FEATURE: MOBILE WORKFORCE
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In today’s modern age, it
is easier than ever to give
employees what they want:
flexibility. Donna Kimmel,
CHRO, Citrix, discusses the
simple technologies that help
employees become more
engaged and productive,
ultimately creating a better
working experience.
flexibility. She responds proactively by
drafting a work-from-home policy; it’s well
thought-out and positively received by
managers, and it gains quick adoption. So
far, so good, but as time passes it becomes
apparent that productivity among remote
workers has actually declined instead of
improving. Now it’s the managers who
are frustrated. They demand that their
teams return to their traditional schedules.
Employees feel cheated. How did this well-
intentioned initiative go so wrong?
Beyond good intentions:
Tools matter
I
t can be tempting to think that
workplace innovation is a one-size-fits-
all proposition. That at any given time,
there’s one best way for people to work,
so all you need to do is read the prevailing
wisdom and then follow suit. Of course, life
is never that clear-cut. There’s no doubt that
technology is transforming what’s possible,
giving organisations more options in the
kinds of work experiences they can allow and
enable, but you’ve still got to make the right
choices for your own business and someone
else’s right answer might not be yours.
What’s most important is to make sure that
whatever direction you take, you’re in a
position to make it a success.
I’ve seen this dynamic at work before.
An HR leader gets wind that employees
are frustrated by time-wasting rush hour
commutes and wish they had more
The scenario I just described isn’t a matter
of slacking remote workers or reactionary
managers. Remote work may well have
been the right answer for this company.
The problem is that they lacked an effective
way to make workplace flexibility successful
– specifically, a technology infrastructure
that lets people become just as efficient
and productive at home as they would be in
the office.
Conventional HR wisdom can be a sea
of anecdotal evidence but there’s good
research showing this gap between
intentions and capabilities. Recently, we
conducted a survey to better understand
how companies are thinking about remote
work. We found that many managers are
fully on-board in concept: more than a third
of the managers we contacted said being
able to work remotely two to three days
per week would give them a more positive
work experience, and nearly half believe
that allowing employees to work remotely
to avoid commuting would be the best way
to improve their productivity. But managers
are also aware of how difficult it can be to
put this premise into practice. Only two-fifths
When remote work doesn’t work –
and how to make
sure it does
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