This document provides an overview of smart working, including its definition, benefits, and examples of implementation. Smart working aims to improve efficiency and effectiveness through flexibility, autonomy, and collaboration enabled by new technologies. It includes flexible work hours, working from home, desk sharing, and virtual teams. The document examines KT, a Korean telecom company, that implemented smart working initiatives like a new office design promoting communication, flexible schedules, and working from home to increase productivity and employee satisfaction while reducing costs.
Information technology has evolved over the years and this has made it an important tool in the current business environment. Embracing technology has generated profits and major benefits for enterprises
Topic Computing: A New Experience Paradigm for the Age of Information OverloadDavid Lavenda
Information overload is real and it’s getting worse. Work environments are particularly prone to overload, given the never-ending stream of emails, chat messages and application notifications workers receive on a daily basis. Interestingly, though, research shows that information overload at work is more often due to poor information quality rather than sheer quantity. (Information quality is considered poor when it’s disconnected and/or incoherent, making it difficult to decipher and process).
Seizing Opportunities, Overcoming Productivity Challenges in the Virtually Co...Cognizant
By following a few simple rules, organizations can overcome the barriers to social and virtual ways of working, including concerns about distractions, personal detachment and business disruption.
Information technology has evolved over the years and this has made it an important tool in the current business environment. Embracing technology has generated profits and major benefits for enterprises
Topic Computing: A New Experience Paradigm for the Age of Information OverloadDavid Lavenda
Information overload is real and it’s getting worse. Work environments are particularly prone to overload, given the never-ending stream of emails, chat messages and application notifications workers receive on a daily basis. Interestingly, though, research shows that information overload at work is more often due to poor information quality rather than sheer quantity. (Information quality is considered poor when it’s disconnected and/or incoherent, making it difficult to decipher and process).
Seizing Opportunities, Overcoming Productivity Challenges in the Virtually Co...Cognizant
By following a few simple rules, organizations can overcome the barriers to social and virtual ways of working, including concerns about distractions, personal detachment and business disruption.
Making Technology Work at Work - #1 in the Employment in the Digital Age Seriesinaroundos
Part one of three digital learning resources for tech-savvy young adults in the workplace. Initiated and funded by Adult Learning Centres Grey-Bruce-Georgian, Adult Learning Programs of Perth and Employment Ontario.
The very nature of work, the way we work and where we work is changing. Businesses are reducing real estate, maximising the use of the space they have, increasing work from home and expecting their employees to adopt new practices from hot desking to unified communications. The need to collaborate with colleagues has never been greater, the pace of business has never been faster, and the pressures to be more productive are ever increasing. This white paper explores the drivers, need for change and case studies behind the technology solutions that are being deployed today to deliver collaborative solutions that fundamentally and permanently change the way we work.
IOT/IOP Dalam Pengurusan oleh Dr. Zahrah MokhtarPersatuan Uitm
Pembentangan IOT/IOP Dalam Pengurusan oleh Dr. Zahrah Mokhtar, Mantan Pendaftar UiTM pada Seminar Pengurusan Pentadbir (SePP) 2019 anjuran Anjuran Persatuan Pentadbir UiTM di ILD Bandar Enstek, Negeri Sembilan pada 22 - 24 Disember 2019
Objektif Seminar SePP 2019
1. Menjelaskan dan menerapkan teknik pembentukan dan pelaksanaan Pengurusan Tangkas.
2. Menjelaskan manfaat Internet of Thing (IoT)/Internet of People (IoP) dalam pengurusan.
3. Merealisasikan minda Cepat, Tepat dan Integriti (CTI) - Produktiviti, Kreatviti dan Inovasi (PCI).
4. Mempelajari teknik mengurus imej penampilan profesional serta penekanan dalam tatacara beretika dan adab dalam tugasan dan dalam setiap acara dan urusan.
5. Mempelajari teknik penyampaian dan komunikasi berkesan.
read more
http://ppuitmsa.blogspot.com/2019/11/seminar-pengurusan-pentadbir-2019.html
The digital workplace encompasses a broad range of applications and mode of communication. Here are 6 broad points on the trends surrounding the digital workplace.
What are the future trends in the Digital Workplace? Are we facing even bigger disruption from social, gamification, and the trends that have been prevalent over the last years or are we coming to a point where things are beginning to mature?
In this presentation - from Nordic Intranet Summit, November 2014 - I have looked at some common themes that I see across both the Nordic region and in the Intranet/Digital Workplace community as a whole.
Will there be Hoverboards? Not very likely... While innovations like these are exciting and fun, the real trends are what we see when we look at innovative solutions and innovative vendors.
The question is: Are we making the most of the emergent trends or are we still using the same thinking and logic we did when the Sharepoint 2007 intranet was launched? It's time to challenge ourselves and our peers!
Today’s growth in technological capabilities, exponential increase in computing power available to both consumers and enterprises, and almost ubiquitous Internet connectivity among other digital advances is changing the way employees and enterprises work.
Organizations are benefiting from the increased digitization of the workplace through increased productivity, cost savings, a more mobile and agile workforce, and generally increased flexibility and adaptability in an ever increasingly complex marketplace. Enterprises are collaborating more globally, and with more diverse and global staff. Employees can now work all over the world, from the jungle to the arctic, as long as they have reliable Internet.
While this has been a boom for employers, it has also changed the power balance in the employer-employee relationship, often more towards the employee. The ability to work from anywhere and stay connected through smart phones, tablets, and other mobile devices has enabled employees to stay connected and collaborate with peers and stay on top of digital trends more readily than the organizations they work for.
