Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, for example, started realizing almost a decade ago that they were losing their best workers to competitors that offered programs allowing people to work from home. Blue Cross decided to test out a similar program, and let 150 people work remotely. Now, the company has 736 people who work outside of the office on a full-time basis, which represents about 20 percent of the company. As more and more people started to work from home, the company realized it didn’t need so much office space, so it consolidated, saving $8.5 million a year in real estate costs, said Karen Kelly, a workforce mobility consultant at the health plan. But even then, there were rows upon rows of empty work space in the head office, since some people worked from home only sometimes, and still had desks. So the company is now launching a program which would get rid of permanent desks for many workers. Instead, they’re given a laptop and a rolling locker that they can use to store coffee mugs, pictures, and other belongings. When they want to work in the office, they can log onto a calendar and reserve a mobile desk. The new set-up saves money while getting more productivity out of workers, Kelly said. Surveys that the company did indicated employees “were less distracted and more productive working in the right environment,” she said. Kelly works from home most of the time now. She has gotten back around two hours of personal time now that she doesn’t have to commute she says. She lost 10 pounds since she can go to the gym more, and spends a little more time working, since she doesn’t have to spend so much time in the car. A study by Stanford researchers published earlier this month affirms that allowing some employees to work from home makes them more productive. Chinese travel agency C-trip allowed a random sample of call center employees to work from home for nine months, and the researchers studied the results. Working from home led to a 13 percent performance increase, partly because people worked more minutes per shift since they didn’t take as many breaks or sick days—and partly because they were able to make more calls per minute because they were less distracted. Another new type of work style that’s changing the way the office looks allows people to come in when they want to, as long as they complete assignments. ---- This is just a hint of what Ive been saying comes out of emancipating the workforce for almost a decade now and why I invented the Action Oriented Workflow paradigm. sent2null.blogspot/2008/03/increasingly-telepresent-workforce.html The world of work is about to radically change as AOW based systems take over and enable people to become more emancipated and work across their value landscape. https://facebook/notes/david-saintloth/discovering-the-action-landscapea-journey-in-progress/10151790916618057 Its such great redemption to see stuff I build technology to enable being confirmed by others...as automation continues to accelerate, AOW based systems will be seen to be the indispensable tools for generating hyper efficiency that they are. https://drive.google/open?id=0B9N6z_bRVUMmOVV2V1NiSlMycWM&authuser=0
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 02:33:34 +0000
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