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How would you like to be part of an effort
that saves $11 billion dollars a year for the
Federal Government; that could prevent 16
million trees a year from being cut down?
What if you worked for an organization that
valued out outcomes? What if it was
important what you did, not where you did it
or who was watching you? What if maybe you
could reduce or eliminate your commute
altogether? How much time could you save?
How much gas could you save? How much
carbon could you reduce and how much more
energy would you have at the end of the day?
What if the project you worked on, you felt
like you owned a piece of that project and
you felt like you were vital to the team. In
other words, you were really engaged. Now
what if your agency could save millions of
dollars a year on the real estate they are
not using? And here is a really big
“what-if” question. What if, job
announcements did not have locations tied to
them? Think about the recruitment pool that
you would have. Think about the retention
possibilities. Well there’s a study out
right now that shows that the Federal
Government could save $11 billion dollars a
year and could save 16 million a year from
being cut, if we could implement telework
efficiently and effectively across the
Federal Government. Did you know that less
than 8% of the Federal workforce teleworks?
That’s a lot bigger number than it has been
but it’s still a pretty small number. And
did you know that GALLUP has found that only
30% of the American Workforce is engaged?
Well if you think about those questions, and
if you think about those facts, and if you
think about this recent Federal budget crisis
that we have had, there might be an
opportunity to save some money and to make
the workforce a whole lot more engaging all
at the same time. And so a team of 15 SES
executives across the Federal Government
under the auspices of the Leading Edge
program came together to study this
opportunity and report our findings. Well we
began by asking a lot of questions. Here’s
the big one: What is Telework? Well, it is
real simply, it’s just employees dispersed
from one another that are working together.
It happens in a variety of locations. It
can be at the office setting. It can be
everything in-between. But it can be at some
unusual settings. Think about General Tommy
Franks, running the war in the Middle East
from a base in Florida. It can be
situational, from a couple hours a day to a
couple hours a week to full time. So
telework takes a lot of different forms.
What are some of the drivers for telework?
Is it return on investment? Well in the
90’s when the US Patent and Trademark Office
started down this road they had not enough
space to work with and they need to squeeze
more productivity out of their program. So
they undertook telework with the idea of
improving their return on investment, and
they did. They’ve measured it and they’ve
done wonderfully. So that’s a key. Is it
work-life balance? Well, probably. Is it a
better Greener Environment? Sure. Is it the
fact that we have a more mobile workforce?
Well that’s what got GSA started on telework
to begin with. But, I think the common
denominator probably is productivity. How do
you get the most productivity out of a
workforce and how do you do that through
engagement? So now a question might be, why?
And there is two categories of answers. The
first is, It’s the Law. There’s a lot of
mandates, the most recent of which, the
Telework Enhancement Act of 2010. But
there’s a whole lot of benefits as well. The
spectrum of benefits include some of those
drivers that we talked about, and it also has
a lot of others. Let’s start with a 2012
report from OPM to Congress. John Berry
noted, that teleworkers were more efficient,
they were more accountable and they were more
resilient in emergency situations. They
tended to have a better idea of what was
expected about them on their jobs and they
were better at getting the results. So it’s
not surprising at all that telework is part
of most agencies COOP plans. What might be
surprising is the dramatic increases in the
effectiveness of telework in COOP. Go back
to 2010, Snowmageddon. It was estimated the
Federal Government lost $100 Million dollars
a day in productivity. A $100 Million
dollars a day. Some agencies were able to
get back up and in the game but $100 Million
dollars a day lost. Fast forward two years,
to 2012 super storm Sandy. US Patent and
Trademark Office was keeping stats of
productivity and they found one of their
groups on the second day after the storm 60%
productive and another group up to 80%
productive, while most of the country along
the Eastern Seaboard was not at work. A lot
of other Federal agencies were able to be
open for business in a remote way, and take
care of their customers. OPM also found that
there were a number societal benefits least
of which was probably less congestion due to
less commuting. And there’s lots of other
benefits as well. Let’s talk about some of
those. Work-life balance, flexibility, less
stress for employees which translates into
employee well-being. Employee well-being
translates into more engagement and more
productivity. So that’s key. But another
key benefit is the dramatic impact it can
have on avoiding or eliminating real estate
cost. And we’ll talk about some specific
examples in our findings. So now let’s ask
some “How” questions. How do you weave
telework into your culture? That’s a key
question. How do you ensure engagement? How
do you avoid professional and social
isolation? How do you ensure knowledge
sharing? How do you get to collaboration?
Is there an impact on succession planning?