This new digital workplace also creates its own challenges, including security, developing a new kind of digital etiquette to expectations for employees, and the tendency for building expectation of always being “on,” causing burnout and often leading to retention problems. Integrating digital technologies into the workplace can not only wreak havoc on the productivity of workers, but it also creates its own distinct culture, impacting the previous work culture and the general work experience. These changes will challenge the workplace by forcing both executives and employees to adapt the way they interact with each other and the technologies that enable their work.
Companies must be proactive in creating new systems and policies, and re-interpreting their corporate culture around digital in the workplace, or they risk losing clients, productivity, and employees.
What does a digital workplace look like? (Keynote presentation from IKO confe...James Robertson
The Innovations in Knowledge Organisation (IKO) conference in Singapore brought together a wide range of practitioners to explore practical solutions. This closing keynote by James Robertson from Step Two shared key definitions, themes from the conference and practical examples.
Smart Work: Future Work Today - White PaperChris Leong
Exponential Information Communication Technology (ICT) advances are changing every aspect of people’s lives. The workplace is no exception and smart work centres represent a significant innovation in this area. Smart work is a mode of working that allows employees to perform telework in a co-working facility that is located close to the employee's residence. This “smart work hub” provides “smart workers” with desk spaces, wireless computer networks, video conferencing facilities and other office support facilities.
Smart work has numerous benefits for both staff and organisations. It can:
• Increase work-life balance which will improve employee performance and motivation;
• Promote innovation and collaboration amongst employees;
• Reduce office space requirements and associated costs for organisations; and
• Lower city congestion rates thereby reducing carbon emissions.
Furthermore, smart work represents an opportunity for increasing diversity in the workplace. For example, in Australia it can link regional workers to urban centres by removing the obstacle of distance.
Smart work has been adopted successfully in a number of countries already, notably the Netherlands, where the program was first started and where millions of euros have been saved every year from reductions in urban congestion as a result of the program. In South Korea, smart work has only recently been adopted, but has already shown significant results. There, the aim is to change the social fabric of that society--from its traditional hierarchical and collective culture toward a flatter and more individualistic one that is more flexible and innovative, and better able to compete in the global marketplace.
However, ingrained and out-dated organisational and cultural attitudes pose a significant barrier to the successful adoption of smart working practices. Through a case study analysis of KT Corp in Korea, this paper will explore how those attitudes can be overcome, should organisations align smart work practices toward specific strategic goals and implement such programs with the active participation of employees. The KT case demonstrates, through independently verified surveys along with external awards and acknowledgment, that improvements in work-life balance, innovation and productivity as well as diversity can be achieved.
As Australia has only just begun to implement smart work programs and will be assessing the economic benefits of such programs accordingly, Australian organisations should take note of cases such as this one, where governmental and organisational support of smart work has been invaluable to the successful implementation of this modern work practice. Finally, organisations should take note of the opportunity that adopting smart work represents for becoming innovators, by adopting best practice for working in the information age, in order to attract the finest talent of the future.
Condeco | Flexible Work e-Book | SlideshareCondeco
Flexible work is one of the most talked-about subjects in the world of business today. After all the forced change of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are looking forward, towards operating at their best in a very different world of work. Find out more here: https://www.condecosoftware.com/modern-workplace/asset/ebooks/flexible-work/
Making Technology Work at Work - #1 in the Employment in the Digital Age Seriesinaroundos
Part one of three digital learning resources for tech-savvy young adults in the workplace. Initiated and funded by Adult Learning Centres Grey-Bruce-Georgian, Adult Learning Programs of Perth and Employment Ontario.
The very nature of work, the way we work and where we work is changing. Businesses are reducing real estate, maximising the use of the space they have, increasing work from home and expecting their employees to adopt new practices from hot desking to unified communications. The need to collaborate with colleagues has never been greater, the pace of business has never been faster, and the pressures to be more productive are ever increasing. This white paper explores the drivers, need for change and case studies behind the technology solutions that are being deployed today to deliver collaborative solutions that fundamentally and permanently change the way we work.
IOT/IOP Dalam Pengurusan oleh Dr. Zahrah MokhtarPersatuan Uitm
Pembentangan IOT/IOP Dalam Pengurusan oleh Dr. Zahrah Mokhtar, Mantan Pendaftar UiTM pada Seminar Pengurusan Pentadbir (SePP) 2019 anjuran Anjuran Persatuan Pentadbir UiTM di ILD Bandar Enstek, Negeri Sembilan pada 22 - 24 Disember 2019
Objektif Seminar SePP 2019
1. Menjelaskan dan menerapkan teknik pembentukan dan pelaksanaan Pengurusan Tangkas.
2. Menjelaskan manfaat Internet of Thing (IoT)/Internet of People (IoP) dalam pengurusan.
3. Merealisasikan minda Cepat, Tepat dan Integriti (CTI) - Produktiviti, Kreatviti dan Inovasi (PCI).
4. Mempelajari teknik mengurus imej penampilan profesional serta penekanan dalam tatacara beretika dan adab dalam tugasan dan dalam setiap acara dan urusan.
5. Mempelajari teknik penyampaian dan komunikasi berkesan.
read more
http://ppuitmsa.blogspot.com/2019/11/seminar-pengurusan-pentadbir-2019.html
The digital workplace encompasses a broad range of applications and mode of communication. Here are 6 broad points on the trends surrounding the digital workplace.
What are the future trends in the Digital Workplace? Are we facing even bigger disruption from social, gamification, and the trends that have been prevalent over the last years or are we coming to a point where things are beginning to mature?
