Business and commutes are at a standstill today after an extreme fire in West Oakland put the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system completely out of service between the East Bay and San Francisco. The resultant traffic and chaos from commuters attempting alternate methods of ferry, buses, and carpooling will likely result in something of a local holiday – as highways turn into parking lots. The growing density of the Bay Area and many urban corridors, puts individuals and businesses at the mercy of transit systems that are both fallible and already pushed to capacity.
If your business has flexible work systems in place, then a “carpocalyse” such as this won’t have nearly the destructive impact that it otherwise could on your team’s productivity. Creating company policy that effectively utilizes remote work and harnesses communication technology is a matter of resiliency and adaptation, not a radical leap or indulgent management style. The future of work requires this shift in managerial and company mindset. Despite the fact that many knowledge workers could efficiently and effectively do their work from home, most businesses default to a management and evaluation style designed for factory workers. It’s time for policy to match reality, we need to work more intelligently – for our health, productivity and transportation sanity.
But maybe you’re not convinced. What does remote work look like exactly? What about the needs to have a home office, the benefits of face-to-face, the prestige of a nice office and coffee chat time? The reality is that shifting to a more flexible, remote work model with your organization is likely going to be a bit like a new exercise routine. The best tactic is to start small and build up a system that is tested and optimal for your team, activity, and industry. Obviously not all jobs can be done effectively in a remote work framework. The end game is not a one-size-fits-all solution, it is more about facing the reality that without this flexibility, your business and team are vulnerable to disasters like this morning’s commute on the Bay Bridge.
Here at BetterWorld, we’ve created a framework for working more effectively, called BetterWork (TM). The BetterWork whitepaper is the findings from a nine-month study at Bainbridge Graduate Institute on the impact of virtualization of communications infrastructure and remote work.
There’s also a large library of useful links on remote and flexible work in our Delicious link library. The majority of academic research in this area has been funded or motivated by transportation improvement efforts. But the benefits for companies and workers extend far beyond decreasing wasted hours spent sitting in traffic. Satisfaction, productivity, loyalty, in study upon study, all of these measures improve with a flexible work environment. For optimal productivity and company resiliency, flexible work needs to be taken seriously. This effort needs to be moved out of the category of traffic mitigation and into the spotlight as the key to our future – evolving our workplace frameworks to catch up with the reality of this modern world.
What steps can you take to build a resilient organization? Are you prepared for a bridge closure, severe weather or public transit failure? The successful companies and organizations of tomorrow will be the ones who implement resilient, flexible work structures today.
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