was by receiving more work.
If there is a lack of trust from employers having employees work from home then all performance should be results based – not just by turning up on time. All of our team work 100% from their homes and pay is purely based on the results delivered. Of course there is a minimum expectation from everyone involved.
The management culture in firms needs to change -from the top down. My last position (as you know well) was micro-managed. Attendance and time keeping was monitored more closely than the results and productivity of staff. I was given a red tick on the fire register for being 2 minutes late into the office! Less appreciation was shown when it came to working extra when needed. It demonstrates that businesses value attendance more than results from its people.
To have good trust and results from home workers, the right people should be chosen for the right job.
There are plenty of sheep out there who want to be led and coralled in an office environment. Equally there are lots of people out there looking for an alternative way to work that suits their personality, values and desires.
In order to make change, one must first THINK change.