In this presentation - from Nordic Intranet Summit, November 2014 - I have looked at some common themes that I see across both the Nordic region and in the Intranet/Digital Workplace community as a whole.
Will there be Hoverboards? Not very likely... While innovations like these are exciting and fun, the real trends are what we see when we look at innovative solutions and innovative vendors.
The question is: Are we making the most of the emergent trends or are we still using the same thinking and logic we did when the Sharepoint 2007 intranet was launched? It's time to challenge ourselves and our peers!
Today’s growth in technological capabilities, exponential increase in computing power available to both consumers and enterprises, and almost ubiquitous Internet connectivity among other digital advances is changing the way employees and enterprises work.
Organizations are benefiting from the increased digitization of the workplace through increased productivity, cost savings, a more mobile and agile workforce, and generally increased flexibility and adaptability in an ever increasingly complex marketplace. Enterprises are collaborating more globally, and with more diverse and global staff. Employees can now work all over the world, from the jungle to the arctic, as long as they have reliable Internet.
While this has been a boom for employers, it has also changed the power balance in the employer-employee relationship, often more towards the employee. The ability to work from anywhere and stay connected through smart phones, tablets, and other mobile devices has enabled employees to stay connected and collaborate with peers and stay on top of digital trends more readily than the organizations they work for.
This new digital workplace also creates its own challenges, including security, developing a new kind of digital etiquette to expectations for employees, and the tendency for building expectation of always being “on,” causing burnout and often leading to retention problems. Integrating digital technologies into the workplace can not only wreak havoc on the productivity of workers, but it also creates its own distinct culture, impacting the previous work culture and the general work experience. These changes will challenge the workplace by forcing both executives and employees to adapt the way they interact with each other and the technologies that enable their work.
Companies must be proactive in creating new systems and policies, and re-interpreting their corporate culture around digital in the workplace, or they risk losing clients, productivity, and employees.
What does a digital workplace look like? (Keynote presentation from IKO confe...James Robertson
The Innovations in Knowledge Organisation (IKO) conference in Singapore brought together a wide range of practitioners to explore practical solutions. This closing keynote by James Robertson from Step Two shared key definitions, themes from the conference and practical examples.
Smart Work: Future Work Today - White PaperChris Leong
Exponential Information Communication Technology (ICT) advances are changing every aspect of people’s lives. The workplace is no exception and smart work centres represent a significant innovation in this area. Smart work is a mode of working that allows employees to perform telework in a co-working facility that is located close to the employee's residence. This “smart work hub” provides “smart workers” with desk spaces, wireless computer networks, video conferencing facilities and other office support facilities.
Smart work has numerous benefits for both staff and organisations. It can:
• Increase work-life balance which will improve employee performance and motivation;
• Promote innovation and collaboration amongst employees;
• Reduce office space requirements and associated costs for organisations; and
• Lower city congestion rates thereby reducing carbon emissions.
Furthermore, smart work represents an opportunity for increasing diversity in the workplace. For example, in Australia it can link regional workers to urban centres by removing the obstacle of distance.
Smart work has been adopted successfully in a number of countries already, notably the Netherlands, where the program was first started and where millions of euros have been saved every year from reductions in urban congestion as a result of the program. In South Korea, smart work has only recently been adopted, but has already shown significant results. There, the aim is to change the social fabric of that society--from its traditional hierarchical and collective culture toward a flatter and more individualistic one that is more flexible and innovative, and better able to compete in the global marketplace.
However, ingrained and out-dated organisational and cultural attitudes pose a significant barrier to the successful adoption of smart working practices. Through a case study analysis of KT Corp in Korea, this paper will explore how those attitudes can be overcome, should organisations align smart work practices toward specific strategic goals and implement such programs with the active participation of employees. The KT case demonstrates, through independently verified surveys along with external awards and acknowledgment, that improvements in work-life balance, innovation and productivity as well as diversity can be achieved.
As Australia has only just begun to implement smart work programs and will be assessing the economic benefits of such programs accordingly, Australian organisations should take note of cases such as this one, where governmental and organisational support of smart work has been invaluable to the successful implementation of this modern work practice. Finally, organisations should take note of the opportunity that adopting smart work represents for becoming innovators, by adopting best practice for working in the information age, in order to attract the finest talent of the future.
Condeco | Flexible Work e-Book | SlideshareCondeco
Flexible work is one of the most talked-about subjects in the world of business today. After all the forced change of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are looking forward, towards operating at their best in a very different world of work. Find out more here: https://www.condecosoftware.com/modern-workplace/asset/ebooks/flexible-work/
Remote Work Revolutionized_ TaskTrain's Role in Maximizing Virtual Team Advan...Task Train
The landscape of work has experienced a monumental shift in recent years, as remote work has evolved from a novel concept to a mainstream practice embraced by businesses worldwide.
Telecommuting – A Key Driver to Work-Life Balance and ProductivityIOSRJBM
The Global Workforce characteristics are changing worldwide. It is showing the growing diversity across sectors with heightened multicultural environment. The last decade had seen a remarkable change in the trend of approach of the organizations through various innovative practices. One of the growing practice is Employee- friendly policy, Work-from- Home (Telecommuting). Telecommuting has evolved and grown rapidly between 2000 and 2008. In the post- industrial economy, a growing number of jobs can be performed with few tools, basically a telephone and a computer with internet access.The popularity of Work-from-home (Telecommuting) has gained attention in the last decade with more and more employers and employees willingness to telecommute.Work – from- Home (Telecommuting) owes much of ongoing rise in popularity to the continuing improvements in Technology. Increasingly mobile and capable technology keeps at home workers connected with the main office, colleagues, customers, and the world. A 2008 IDC survey showed that 81percent of Asia Pacific executives believe that telecommuting improves productivity, up from 61 percent in 2005. The US and UK aren't the only countries that have jumped into telework.China, India, France, Brazil and Germany have all joined the global trend.The increase in a positive attitude towards telecommuting was also evident in Hong Kong, Australia and India. In this article, the effort is to understand the telecommuting with a special emphasis on productivity and work-life balance of employees and its implications on the organizations
Digital transformation starts with your employees. Does your workplace culture empower everyone in your organization to transform and grow the business? A digital workplace can change how your people work and influence your business. Microsoft Services solutions can help you drive leadership, sponsorship, coaching, motivation, training, business insights, and reinforcement practices.