Will people that were teleworking not apply
for jobs that provide them less teleworking
opportunities? Something to consider. And
how do you influence security and
infrastructure. Well, let’s look at
infrastructure first. It’s like a car. You
got to have tires, and gas and oil to make it
go. Same thing with telework. You got to
have all the essential ingredients. And just
like a car, you wouldn’t want to park it
somewhere and it get vandalized. You would
want to have it secured. So you got to have
the right security. So that’s important.
And then how do you estimate, how do you
manage for the financial resources you need
and the Human Resource needs you are going to
have to make it work? Well, we’ve researched
a lot of the questions that we’ve talk about,
and wrote a paper. It’s a 10 page paper, so
it doesn’t take long to get through. It’s
called “Effective Strategies for Engaging an
Increasingly Diverse Workforce.” And that
paper lays out five phases that we recommend
that people wanted to get better in telework
follow: the first is planning, the second is
policy modification, the third is technology
enhancements, the fourth is workforce
training, and the fifth is continuous
evaluation and improvement. Now the paper
also lays out seven concrete recommendations
but to save time we are going to direct you
to the paper to find out more about that. So
what are some of our finds? Well they’re
pretty neat and they range the gamut. Let’s
start off with a GSA commissioned study by
Booz Allen Hamilton that showed that
employees could get anywhere from 225% to
1500% more productive if they had effective
telework arrangements. We found that
agencies that engage in telework have seen
their Employee View Point Survey scores go up
15 points. US Patent and Trademark Office
has attributed telework as one of the reasons
that they’re one of the top 10 places in
Government to work. We have found that some
agencies weave it into their business
processes. For example, there’s an agency
that asks all employees to take telework
training, and when you come out of the
telework training you have a telework
agreement unless there is some reason you
shouldn’t have it. Other agencies weave it
into their collective bargaining agreements.
But we found out that everywhere that it
works it works because the top management
telegraphs it in a lot of ways, through their
policies, through their planning, but also
through their actions. Employees see it,
they know it is safe, they know it’s a good
thing to do and it’s encouraged. And the
agencies brag about the results that their
getting. Now, there is also tools to help
make this easier. That’s one of the things
we found. GSA has a program called, Total
Workplace. And Total Workplace is pretty
cool. What it does is it’s a service that
makes the transition a lot more easy and
thoughtful to telework. Because you are
going to have lots of impacts when you do
this. The space that’s left behind probably
needs to be redesigned and you probably need
to have a lot of technology requirements,
etc. Well a number of agencies jumping on
the bandwagon with this. There was a recent
new article that showed some of the results,
and I will just share a few of it. Health
and Human Services -- they’re going to save
$15 million dollars a year on a 10 year lease
by lowering their real estate footprint.
Fish and Wildlife Service is slashing 72
thousand square feet going to save $3 million
dollars a year. And how about GSA -- well
GSA in DC is going from four buildings to one
building, they’re going to save $24 million
dollars a year. What are some other
findings? Well one of the early leaders, US
Patent and Trademark Office, mentioned them
already, 7 thousand employees, 80% use a
hoteling situation to telework four or five
days a week. They’ve saved $24 million
dollars in doing that. But even better,
employees have saved $5 million dollars a
year for themselves in gas. They have also
reduced emissions by 29 thousand tons a year.
And they have this program called R
Friends. R-Friends is a way that gets at
some of those needs for collaboration and
social interaction. And it works all across
the Continental United States for them and it
has worked really good. Some other results
-- The Department of Agriculture Studies
suggests that $200 million dollars a year in
transit subsidies could be saved. Department
of Transportation has noted that they’ve
saved 30 million commuter miles. They’ve
also reduced 9 million metric tons of
Greenhouse Gas in 2012. Department of
Veterans Administration, they’ve 16 thousand
people teleworking now. They’ve quadrupled
their number since 2009, and they’ve relooked
at their location policies. In fact, some of
their executives, working remote from their
team, are on our team. So that gives you
kind of a whirlwind view. So, in conclusion,
I hope we have given you a little more
insight about telework. I hope we have
inspired you to think about getting some of
these gains for yourself. Remember, there’s
$11 billion dollars in savings out there.
There are 16 million trees that we could
prevent from going down. To make it just a
little bit easier, we garnered a group of
people that have agreed to serve as mentors
or benchmarks and we have listed them in the
paper. You can reach out to them and they
are happy to help you. Also, think one more
time before we leave, only 8% of the Federal
Civilian workforce teleworks. Only 30% are
fully engaged in the United States work
population. We can make those numbers a
whole lot better, and get a lot more benefits
and make the workplace a lot more engaging in
the process. Thanks.
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