Survive the downturn with a healthy, "virtual" workforce

22 January 2009 8:39am

For a "virtual" workforce to succeed, managers need new skills to lead their teams, provide flexibility and ensure consistent communication, according to Unisys Asia Pacific's Petra Buchanan.

Effective virtualisation requires comprehensive planning, commitment, leadership and cultural change, she says.

Employers establishing or maintaining virtual teams - which might communicate primarily using videoconferencing and Web 2.0 tools (which allow information sharing and social networking) - face the challenge of:

creating a genuine team culture - organisations with workers based at home, Buchanan says, can feel "a loss of team from the loss of physicalness".

To counter this, Unisys - which has a dispersed workforce of its own - holds monthly informal luncheons at a central location and regular workout classes with a personal trainer to which home-based workers are invited.

Workers further afield are kept in touch through internet forums, teleconferences and regular phone calls.

"Employers need the forethought to create mechanisms to bring people together," Buchanan says;

developing behaviour that is driven and measured by outcomes instead of daily tasks - managers need to measure outcomes in ways that are "tangible to the business from the bottom line" while recognising that all workers achieve their objectives in different ways, she says.

With workers away from the office, managers actually have to be smarter and "more attuned" to their people;

offering flexibility while setting boundaries - flexibility should work both ways, with managers being accessible and objectives determined according to the role of each individual; and

trusting employees who cannot be physically seen - many managers and employees have always worked in a conventional office environment, and may find it disconcerting coping with a workplace culture devoid of direct supervision.

Employers with a dispersed workforce will need to develop a new philosophy on how the "workplace" functions, Buchanan says.

The value of health programs, and how to prove it

Workplace models providing flexibility are vital in retaining or attracting staff and in allowing businesses to have "fast access" to the right people when market opportunities arise, Buchanan says.

However, she notes that "softer" HR initiatives, such as health and wellbeing programs, are just as important, particularly where employees are in regular contact with external bodies and are therefore ambassadors for the company's brand.

"Healthy, motivated employees are a positive reflection on the company and can ultimately benefit the bottom line," she says. "Employee wellbeing is not a simple human resources matter. It impacts the wider business."

Unhealthy and stressed employees generally under-perform, she says, and are responsible for billions of dollars in lost productivity in Australia each year. Further, employees are even more prone to anxiety and ill health during an economic downturn.

Yet health and wellbeing initiatives will be scrutinised by company boards in the months to come, she warns, as employers look to cut costs and increase productivity.

HR managers will need to prove that programs deliver a return on investment and contribute directly to business results.

They need to think beyond the benefits to individual employees to the "balanced benefits" between the employee and the bottom line - or else the programs are likely to be slashed.

HR must be able to demonstrate that health and wellbeing programs result, for instance, in an improvement in productivity and a reduction in sick leave, Buchanan says.

Return on investment metrics, she says, will be a key HR tool in 2009.

Unisys's own health and wellbeing program, developed for its 1,800 Australia-based employees by Springboard Health and Performance, is a predominantly activities based, team-oriented program with a variety of online components, including information sources and record keeping.

The program, Buchanan says, has seen an overall improvement in employee health and, consequently, a 6.6 per cent increase in job satisfaction and a reduction in sick days from an average of three per employee per year to less than one, equating to a gain of more than 3,780 productive days annually.

Comments closed

Employers to face employee requests for flexibility, under proposed IR laws
Flexible employers falling short of platinum recognition
Supportive leadership and high morale cut psychological injuries

Latest headlines

Advanced search

search for	from date

	to date