Short description of the main aspects to be taken into account while introducing "new way of working" initiatives in your organization. Focus is on the EU institutions.
In the last few years, an increasing number of workers have shifted to a virtual work environment, also called a digital workplace. A digital workplace is an always connected environment that provides instant access to employees at any place, at any time, and through any digital device. It goes beyond the limits of a physical office and provides for knowledge sharing and collaboration in new, effective ways. This paper provides an introduction on digital workplace. Matthew N. O. Sadiku | Uwakwe C. Chukwu | Abayomi Ajayi-Majebi | Sarhan M. Musa "Digital Workplace: An Introduction" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-6 | Issue-6 , October 2022, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd51861.pdf Paper URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/computer-science/other/51861/digital-workplace-an-introduction/matthew-n-o-sadiku
The EIU examines how the rise of mobile devices is changing the way we work within our office walls in an extended article, sponsored by the Mopria Alliance.
How To Stay Covered in the Mobile Work DownpourCitrix Online
Once upon a time people went to the office five days a week. They commuted and were only able to complete their work at the office. Find out what happened when the digital rains arrived, empowering people to connect to their work from other locations.
The Transformation in Philippine BPO Companies: The Impact of Digital Workpla...AI Publications
The workforce in various industries, particularly the BPO industry, experiences significant impacts from digital workplace transformation. It is affected by employee skill levels, knowledge, efficiency, and rationalization. This research aims to investigate the impact of digital workplace transformation on work culture, represented by the following variables: employee retention, motivation, and productivity. Participants in this study work as front-office customer service representatives (CSR) for business processing outsourcing (BPO) companies in the Philippines, specifically the top BPO companies on the list issued by the IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP). Using a mixed method approach, the researchers incorporated qualitative and quantitative data for this study, allowing them to compile all the necessary information. Using Somer's delta, the researchers identified the association between the dependent and independent variables. After analyzing the data, researchers found that the development of the digital workplace positively impacts work culture. At the same time, the shift to a digital workplace benefits worker productivity, motivation, and retention. On the contrary, with the interview results of the study conducted with the respective team leaders of these employees, the researchers discovered that despite the magnificent benefits of digital workplace transformation, it can still cause stress and work overload. In conclusion, our research findings contradicted our initial hypothesis that the digital workplace would not significantly impact work culture in BPO companies. Instead, we discovered that digital workplace transformation impacts employee retention, motivation, and productivity. The transformation to a digital workplace progressively enhances the quality of work performed by customer service representatives in BPO companies, leading to a better work experience. Researchers recommend that BPO companies focus on skills development, effective communication, work environment enhancements, and supervisor support to ensure a successful transformation.
NEC's Top 10 Strategic Smart Enterprise Drivers 2022InteractiveNEC
Digital Transformation is recreating business models, changing the way customers and employees function and
altering whole industries. Social and business values surge when people, devices, and resources are connected.
With the COVID-19 pandemic a further catalyst, organizations worldwide are embracing digital transformation
to manage rapid organization-wide changes in support of business continuity, remote working, and dynamic
service delivery.
2. CONTENTS
Executive Summary
1. Introduction
2. Working Environment Change
3. Definition of smart working
4. Smart working Cases and Results
5. Conclusion
References
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Driven by the new technologies, our ways of working has been changed rapidly especially in
the recent 20 years. In order to maximize profits, companies try to find the optimum solutions
to raise productivity. During the change from paper based working to computer based,
organizations accelerated their working speed and also reduced extra working space that
would otherwise have been assigned as storages for the paper documents. It has not been long
since the term smart working was actively used. The smart devices such as smart phones,
tablet PCs helped this stream settle as a trend. This report will look into smart working from
inception to application and introduce some real examples in South Korea and The
Netherlands to see why companies pursue smart working and whether it ultimately gives
benefits to the organizations that adopt the measure.
3. Introduction
Since the Industrial Revolution, humans’ working efficiency has been improved dramatically.
Not just the labor forces in physical working sites, office workers also have found ways to
reduce time and expenses spent on the same results. Thanks to the development in IT, the
speed of change is getting more spurred. The internet ignited the transformation by changing
the way we communicate with one another. Connecting the world, the internet helped us
reach the information we need regardless of time and place while working. It can be referred
to the 21st century’s revolution compared to the 19th century’s Industrial Revolution in terms
of the degrees of the improvement in working efficiency. It is now propelled by the smart
devices such as smartphones and tablets. This development enabled us to get beyond the
physical boundaries through networks. The smart era helped create the concept of smart
working with which companies expect productivity maximization.
Working Environment Change
Traditionally in the 20th century, people worked fixed basis with 8 hours of working time
from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. It fitted well in typical organizations at that time because workers
needed to converse with each other and the way to make the best out of it was to work
together at the same place and time for collaboration. As women’s participation in
workplaces was low, male-dominated workplaces during that period did not really have to
consider various aspects regarding working conditions.
