Woman: These days, more and more people are employed by a company, but work from home. They’re sometimes called ‘remote workers’. Carserve is a vehicle breakdown company whose pho~Lc operators are all based at home. Steve Marriott, an internal business consultant with Carserve, is in the studio today. Steve, do people really enjoy working from home?
Man: If you measure enjoyment by staff retention and improved productivity, the answer is definitely yes. But this doesn’t happen by itself. In Carserve, we like the fact that our staff keep in touch with each other, through personal phone calls and emails. We also use email for company communications, instead of using office noticeboards, though of course we can’t guarantee that everyone reads them all. But the absence of a sharp division between work and home sometimes creates a definite sense of insecurity, which we can’t always remove.
Woman: Wasn’t there a risk in introducing remote working?
Man: Before it was started, the greatest fear was that, with the change in the support provided, people would be less productive. As it’s turned out, staff have to be actively encouraged to take short breaks. You see, they tend to feel they have to answer the phone at the first ring, in case their manager thinks they’re sitting around watching TV, even though they know we don’t do that kind of checking up.
Woman: When you joined Carserve you weren’t happy with the ways things were being run, were you? What was the problem?
Man: The management focused on what could be put down on paper, like an organogram showing reporting lines. But they tended to avoid the less concrete issues, like how to ensure the workers knew what they were expected to achieve. So despite detailed planning and plenty of memos, in reality people were working in a bit of a vacuum.
Woman: How did you turn that around?
Man: Communication is important, but regular meetings are no substitute for a change of attitude. Managers have to start from the assumption that the remote workers are doing their job properly, even though they aren’t being supervised. So that’s what I focused on.
Woman: You do teamwork, don’t you, even though the teams aren’t physically working in the same place. How does that work?
Man: Surprisingly, perhaps, it makes them more effective. Because they know they’re only coming into the office for a team meeting, they plan that meeting much more carefully than perhaps they would do otherwise. And between meetings they communicate by email or phone, and that tends to take the pressure off reaching a decision before thinking it right through.
Woman: Earlier, you mentioned the use of electronic communication internally, like the phone, and computers for emails. Have these replaced face-to-face contact?
Man: Not entirely. In fact, managers often work from home too, and staff are sometimes afraid, wrongly in fact, that a phone call will disturb them, or that an email won’t be read on time. So, we make sure staff can regularly talk to their managers face-to-face.
Woman: Doesn’t remote working make it difficult for managers to carry out their work?
Man: It certainly changes its nature. As part of our performance management process, managers visit staff at home twice a month. When everyone works in one office, you get on with some, and have less rapport with others, and usually that doesn’t matter. But when you travel around visiting staff in their own homes, you have to develop relationships with them that are based on their needs, which may mean helping them with aspects of their non-working lives that are affecting their work.
Woman: So, have you organised training for managers, to deal with this new way of working?
Man: Yes, a great deal of thought goes into finding out what would most benefit staff. Many people would focus on how to use the technology, but in our experience that isn’t a priority. We’ve already run workshops on managing remote teams, but many managers find it hard to let go of their traditional control, and feel that remote working is a recipe for chaos. We’re trying to tackle this.
Woman: Steve Marriott, thank you very much.
Man: Thank you.
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