Trabalhar onde e quando quiser

O Gerente de Projetos da Ustore, Lenildo Morais, teve seu artigo publicado no Portal de Tecnologia e Inovação Bloovi, na Bélgica, atualmente com 81 mil seguidores.

O artigo original publicado neste site em inglês, foi traduzido para o idioma holandês pelo corpo editorial do portal Bloovi, portal este vinculado a duas importantes universidades europeias – Universidade de Amsterdam e Universidade Sorbonne.

Segue o artigo em inglês na íntegra:

Stress is created by an imbalance between, on the one hand, the demands of the employer and, on the other hand, the employee’s ability to carry out the work properly. By improving your time management skills, you automatically spend more time on high priority tasks and therefore perform better.

Training on the Job

But training employees under stress in the form of a course, course or workshop is actually not possible. There is simply no time to just drop the work for a moment. An alternative is therefore coaching and training employees during their work, for example with the help of efficiency software. This software alerts computer users to the fact that they have been sitting behind their computers for hours, trains their computer skills and gives tips to improve time management. An important advantage is that employees can be trained with the software anytime and anywhere. Whether they work in the office, at home or on the road.

Of course, the use of efficiency software is not the only saving solution for work stress. After all, various factors play a role in this. However, it can be a good first step to reduce the stress level of employees.

Workplace Hosting

Working wherever you want is completely out of date. If you want to be able to work productively at every workplace, it is important that office automation functions properly. For example, employees need not only have a good computer, but it is just as important that they can use the right software and that the ICT infrastructure works.

Hosting workplaces is something that fully belongs to the New Way of Working. This means that you can access your work anytime and anywhere, with all the software and documents that are needed for this. What could be more fun than just spending a day at home or being productive behind your laptop when you make a long trip on the train? Moreover, it is an efficient way of working!

Benefits of the New Way of Working

The New Way of Working is about working wherever you want, regardless of time and location. Of course you need a laptop, smartphone and / or tablet for this. And you must be able to work in the cloud. This means that you are offered a workplace online so that you can log in 24 hours a day to carry out your tasks.

Of course, the New Way of Working offers various advantages. It is just a little easier to bring the children to school and you can also do some shopping in between. Another advantage that The New Way of Working entails, the cost-saving effect. You no longer have to make travel costs to and from the office and you also save yourself the stress of the inevitable traffic jams.

Plea for Technological Simplicity

While the first steps towards more working from home were already made at the beginning of the 21st century, the technology was only ready for it later on. ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS) emerged over the past ten years and was seen as the facilitator for the New Way of Working. It enables employees to do their work at home as well as at the office.

The problem, however, is not in the possibilities, but in the daily practice. Ensuring that someone at home can have the same (digital) workplace as in the office is not that difficult. Ensuring that the employee also has software that is up-to-date, can deploy new solutions without major problems, and gets the right support in the event of incidents, is less obvious. There is more to it than making a laptop, tablet or smartphone available.

Working flexibly thanks to the increased possibilities with SaaS is better facilitated. At the same time, IT departments do have a problem. They want access to infrastructure, the use of software licenses (compliance management) and help end users with incidents. Imagine that the new law with regard to working from home will ensure a growth in the number of professionals carrying out office work at home. This would mean that IT departments would have to deal with a new type of requests and incidents, and that new workplaces should also be set up. Configuration and distribution of software and problem solving become more complex if the device and the user in question are not in the office. The growth in the number of (different types of) devices makes management even more complex.

There are challenges in various areas that IT needs to answer if you want to equip your home workers adequately. As a true ‘business enabler’ the IT employee will have to ensure that end users have all the possibilities and that the technical aspects are minimized. The challenges lie with security, mobility, compliance guidelines, software distribution and IT Service Management.

To be able to act as a business enabler, IT uses a variety of tools. Integrated solutions that provide answers to all challenges and in this way simplify the underlying management. Because simplicity is the answer to the complexity that the modern workplace offers us. And that applies to both the workplace at home and the office.

Making Appointments and Transparency

Many issues are discussed when concluding new cooperation agreements with customers, with ‘short lines’ being a frequently heard term. The first weeks and months this usually happens properly. The work performed is neatly reported through a bi-weekly (conference) call.

However, as the collaboration is continued, these kinds of contact moments are often scheduled less frequently. Until the moment things get worse and the customer asks for clarification about the work performed and the time spent on it. Productivity tools ensure optimal online collaboration. Not only between employees and the customer, but also between employees. The New Way of Working is about making appointments and about transparency. Make sure that both spearheads are visible throughout the organization, both internally and externally.

Grips for New Technology Adaptation

In order to implement new technology successfully, it is important that IT departments focus more on adjusting employees to new technology. For ICT people, working with new opportunities is often a matter of course, but colleagues from other departments often need training in order to increase their knowledge of and dealing with the new possibilities. Attitude and behavior are not influenced just like that, but you achieve a lot by convincing your employees of the benefits of such a new tool. Make clear how it makes their work easier and more efficient. Only then will they start to use the tool effectively and experience the benefits themselves.

There are various means and learning methods to get employees to get used to new technology. Think of training, e-learning, gamification and serious gaming. Methods that work for one target group can have a counterproductive effect on another. Giving training to an employee who already knows how an application works will cause frustration. Therefore choose the right intervention for each group of employees.

The ‘getting used to’ new technology – or New Technology Adaptation (NTA) – starts with logical thinking: what exactly do we want to achieve with that new technology? By talking to different groups of employees, insight is gained into the need for support.

Need for Want Versus Want to be Able

With a ‘need for want’, it is mainly about motivating employees. If they experience that the new technology offers advantages for the execution of their work, they are motivated to use them properly. This leads to more involvement and higher productivity.

If the emphasis is mainly on ‘need for ability’, training of employees is particularly effective. This can be done in a classic way, but also online, with video instructions, gamification or by using serious games. Depending on what best suits a specific target group and where the employee benefits the most.

A thorough NTA route for employees provides many benefits for an organization. They become enthusiastic and motivated, which increases their productivity. A summary of the aspects that make new technology adaptation a success:

– Make a thorough analysis per target group (what impact does the introduction of the new technology have on your employees?);

– Prepare an adaptation plan (ensure that communication, training and support are well coordinated);

– Apply the right intervention per target group (need for skill versus need for want