The late 20th century’s technology development, i.e. laundry machines, dish washers,
refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, etc., freed women from being bound by home choirs. In
addition, as the social systems like day-care centers for children were organized, more
women have been able to join workplaces. This phenomenon also changed men’s role in
households and they started take part in upbringing of their children. This complexity
generated a need for companies to consider new ways of working in order to content their
employees amid this social transformation.
The Employment Act pertaining to the flexible working regulations in the UK that has passed
in April 2003 reflects this trend. The regulations were meant to provide employees looking
after young or disabled children with the right to ask their employers for flexibility in
4. working. From April 2007, the Act was extended to the workers that look after other
dependents, such as spouses, partners, relatives, or someone living at the same address as the
employee (The Times 100, 2014). The extended regulations also apply to hours of work,
times of work and place of work: home or office (ACAS, 2013).
Along with this social change that brought about flexible working time, the Information
Technology not only made working-from-home possible but also intrigued radical change
such as mobile office. Using cloud computing, people can work in the same environment at
home as they do at the office. They have access to the files and emails at home without any
hassle if they have an internet connection. Combined with cloud computing, smartphones and
tablets enabled working on the go. This mobile working totally disrupted the physical
boundary of workplace, expanding it to everywhere the internet signal reaches: in a car, on a
train, in a café or even on foot. People can now work anytime anywhere seamlessly so that
they don’t need to stay at the office all day long.
Definition of Smart Working
There is not a fixed definition of Smart Working since it came out naturally following
different types of new ways of working. Generally speaking, people would mention flexible
working hour, cloud computing, working from home or desk sharing as a part of smart
working when they were asked about it.
Capgemini defines smart working like this; ‘An approach to organizing work that aims to
drive greater efficiency and effectiveness in achieving job outcomes through a combination
of flexibility, autonomy and collaboration, in parallel with optimizing tools and working
environments for employees.’ (CIPD, 2005). The flexible working-focused research company
Flexibility said in a research paper that it uses the term ‘Smart Working’ to refer to the new
ways of working made possible by advances in technology and made essential by economic,
environmental and social pressures (Flexibility, 2011). Smart working does not seem to have
a strict boundary since it was not distinctively defined by a scholar. We can add more
features on the concept of smart working or customize it to make it fit in the organization in
order to optimize the action for the best performance.
Ceridian (2014) sees smart working initiatives include:
5. ㆍ Flexible working – both in terms of working hours and location
ㆍ A greater degree of autonomy
ㆍ Virtual teams
ㆍ Increased mobile communications technology
ㆍ Aligning personal objectives to business objectives
ㆍ Creating the cultural conditions for smart-working to work
Flexible working consists of these forms (CIPD, 2005):
ㆍ Part-time working
ㆍ Term-time working
ㆍ Job-sharing
ㆍ Flexitime
ㆍ Compressed hours
ㆍ Annual hours
ㆍ Working from home on a regular basis
ㆍ Mobile working/teleworking
ㆍ Career breaks
Desk sharing idea came out from the obvious fact that all the desk were not fully taken by the
employees because of business travels, meetings, vacations, sickness leave, sabbatical year,
and so forth. Raising the occupancy rate by sharing desks, as we do in library, companies will
be able to maximize utilization of the office space and, as a result, reduce the costs spent on
the properties.
NHS Lincolnshire (2010) sees desk sharing, or hot desking, provides:
Organizational benefits
ㆍ Ability of employees to work in areas that best suit the task in hand
ㆍ Ability of employees to be more productive
ㆍ Reduces space costs
6. ㆍ Improved communications
ㆍ Increased Employee Satisfaction
ㆍ Increase labor pool through the ability to recruit people who may not be able to work
in a traditional environment, such as single parent families and people with a physical
handicap
ㆍ Creating the cultural conditions for smart-working to work
ㆍ Improved work quality
ㆍ Improved people quality and retention
ㆍ Opportunity to undertake business re-engineering
Employee Benefits
ㆍ More flexibility and control provided to staff to choose when, how and where they
will work.
ㆍ Ability to organize working day around meetings and pre commitments.
ㆍ Traffic/commuting considerations - freedom from rigors associated with commuting,
reduced commuting time.
ㆍ Improved quality of work stations, comfort and environmental aspects.
ㆍ Relaxation of time parameters in which to work
ㆍ Ability of employees to better balance work and home life
ㆍ Increased job satisfaction
Virtual desktop has recently emerged as an enabler for mobile working in the ubiquitous
environment. With the remote connection using the mobile devices, people are now able to
work anywhere they want as long as the internet connection is accessible.
Besides those ways of application for smart working, companies pursue different styles of
working ways as per their current business situations. Therefore the notion of smart working
is also evolving as the new technologies are invented and business world is constantly
changing.
7. Smart Working Cases and Results
The main reasons for companies to start smart working are productivity increase, cost
reduction, cultural change, employee satisfaction, etc.
South Korea’s biggest telecommunication company KT, or Korea Telecom, started its new
ways of working project when it merged its subsidiary KTF, or Korea Telecom Freetel, that
was ranked the second in the mobile communication market in Korea, followed by LG U plus.
Although the combined KT overpassed the mobile giant SK Telecom in revenue including
the sales from fixed line products, it was still lagging behind in mobile market which was
envisaged as the future growth engine. Besides the several financial investments in the
different industries like credit card aggregator and media production and distribution, it saw
the corporate culture the key factor to be the leading company in the industry. Since it had to
integrate the IT systems, including customer data and business process, between the two
then-separate companies, KT and KTF, it set up a big picture to migrate to a whole new
system based on cloud computing. This IT integration project was named as ‘The Blue Print”.
