One of the best things about being in the Digital/Social Media space is that you get to use the tools of the trade so to speak. Facebook being one of those tools of course. And one of the real benefits of Facebook for me, aside from all of the business related things, has been the ability to reconnect with some high school buddies who, had it not been for Facebook, I would never have had the chance to talk to, other than an occasional reunion, and thus far, some 41 years out of high school, I haven’t managed to make one of those yet. My loss to be sure.
Barbara Healy is one of those buddies. She’s been busy these last few months getting a new business going, Barbara Healy Associates. Organizational Development is one of her areas of concentration. You can she her resume and credentials here: Barbara Healy. One very smart and talented lady.
She tweeted something today that struck a nerve, as I had been thinking about it since Chris Brogan posted about Chatter Channels just over a week ago. That post is here: Do You Need a Chatter Channel. Chris has been working with Socialcast trying to see all of the ways it can be used in business. He’s come up with some great ones. Read it if you have time and see what you think.
One of the things I liked most about what Chris is doing with Socialcast is its potential to make remote workers feel more “at office” when they are working at home, or Starbucks or wherever their virtual office happens to be. Chris is one of those workers himself I believe. We had a number of remote workers in my last job and that was always one of the things we struggled with. How can you keep them engaged in a way that makes them feel part of the everyday office environment? Socialcast looks like it can go a long way towards helping with that.
Barbara’s tweet was a link to Tom Davenport’s blog on the Harvard Business site. Here it is: The Return of the Non-Virtual Organization. Tom talks about Eclipsys, an Atlanta software provider for the healthcare space. They changed CEOs last week. The old one lived in Silicon Valley and ran the company from there. The new one is moving from Miami to live in Atlanta.
Here’s the money quote. “Pead said this week in an address to customers, ‘You can’t deny how effective it is to be able to sit down and have lunch with another leader and resolve an issue quickly.’ My sense is that he’s right and we all know it. However, many companies seem not to want to acknowledge it.”
Barbara asked in her tweet if companies were really going to get rid of their virtual offices and if so, what did we think. Now, she has a lot of experience here so I’m curious to hear what she thinks. For my part, with all due respect to Mr. Davenport, I think that those companies who are reeling in the workforce are doing so for reasons other than “having lunch to resolve an issue quickly”. Companies change CEOs in times of business downturns. I can’t think of one instance where a board of directors said, “Business is great. Let’s dump the CEO!” It has always seemed to me to be a natural reaction when times aren’t great to try to exert more “control”. And what better way to do that than to call home the forces?
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Depends if the virtual employees are less expensive… isnt that the whole reason for outsourcing to hit big?
Hi!
Thanks for stopping by. That’s a very valid point. My experience has been that virtual employees are almost always less expensive in terms of dollars and cents. It’s the emotional or “people” expense that tends to be high. And again, that depends on the person.
Thanks Gregg, for the mention. The bottom line, for me, is that organization’s will NOT be able to discard the notion of virtual workers. The talent forecast data for the near future shows us how the Millenial (Gen Y) generation will be our workers – just by sheer numbers of Gen Y’s (a boom) to numbers of Gen Xers. Gen Y will demand a new way of working – working hard, but having a life (no more work-life balance). Once this occurs, the organizations will catch up with the virtual arena.
You’re welcome! Thanks to you for getting the thought process started on this. I’ve met some very interesting people as a result. Some of whom are doing some really neat things in this space. FWIW, I agree with you completely. Institutions are losing the ability to control the flow of information (something they’ve been controlling for almost 500 years) and I think that once that happens the idea of controlling workers will evaporate as well. I suspect that those who foster a virtual workforce, sooner rather than later, will have a leg up on all of their competitors.
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