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How different is managing telework
from other forms of management? The location of managers and
workers may be more variable, but are there any core skills
which are significantly different?
The growth of teleworking has
presented a number of challenges both to managers and to
academics researching and developing management theory.
We know from the rising tide of
enquiries to Flexibility from undergraduates, MBAs and
researchers that telework is an increasingly sexy topic for
dissertations and research programmes. But in terms of theory,
these are still early days. Reliable data is thin on the ground,
and there are relatively few good theoretical works around which
have their feet on the ground in terms of real business
practice.
Managing
Telework - Perspectives from Human Resource Management
and Work Psychology is an attempt to fill
this gap. It is a collection of papers edited by 3
teleworking academics. Its aim is "to provide a basis for
more informed management practice in this area [telework] by
gathering and integrating in one volume current thinking on
different aspects of teleworking".
The authors focus on the
"human process" involved in managing teleworkers,
rather than the technological. Telework is examined in its
social and organisational contexts, and the authors investigate
how to modify management processes to ensure that telework is
successful.
| One size
doesn't fit all |
|
Telework isn't one thing. It
covers a wide variety of work practices. Most guides and studies
provide some kind of breakdown of the varieties. The difficulty
lies in making useful distinctions from a management point of
view.
In Managing Telework the
editors provide one helpful segmentation of teleworking types
using a matrix based on the following variables:
- whether the role is
home-based, at a remote office, or mobile
- whether the telework has high
or low "knowledge intensity"
- whether intra-organisational
contact is high or low
- whether external contact is
high or low
This kind of classification is
more helpful than the standard home/telecentre/mobile
distinctions. But it also suffers from the problem of seeing
telework as applying to whole jobs or whole persons.
For most people it is a way of
working part of the time, not all of the time. In this respect
it is more useful to consider the tasks which can be
undertaken remotely, rather than the jobs.
But the key point is that just as
work comes in a variety of flavours, so doing it at a distance
will bring different factor into play.
But also it is the case that if
someone is only doing some of their work on a more flexible
basis, managers may find that in terms of human interaction it
may not be vastly different from dealing with, say, a sales
force who are out on the road for much of the time.
| Personality
and telework |
|
Recruitment and promotion often
involve some kind of psychometric analysis. It is quite natural
that HR practitioners may see some merit in applying this to
assessing suitability for teleworking. Several chapters in this
book examine personal suitability for teleworking.
However, this is an area where it
is hard to be precise, and once again it is necessary to raise
the issue about whether teleworking is for the whole of a job or
only certain functions.
Much current advice is simply
banal. According to the UK Department for Education and
Employment teleworkers should be:
- mature
- trustworthy
- self-sufficient
- self-disciplined
- good time managers
- good communicators
-and this is no doubt right. To
assess the value of such advice, turn the issue on its head.
Ask, then, which of your employees do you want NOT to
exhibit these characteristics?
In almost all cases, specified
attributes for teleworkers are only what you would expect from
the best of your workforce as a whole.
And if your are employing people
whom you find to be immature, untrustworthy, undisciplined, poor
time managers etc, the question arises why you are employing
them at all.
Unless you are content for
telework to be available as a privilege, or as an option for a
kind of workforce elite, then the issue is not so much about
selection on a personality basis as about how to raise standards
and how to prepare people for a different workstyle.
Once again, it is difficult to
arrive at generic advice, as the devil is in the detail. Much is
made, for example, of the need for teleworkers to be
self-motivated, self-managed and to be willing to work on a
trust basis. While this is often the case, it often is not. If
you are at home on phone duty for BT or the AA, or need to be
available for clients, you really have to be at a specified
place at a specified time. Management may be at a distance, but
it still exists in the same way as if your manager was at HQ and
you were at a satellite office.
As the chapter on Selection
for Telework points out, personality is only one variable in
the selection: other variables are
- organisational environment and
culture
- the suitability of the remote
environment
- the type of telework
- task characteristics.
| Managing
context, process and outputs |
|
For both academics and HR practitioners Managing Telework
is a valuable source of ideas.
Key to its value are:
- its willingness to explore the
complexities of managing telework.
- its appreciation that
teleworking requires not just the managing of outputs, but
of the context and process as well.
Moving towards telework will
require changes in the organisational context in which work
takes place. This can require changes to work processes not only
for people teleworking, but for all workers if the new work
style is to be effective. It can also mean changes to facilities
- do you need all those desks, and should the office be designed
like this...? Most of all it may require a change of culture.
How difficult all this is depends
both on where you start from and on a good understanding of the
issues involved.
But, while there are issues to
explore, implementing telework should not fill managers with
dread. Instead, if they are confident in their management skills
and enjoy the challenge of change, they should be
confident in their ability to manage telework successfully.
As the authors say,
"It becomes clear that there
is no easy, nor one best, way to manage teleworkers. Rather, and
not surprisingly, it is the case that many of the principles of
good management are as applicable to teleworking as they are to
traditional work arrangements".
Managing
Telework - Perspectives from Human Resource Management
and Work Psychology, edited by Kevin Daniels,
David A Lamond and Peter Standen, is published by
Business Press. ISBN 1 86152 572 9.
Available from bookshops or Business Press, Berkshire House,
168-173 High Holborn, London, WC1V 7AA, UK
www.itbp.com
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