For a holistic change, it needed a change in software, namely corporate culture, as well as in
hardware, IT infrastructure. KT bestowed the title ‘Smart Working’ on this total change,
pursuing an innovative company. Since its foundation as a public owned-company, it has
been into a bureaucratic and hierarchical pitfall, and it used to be called a dinosaur that can
hardly change directions. Its target was to disrupt the old culture that was deemed as the main
cause of the sluggish growth rate and to transit into an agile organization corresponding to the
rapidly changing mobile industry. KT gave the title ‘Smart Working’ to the new KT ways of
working. The smart working in KT was applied to the organization with the procedure from
the vision to the actions through communication. As many academia scholars claimed setting
up a clear vision be a start of the new cultural change in change management, KT established
a new vision and missions. In addition to them, it also created a management philosophy that
clearly defined the identity of the company. These messages were meant to work as a
compass showing the direction in the midst of the confusion posed by the change. It turned
out to be the best timing for change and innovation since the smartphone revolution was just
about to bloom.
Opening lectures both online and offline, KT encouraged its employees to take the courses
for the mindset change and expected soft landing in this radical movement. It was obvious
8. that the workers, at least, sense the indication that they would face a drastic change looming.
Each department was imposed to create its own mission statement and action plans including
Rules & Guides.
It was not just a mental change. KT decided to move to another office building to integrate
both organizations, KT and KTF, and to design it as a smart office. KT’s smart office
basically offered open space in which everyone could easily communicate not hindered by a
lot of obstacles that the previous cubicle style office had had. The new building had
artistically designed interiors with a lot of pictures and ornaments everywhere even in the
toilets and meeting rooms. It also provided amusing resting spaces such as meeting space on
a turf area with classical music and private phone booths with a cozy sofa/bed and a table
beyond their own function, phone calls. Interestingly, the employees found out a way to
utilize the phone booths. As we might have experienced eureka moments during taking a
shower, people started using them for meditation, keeping the lights off while they were
inside. Despite the employees’ anticipation in the early stage of the migration that no one
would use the phone booths because those were not placed right beside the desks and their
managers would not like their employees’ absence, those facilities became one of the most
popular places to spend time inside the building. The old style management in the
organization valued visibility. The managers had thought their employees were working only
when they were at their desk. However, Apple and Google’s success prompted KT to realize
that innovative ideas rather than long working hours had more impact on the company, and
they started indulging the employees to have their own time even at work. This also explains
the success of the phone booths.
KT abandoned its fixed desk policy. It encouraged employees to change their desk regularly
like once in a week or a month. It was not successful because the new policy was not
mandated and people took frequent moving as a hassle. Gradually leaving their belongings on
the desk, they regarded the stuffy seats occupied, making them hesitant to take others’ desks.
One of the studies (Flexibility, 2009) attributes the enemy of the sharing desk policy to the
culture of possession and stresses the importance of changing the concept of owning a
particular desk into having guaranteed access to the right kind of facility for getting the work
9. done. It would have been better if KT had considered and applied the principles for desk
sharing proposed by some research institutes.
The research institute Flexibility (2009) also suggested these principles below for the success
of desk sharing.
1. A clear desk policy
2. Well organized team storage
3. Have the same agreed compendium of essential information at each desk and/or
online.
4. Create a beautiful environment!
5. Ergonomic work positions.
6. Laptops are preferable to desktop PCs.
7. Provide ample touch-down space to cope with peak demand
8. Work in non-exclusive team areas with fuzzy boundaries.
9. Have a good telephony solution
10. Encourage flexible working in practice
KT has missed mainly the two criteria among 10 principles: the clear desk policy and the
agreed compendium parts. Regarding touch-down space, it built Smart Office section in its
main office buildings and opened them to anyone who wanted to work nearby home or other
places wherever they felt helped creative thinking through a new environment. The facilities
also improved the employee satisfaction level especially of women workers in charge of
upbringing of their children, workers commuting long distance every day.
In addition to the desk sharing, KT adopted flexible working hour and working-from-home
policy. Employees could choose the time when they come to and leave the office as long as it
complied with the 40 working hours per week by legal requirement. However, it was not a
complete form of flexibility since the employees had to choose their working time only
among presets like 8:00, 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. of starting time and 05:00, 06:00 or 07:00 p.m. of
finishing time. They also had to make a decision in advance at the time of the beginning of
the month for the full month plan, thus they were not able to adapt to the change of their
schedule. Working-from-home policy was applied differently depending on managers. The
10. recommended guide proposed telecommuting one day per week. Despite the worries about
this policy as managers in the organization believed their employees would not work when
they were home, it proved, at least, it did not deteriorate the productivity while increasing the
employee satisfaction level. The mobile business division even implemented one month of
working-from-home policy for the employees working at the head office, allowing only
limited number of office visits for necessary business meetings. The radical policy was
praised as a big success within the organization after a time being.
KT exerted its initiatives to change not only the form of workplace in the corporate level but
also the ways of working in the individual level. In order to make the employees work based
on projects that were planned and closely connected to the other ones, it needed to come up
with a new task management system that would support planning tasks and communicating
with managers for feedbacks. The new system was designed to suit the flexible working
culture and smart devices celebrated as office tools since the BlackBerry’s success. Because
the employees were supposed to put all the tasks they perform into the system, they started
thinking what should be in and out. This behavioral change naturally made them prioritize the
tasks based on importance and remove unnecessary chores that were succeeded over years
without any doubt while not providing any benefit to the company. The managers also started
giving the list of orders through the system. This helped the company work more organized,
basing on plans rather than spontaneous incidents. The company saw the possibility of
transition from doing urgent and not crucial to doing not urgent and crucial jobs.
