Tired of Talk; It’s Time for Business Continuity Action

“Business as usual” is a phrase I use quite often, but I cannot single-handedly change the way in which businesses are conducted. Obviously, catastrophies such as Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 and even the East Coast Blackout have brought more widespread attention to business continuity drivers for remote work, but is telework actually being adopted by mainstream business at large? Curious to know who else is thinking about smart, better ways to work, I have been poking around the Internet and the blogosphere for the past few months, and here are some other sources encouraging effective business continuity strategies:

• Public Issues: Five Years After 9/11, AT&T Study Finds that Three out of Four Washington, DC Companies have Business Continuity Plans in Place, Public Issues & News
• Citrix, IBM team up for business continuity, ComputerWorld
• How one company rode out a Category 5 Hurriane, ComputerWorld
• Officials Prepare for Continuity of Operations during Emergency, Loudoun County Government
• The aftermath of Katrina: HR lessons learned, HR Web Cafe
• Business Continuity with Collaborative Conferencing, Collaboration Loop

Rita Mace Walston, General Manager, The Telework Consortium

COOP, Five Years Later

I’m amazed that on the five year anniversary of 9/11, both the public and private sector still need convincing that Continuity of Operations Planning (COOP) should be standard business practice. As the nation waits  for the next hurricane, the next pandemic, the next terrorist attack, I wonder, have enough organizations truly embraced COOP to protect themselves? I know that some progress has certainly been made. One positive example is the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administrattion (TIGTA). Prior to 9/11, TIGTA had a continuity of operations plan just like most other agencies. But after that fateful day, the agency realized that the piece of paper describing its critical systems and data requirements was fairly useless unless it also had an operational plan to tap that information. Acting on this recognition, TIGTA methodically and meticulously integrated its telework program into its continuity of operations plan, and now the agency claims it can reconstruct the agency from laptops, and 100% of its employees can telework if faced with an emergency. Not bad.

Today, I’m speaking at The Commonwealth of Virginia’s Innovative Technology Symposium (COVITS) about telework strategies for Continuity of Operations. As government and business execs develop strategic planning priorities for Virginia’s technology future, it is essential that COOP, and telework, be a significant part of the strategy.

William Mularie, PhD
CEO, The Telework Consortium

Dashboard Doggies

I’ve noticed a phenomenon I call the “Dashboard Doggie.” This is where a group of people meet to talk about what an important role Telework can play in Continuity of Operations, cost savings, traffic congestion relief, and employee recruitment and retention. Yep, everyone agrees it’s a great idea and one whose time has really come. We all nod at one another, agreeing that Telework would really help accomplish these goals. By the end of the meeting, there’s so much nodding we each look like one of those little doggies with the articulated neck and head that bobs up and down, up and down as it sits on the dashboard of a moving car. The problem with the Dashboard Doggie phenomenon is that, while everyone agrees—and, granted, especially when it comes to business people and politicians that’s never to be taken as a given—more often than not nothing of substance actually happens. We just all meet again at a later date to talk and agree some more.

I commend the several states that are taking action to move Telework beyond the Dashboard Doggie phase. A fair number, Maryland and Virginia among them, give tax incentives to businesses who implement a telework program. This is a move in the right direction, but our neighbors in the Southeast may have taken the extra step that will have more cars parked in home driveways than parked out on the highway during rush hour.

Georgia recently passed House Bill 194 which, in 2008 and 2009, will give up to a $20,000 tax credit to businesses that conduct a Telework Assessment. Similar to the programs in Maryland and Virginia, there are additional tax credits for implementing a Telework program.

The importance of the Telework Assessment tax credit is this: implementing a successful Telework program is not a cakewalk. Let’s face it—it’s a dramatically different way of doing business. It requires buy-in from key stakeholders in management, IT, HR, and end-users (the employees who will actually be doing the teleworking). That buy-in involves understanding where your company is in terms of IT infrastructure, HR policies and procedures, management oversight and workflow, and employee work culture. It’s important to hear from each group the concerns and challenges they face—then come up with solutions and a plan that addresses them.

By conducting a Telework Assessment before implementation, companies can build a roadmap to a successful and robust telework program—one that will deliver on the promise of “business as usual” Continuity of Operations, cost savings, traffic congestion relief, and employee retention.

Georgia got it right: give companies an incentive for going through the steps to develop a custom Telework program. I applaud Virginia and Maryland for offering the tax incentives they have for Telework program implementation. To really get everyone beyond the Dashboard Doggie phenomenon, states should go one step further and offer a tax break to companies who conduct a Telework Assessment.

Rita Mace Walston General Manager, The Telework Consortium

Why is Telework so Difficult?

Managing telework, in its current implementation, is hard.  

Management is being bombarded by the media and telework advocacy groups, such as our Telework Consortium, extolling the need for telework to alleviate traffic congestion, the staggering costs of commuting and to ensure continuity of operations (COOP). 

The most popular argument given to explain the low participation rate in telework programs has been the “resistance of management.” However, I believe that given the current state of the telecommunication infrastructures supporting telework, this “resistance” is well founded. Co-location of management and workers at a “place” has, since the start of the Industrial Revolution, been fundamental to the practice of “work”. The benefits of co-location include: rich of face-to-face interactions for exchange of both verbal and non-verbal cues, the ability to perform collaborative work, socialization and informal transfer of knowledge and information-the “watercooler” effect.  However, the current suite of telecommunication services (circa 1985) that support telework (the telephone, e-mail, VPN remote and Web access) supply none of the above attributes of the workplace and thus are only adequate for managing workers involved in solitary or episodic work tasks.  

In spite of the inadequacy of the telework infrastructures, there is no relaxation of the requirements upon managers to deliver the expected goods and services. 

It doesn’t have to be this way!  The tools are available to effectively manage teleworkers and a remote workforce. 

Modern multi-media (video, audio, electronic whiteboard), desktop PC-based IP telecommunications services, as deployed in our Telework pilot demonstrations  can dramatically change this mismatch between managing the “workplace” and a distributed workforce. They also provide the remote worker with a richer workplace context for socialization and collaborative work. 

So the Telework Consortium does more than irritate management with telework advocacy—we help in fielding successful telework programs based upon modern telecommunications infrastructures. 

The process starts with our assessment program, one that leverages our public and private-sector experience in pilot telework programs. These assessments analyze current conditions and suggest steps necessary for successful implementation BEFORE committing to the telework program.   

Give us a call…perhaps later you will have the capability to meet us “face-to face” on your PC.  

Cheers 

William Mularie, Ph.D.
CEO, The Telework Consortium