Article: "Quantified Workforce" tools enable telecommuting and flexi-working

Technology

"Quantified Workforce" tools enable telecommuting and flexi-working

Quantified Workforce technology provide visibility into the productivity of remote team, making flexi-working effective
"Quantified Workforce" tools enable telecommuting and flexi-working

Organizations today are opting to implement a flexible work arrangement model as an initiative to ensure happier employees, and to bring balance in their work-life environment. Flexible working provides a low cost way for employers to attract and retain talent, increase productivity, reduce absenteeism, improve employee commitment and morale by allowing employees to balance between work and home life. It is not about the number of working hours in office but the total effective work hours in a day contributed by an employee. This helps organizations to keep up their promises to their customers. Telecommuting provides flexibility to employees to work from home, enabling them to manage their home priorities as well.

While flexible working offers more choice for employees, there are 4 basic areas of concern for employers. These are: - perceived lack of control for managers, increased administrative costs, lack of transparency during work hours and the inability to measure work effort. Measuring the productivity of employees working away from office is a significant problem for business. This has resulted in organizations like Yahoo, Best Buy and Bank of America in either revoking or re-working their flexible working policies. Statistics however show that flexible working is growing despite such fears.

Many flexible working programs remain as policies with very weak implementation due to the above concerns. This can be taken care of through effective use of technology such as automated measurement of work activity, creating a “Quantified Workforce”. Technology can provide the much needed "Visibility" of efforts towards achieving team goals as well as "Alignment" of efforts of all distributed or virtual team members towards meeting promises made by the organization.

“Quantified Workforce” tools provide visibility and detailed information of an individual, team, function and the enterprise. To achieve the best results, the leaders need to communicate organization goals with targets, motivate teams with their current status of performance and support team members by bridging gaps through organization initiatives. Such tools provide a "closed loop" performance management system with deeper employee engagement, a fusion of art and science for mutual benefit. Also, with improved technology and businesses becoming more global, an increasing number of people are either working or managing work remotely. In such situations quantification tools make the job of the managers/heads easier by effectively tracking the projects of their employees in real-time.

“Quantified Workforce” tools are now getting acceptance from both the employees and the employers. Such tools enable mobile work force without infringing on employee rights or compromising on work and productivity. Employers find that such solutions enable confidence in their employees to ensure successful implementation of flexible working solutions. They also find that their work gets due recognition without the stringent work timings in office. On the other hand, employers are realizing that “Quantified Workforce” tools eliminate the ills of implementing and managing flexible working programs, providing control and transparency for managers without loss of privacy for the employees.

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Topics: Technology, #BestPractices

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