KT introduced new IT platform using cloud computing technologies with which people were
able to work remotely on a virtual machine that is assigned to them from the common
machine in the data center. The new system consists of two pillars, virtual desktop and file
sharing system. KT intended to let its people get out of the office into the market and work
from anywhere they were present. It offered all the employees iPad® to support this new
mobile working environment. The virtual desktop accessed by client terminals provided them
with the same environment like the previous physical desktops or laptops. For the mobile and
seamless working in the building, it installed secured Wi-Fi network reaching everywhere in
the building. Ones with old hardware welcomed the new system since it ensured faster speed
without lags in using personal devices. However, not strongly convinced about the expected
11. effects that it would create values without any negative impact, KT applied the new policy
only to the minor workers in the headquarter, leaving the majority in the field staying with
the old system. This mismatch made a discrete sentiment fracture between the office workers
and field ones. As for the data sharing system, all the documents created after the file sharing
system was deployed were supposed to be stored in the database so that anyone searching for
certain information could have access to it as far as it was on the database. Although KT
expected shared information would stimulate collective intelligence by collaboration, the file
sharing system was not welcome and only a few people followed the guideline, not uploading
their files onto the shared system. They still had the notion that the files they had generated
were possessed by them, thereby hesitating to share those data with others. KT should have
reminded the employees of the company’s ownership of the data created at work and have
mandated uploading the files to a shared data area in the machine. One of the minor attributes
on this failure was the inconvenience of the system in uploading files. It happened when
people transferred data files between virtual desktop to another virtual database, the fact that
created a bothersome effort. Some of the employees asserted that those two independent
systems be integrated into a single one that automatically stores files, not requiring any
annoying hassles to move files just to share them with others.
During this time, matrix teams were actively running since the employees started working
task basis that had planned and defined as a part of projects. When a project was spanned
across the departments, a virtual team based on matrix organization was formed. This
measure helped KT respond to the market needs quicker than any other competitors in the
South Korean mobile communication market.
Having recognized the importance of the cultural transition, KT drove its cultural change by
communications. The HR department and the Change & Innovation Team led the campaigns.
For instance, they conducted an email campaign to improve the efficiency of email
communication. They asked the people to add a simple header on the subject and to make the
body concise as much as possible. They also campaigned for paperless policy, urging the
employees to use the tablet PC instead of printouts. While being an active twitter user to get
closer to the customers, the president of the mobile division also used enterprise version of
12. social media called Yammer® internally for the employees, emphasizing the essence of the
real-time communication in the mobile business that changed rapidly.
With all the innovation trials as a whole titled as ‘Smart Working – The Ways of Working in
KT’, the company gradually changed its image as a dull dinosaur and started being
recognized as one of the most innovative companies in Korea. Ridiculed about its size and
culture that were referred to the traits making it too heavy to adapt to the new mobile
environment, KT had sought a disruptive change rather than just an improvement. Ironically,
the harsh situation was viewed as the success factor behind its radical transformation to an
agile innovative company. Eventually, KT has won the President’s Award in the 9th
Corporate Innovation Award, KCCI (KT Service Innovation Group, 2012). There is no doubt
that the KT’s smart working played an important role for this award as the CEO frequently
advertised the story of the smart working in KT. The company has also won other awards on
various fields such as design and technology, the fact that was regarded as the fruition from
the new environment that prompted the employees to think differently.
Global top 5th, in production quantity, steel manufacturer POSCO (World Steel Association,
2013) was founded as a public-owned company like KT. It also suffered bureaucracy and
hierarchical organizational character. Since the steel industry started sluggish in terms of
growth after the global economic crisis initiated by the United States, it began to consider a
change in its identity as a blue chip company. It needed new ideas to break through the
stagnation with. Under the static organization formed by a very strict hierarchy, it was
difficult for the employees to speak out with their opinions in meetings, suppressed by their
authoritarian managers. This was the start of POSCO’s smart working, namely ‘Smart
Working Place (SWP)’.
The company designated a pilot floor for smart working and named it ‘Smart Office’
enabling creative thinking with lowered barriers. The desks were taken out the partition
panels for open communication. Desk sharing policy was imposed to destruct hierarchies and
to inspire them with new ideas by making them mingle with others from different
departments. Not like KT that just recommended the desk sharing, POSCO mandated people
13. to change their seats every day, thereby preventing desk possession. It successfully permeated
into the organization and firmly settled as a norm on the pilot floor.
The new office was equipped a common library in which all the books from personal desk
could be gathered and displayed together at the shelf so that everyone had the access to any
books whenever they wanted. Having this space for books also helped the clean desk policy
for desk sharing.
Some spaces were assigned as concentration place. One who wanted to work without any
interruption could get into the place to focus on the individual tasks in there which was
separated from the normal office space.
POSCO implemented an interesting trial by making a non-office looking spaces as well.
Targeting to inspire the employees with refreshing environment, it opened a floor with full of
joy and named it ‘POREKA’ after the combination of POSCO and eureka. The place was full
of amusement equipment, such as foosball table, pool table and meeting rooms without desks
and chairs with only mattress and cotton cushions on the floor.
In order to change the working culture, it harshly pushed paperless policy. It was rather cruel
to people that did not reduce paper consumption to nearly zero. There happened a lot of
outrage on the policy because everyone had his or her own reason to print. The innovation
group did not allow any exception until it thought the new culture was set in the organization.
