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IKANO News
Title: Utah wins gold for avoiding Olympic crush...
Date: March 25th, 2002
URL: www.telecommute.org http://www.telecommute.org/newsletter/newsletter2.3.shtml#olympic
Utah wins gold for avoiding Olympic crush...
Anticipating a doubling of cars on the road for the duration of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games last month, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee asked employers to help by reducing traffic by 20 percent. Taking the warnings to heart, Utahns stayed off the roads in droves. Downtown traffic was reduced by 30 percent to 40 percent and traffic in outlying areas fell by 20 percent to 30 percent, according to John Njord, executive director of the Utah Department of Transportation. The result: a snarl-free Olympics.
Though a number of companies changed their work hours to accommodate Olympic schedules, some chose telework as their coping strategy. IKANO Communications, a networking provider and ISP, had offices located within a few blocks of Olympic Square and the ice arena. IKANO saw the Olympics as a golden opportunity to test a set of Internet technology products.
It equipped approximately a third of its 350 employees to work from home using a combination of communications devices. These included high-speed wireless Internet access, Instant Messenger, e-mail, Web cams for personalized virtual meetings, and of course, the telephone.
To ready employees for telecommuting, IKANO held company-wide meetings and training sessions. "We provided tools training, tips and tricks, and explained how to create a more productive home environment," says Debbie LaBelle, director of marketing and an experienced teleworker.
Work-at-home employees were selected from the management, accounting, networking and creative teams. Many moved home for the duration of the Games and others worked from home two or three days a week.
Productivity went up immediately. "Employees worked, on average, one to two hours more per day," says LaBelle. Josh Child, a member of the web design team, noticed that the design process accelerated. "The "work from home program" was a success for the creative team," he says. "We stayed focused, organized and motivated." Chief legal counsel Shane Hanna agrees. Hanna especially appreciated the instant messaging (IM) capabilities. "IM tools allowed me to instantly see exactly who was available at that time to work with, and find ways to contact them so that we could discuss things at the other person's convenience," he says. "Further, IM allowed me to have multiple conversations with multiple parties at the same time, which increased my productivity."
Will IKANO stop the experiment now that the Olympics are over? Not if Garth Howard, IKANO President and COO, has anything to do with it. "We are definitely looking to expand telecommuting," he says. "I firmly believe the time working at home is more effective, especially for certain types of work. Our creative team, for example, showed much higher productivity because they could work in an environment with fewer interruptions."
IKANO’s next step, says Howard, is to analyze the test results and develop formal policy guidelines. For example, they need to determine who can telecommute full-time, which jobs are most appropriate for telecommuting, etc. They also plan to identify clear performance goals so they can measure the benefits of telecommuting more accurately. Sounds like a winning strategy.
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