OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 5-8-08

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
May 8, 2008 meeting

Present: Rich Hoffman, Paul Gray, Andy King, Rich Cormier, Joel Manfredo, Randy Miller, Jim Sutter, Joe Cracchiolo, Mitch Morris, Jennifer Curlee, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, Subbu Murthy, John Pringle, Dave Phillips

The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the host’s presentation material, when available. Please provide us with the “url” of your presentation materials.

Topic: Virtual workers – does it matter where you work from?

Rich Hoffman, ex-HISNA, was going to present his introduction remotely to see if it affected the quality of the presentation and subsequent discussion. But in the end, he arrived in person to present his list of questions to the group (see attached). The 1st few questions are about how many employees are virtual today (even if you exclude field and service personnel)? It’s hard to find a definitive answer but, according to Joel Manfredo, IBM is 40% virtual, and has saved $350M in office rental from workstation hotelling. SUN is almost too successful, and many of their staff do not want to go in to the office as almost no one is there, except 1st year employees who are not allowed to telecommute. What kind of jobs can be/should be done from home? Jobs that are measurable, independent, unsupervised (like claims processing, contract administration, Helpdesk), that don’t involve much face time with customers. What companies are using virtual departments? Does it depend on where they are located? London used to have 30% of all UK office workers commuting to downtown locations, so they had to disperse for logistic reasons. Prudential had a central office downtown LA but the neighborhood changed and they ended up with two locations in the valley. Does working from home come naturally to boomers? No. To Gen X? Yes – they even text each other in the same office! How do you get virtual workers to care about the company? They won’t unless they are treated right – see John Pringle’s comments from last week. Paul Gray found that they can’t work offsite all the time – they need to spend some time together. Rich expressed the opinion that only customer facing jobs had to be onsite – business analysts, client principles, process specialists/owners. Other jobs such as operations/production environment could be done offsite, but in 1st world countries, if you are concerned about downtime or business continuity (see Larry Godec’s topic next month). Rich handed out a Virtual Workplace Do’s and Don’ts from Business Week, which is very good. In summary:
Do’s: Get good gear; encourage small talk; help them stop; create office space for when they come in to the office; set goals.
Don’ts: neglect training; assume it’s a fit for all employees; lose track of people; forget face time.

We asked each member to talk to his/her approach re virtual workers.

Paul Gray, Claremont (Emeritus), co-wrote the 1st book on this topic with Jack Nilles years ago. They found that people could work at home/telecommute a lot of the time but not all the time. Whether a company was successful or not depended whether the management was for or against it. They found that to be successful at universities, it had to be interactive. He did it successfully at Stanford in the 60’s, but no one would go for it at Claremont.

Andy King, SitOnIt Seating, said that it depended on the culture. If you can define the deliverables, then it can be successful. You have to have the right mix, because it is not fun being the employees in the office fielding all the questions when most of the other employees are telecommuting.

Rich Cormier, Edwards Lifesciences, said that it could work depending on the job. They have used telecommuting centers, and have warehouses offsite. To get some of the community interfacing and human connecting, people from different companies would get together.

Joel Manfredo said that he was a member of the Lotus learning space council. They had no issues with telecommuting people staying engaged. Companies like SUN and GSA are deep into it. They have characterized each job, and each person, as suitable or not. Productivity for the right job and person goes up.

Randy Miller, Toshiba ABS, said that they did not have a formal policy regarding telecommuting – informally, it depended on the person and the position. They would allow it to keep the knowledge of the employee. When they conducted an employment engagement study, they found the virtual worker to be very demanding.

Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, said that the general trend was to become more virtual. The Winery is very traditional and discourages telecommuting. At Rockwell, they tried telecommuting but insisted that everyone had to be in the office on Mon. and Fri. and during “core” hours. He found that at USC, the trend was against it as they were very team and relationship oriented. That doesn’t seem to matter at UCI.

Mitch Morris, IAMPO, said that telecommuting works for those who want it, depending on the company and culture. There is still the question of how best to manage those who are virtual. IAMPO has a policy against telecommuting.

Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that when they were a small company, everybody came in to work. Since 9/11 they have grown at 60% and have 6 facilities. Manufacturing is done onsite. IT employees are working remotely, and at odd hours. They use tools like “Go to Meeting” to keep in touch.

Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that their HR is very much against telecommuting. He has no problems with individuals working at home. He took some classes on TV and it worked out well. He encourages employees to do the same. Working remotely works for certain kinds of jobs, but no all. He wonders how individuals become managers if all their experience is being a virtual employee.

Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, finds that certain administrative functions can be done remotely, but they operate as a team to respond to client needs, and they find that having everyone in the office most of the time works better for them.

Subbu Murthy, USourceIT, said it depends on the 4 Cs – the culture (trusting that the worker will perform); communication (ability of the worker and manager, and tools); cost (balancing the savings in office space vs. cost of network, etc.); and collaboration skills.

John Pringle, RCMT, agreed in depends on the culture but he warned that employers would have to become more flexible because unemployment is less than 2%. We will have to do more of this, rather than less. At RCMT, 80% of their Oracle practice is done remotely. In the past, it was for cost reduction reasons. In the future, it will be to accommodate human capital flexibility demands.

See you on June 12, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:

940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260.