Enabling self-checking in performance of reducing paper consumption by displaying the
number of printouts on person on the intranet, it persuaded and, in case, forced the policy.
Since people misperceived the reason as a cost saving, the group tried to emphasize on the
real reason, change in ways of working in terms of efficiency in both-way communication
and corporate document security.
As for an IT support for the cultural change in working, POSCO also developed a new
system with mainly Task Management System (TMS), Idea Management System (IMS) and
Knowledge Management System (KMS). TMS was designed to manage tasks and share the
task contents and working schedule with others. IMS was for idea suggestion. Its
improvement was a new function to connect small pieces of ideas and to enable people to add
14. their ideas on others in order to make bigger ideas by sharing. KMS, as well, targeted to
maximize the collective intelligence by offering common modification functions like
Wikipedia®. The company also provided easy-to-use video conference call for better
communication.
POSCO’s Smart Working Place (SWP) implementation also made a great success, reportedly
reducing costs and increasing new knowledge and ideas. According to the Hankook-i (2014)
media production of South Korea, POSCO figured out the impact of SWP that it shortened
time consumed on decision making by 60 % on average, cut expenses spent on business trips
by 30 %, and reduced the number of printouts by 77 %. In addition, about 14,000 knowledge
and ideas per month were registered and shared in the system. Despite all the success,
POSCO decided to halt the additional investment on office space renovation more than the
pilot floor due to the budgetary issue.
T-Mobile Netherlands, Deutsche Telekom’s subsidiary mobile business unit, decided to adopt
smart working concept mainly for cost reduction. Like most of the mobile communication
companies in developed countries, it suffered market saturation. In order to overcome the
revenue stagnation and increase profits in the harsh market competition, cost reduction was a
way to go. The German headquarter made a decision to close down two buildings out of
seven in the main office complex in The Hague, The Netherlands, so that it could rent those
two to other tenants. The initial plan was only to reduce space by adopting desk sharing
policy. It set the new desk ratio as ten people fitting in six desks (10:6), instead of the
previous 1:1. The figure was based on many statistics.
One of the researches (Flexibility, 2009) on desk sharing shows the office occupancy as this:
ㆍ A traditional office used 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday to Friday is used only 30 %
of the year
ㆍ Holidays account for 8% of an employee’s time
ㆍ Typical occupancy is around 45%
ㆍ Average office costs per head are around £6k.
15. Though the new desk ratio accounting 10:6 was to make T-Mobile Netherlands reach its goal,
emptying two building, thereby reducing costs, it took one further step to enable mobile
working through cloud computing and named the whole change program ‘Fit-In Advanced
. Similar as KT, a counterpart in South Korea, it built virtual desktop and offered laptop or
tablet PC to the majority of the employees when they migrated to the new virtual desktop
environment, which was named ‘NGDS (Next Generation Desktop System)’. As the cost
cutting project turned into the smart working concept, it also wanted to change its culture that
was represented as resistance to change. It also tried a smart office with new array of desks
and atypically designed interior, expecting workers’ behavioral change. In spite of the
visibility issue that some of the managers missed over their employees, most of the people
seemed to be satisfied according to the surveys conducted among who had experienced the
smart office.
T-Mobile Netherlands’ smart working has a fundamental constraint, the budget. Since the
motivation was cost reduction, the budgets that could be allocated in cultural program and
physical improvement of the office environment was scarce. The company’s frugal
innovation in ways of working is ongoing for the moment, even though it took a negative
stance on placing budgets in cultural program and office reformation. It has recently loosened
the desk ratio from 10:6 to 10:8 for many departments, reflecting the descending number of
employees.
Meanwhile, as T-Mobile Netherlands has already applied flexible working, the employees
work from home, come to and leave the office at their disposal as long as they can manage
their job to be done. It is expected to meet the aim, closing down two buildings, by the end of
February, thanks to the smart working including desk sharing and mobile working brought by
the virtual system and smart devices.
Summarizing the examples, KT and POSCO decided to adopt smart working to upgrade the
organization to an innovative company with creative ideas, whereas T-Mobile Netherlands
initiated the change mainly for reducing the costs. The smart working was applied to the
companies through flexible working, matrix organization, virtual desktop system, cultural
change campaigns, smart office with lowered obstacles and fun factors stimulating
16. imagination, and so on. It was more successful when the company was not lenient to applying
the policies to the organization.
No matter the motivation, cultural transformation or financial reform, it is shown that smart
working in those cases helped companies take benefits from it by promoting performance in
financial status and/or productivity level by changing the ways of working.
Conclusion
One of the research organizations specialized on smart working addresses the reason why
smart working as this (Flexibility, 2011);
Underlying Smart Working is a commitment to modernize working practices, by moving
away from the ‘command and control’ assumptions of traditional factory-style working about
where, when and how work should be done. It’s about doing more with less, working
wherever, whenever and however is most appropriate to get the work done.
This reason to proceed with the new innovation in working culture and environment is
realized by various aspects depending on the companies’ current situation. As seen in the real
cases that the companies have been through, we conclude that smart working help elevate
productivity with the same or less resources, therefore, reducing overall costs of running an
organization.
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ㆍ ACAS (2013), The right to apply for flexible working, p16.
ㆍ CIPD (2005), Flexible working: The implementation challenge, p 64.
ㆍ Flexibility (2011), The smart working handbook, p 39.
ㆍ Ceridian (2014), The connection guide to smart working,
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ㆍ KT Service Innovation Group (2012), KT’s Innovative Management Story, p 24.
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