Mobile Working – New idea or one past it’s day?

With all the current comment by some companies such as Yahoo and their move back to office based working I thought that we should take a closer look at the subject.

In 2007, Cisco commissioned a report that identified five categories of mobile workers. All were still strongly tied to head offices and included

• On-Site Movers – implementers and repairers who moved between customer sites
• Yo-Yo’s – occasional business travellers visiting remote locations to meet clients and colleagues
• Pendulums – free-thinkers flicking smoothly between base, client facilities and home offices
• Nomads – marketing types constantly on the prowl for new clients and further sales
• Carriers – people like couriers, train drivers and jet plan captains who travel with their cargo

Most interestingly, remote working was still not an end in itself. It just came along with the turf and mobile providers were little more than camp followers. I read two things recently that illustrate how far we have progressed towards geographic freedom.

Late last, year a bunch of Dimagi youngsters in Cambridge, Massachusetts were working away at mobile apps for health care in developing countries. It was freezing cold. One of them was Brazil-born Danny Roberts, whose São Paulo aunt had an apartment standing empty while she was on an extended holiday. The team figured out that as long as they had laptops, emails and Skype they could work together anywhere. But, would they be productive, or be lured away from work by legendary distractions?

Dimagi SEO Jonathan Jackson was open to the idea. He already had 15 staff in home offices, plus a further 14 at remote bases including India and South Africa. Jackson could see spin-offs from learning other cultures. Moreover programmers are often more productive when released from office chains. The team bonded well in an unusual location where the pressures were on them to project-manage jointly. “There was a ton of great energy when I visited,” Jackson told Inc.Com. “People really wanted to prove the idea of an away-month was feasible, and they were very productive.”

Sharing life together 24/7 provided natural chances for team builds. Although the group worked longer hours than usual, they also found time-out for weekend breaks as they explored pubs, beaches, restaurants and carnivals. When they returned to Cambridge, they brought a wealth of friendship and energy back with them. One of Jackson’s early concerns was that his home-base could fragment because those left behind might feel resentful. Splitting the exercise into two waves certainly helped, as did having reliable local broadband to keep in touch.

Cisco has long recognized the need for effective conference hook-ups to keep mobile workers integrated, especially as these roles mature into longer periods away from base. Its latest WebEx upgrade allows seamless integration of bring-your-own-devices into its teleconferencing system. This includes enabling browser-based clients, and busy travellers calling from airport phones literally on the fly. Innovations like these are helping achieve realities that were just possibilities a few years ago. Mobile working, in my view is really working now and creating business advantage.