Shift to Distributed Workforce at scale

In the past dozen years, thanks to technological advances, increased need for skilled labor and growing costs of office operations, organizations large and small have been re-evaluating the composition, location and skillset of their workforce. The evolving trend toward remote enablement is continuing to challenge organizational leadership in managing and motivating a distributed workforce.   Nonetheless, demand and desire for ability to work from anywhere has been on a steady climb.

While most companies have become more flexible in offering remote work option for significant part of their workforce, the lack of transparency and sufficient oversight has prevented management from ensuring that employees are staying productive and focused.

Recent COVID19-related location shutdowns only serve to underscore the urgent need to implement effective distributed workforce solutions and tools to gain visibility into employees’ activities, progress and individual performance.

Today’s workforce is shifting to videoconference meetings in place of business-related travel. Coming to the office means Social Distancing and daily temperature checks, Office Space reconfigured for safer interaction, complex in-office/remote work schedules and other safety measures focused on prevention of disease spread and outbreaks.  Given that government regulations can temporarily close down offices for unspecified period of time, means that remote work is no longer just an option. 

Common concerns and impediments:

Some of the most common concerns we hear from upper management include:

• Are my employees actually working during work hours?
• How much time are they actually spending on their assignments and responsibilities?
• Should I monitor them on continuous basis?
• How do I measure their productivity?
• Will we experience communication difficulties due to technical or coordination problems?
• Can the work be done effectively at home?
• How do we provide clarity in work procedures and assignments?
• How do we measure quality of work?
• How can everyone collaborate effectively?

Organizations that need to shift to “Work from Anywhere” run into unexpected difficulties as they discover that their existing practices do not always translate to remote workforce.  Here’s an example of few of these:

• Using Email for all communications
• Systems not equipped for virtual work
• Reliance on in-person technical support
• Requirements in large unstructured documents
• Tools suites inconsistently used
• Lack of organized and standardized on-boarding and support
• Classroom-only training

ETI has been helping its clients address and overcome such issues over the last 5 years.

 

Our experience with executing on corporate initiatives with Remote Teams

Offering the right mix of technology and management stewardship, ETI optimizes individual and team productivity while remaining loyal to corporate strategy, mission and culture. We work closely with your leadership and management teams to assure project success from every angle: C-suite, finance, operations, human resources, technology, supply chain and marketing.

As an established expert in distributed workforce technologies and services, ETI delivers services in the context of an actual project or a corporate initiative vs. theoretical examples and traditional training. Our approach to streamlined workflows, centralized business rules and conflict remediation results in quicker ramp up, standardization and adoption of best practices.

Best Practices, tools and techniques

ETI empowers companies to gain the significant benefits of a remote-enabled distributed workforce. We maximize effectiveness and reduce CapEx/OpEx costs, by implementing the appropriate technology and a steady evaluation of work estimates, deliverables and check-ins.  Our clients engage us to:

• Provide expertise to implement best-practice methodology and technology to ensure successful execution of enterprise initiatives.
• Automate and transform workflows enabling your employees to be effective and focus on what matters most.
• Remove the guesswork out of “who is doing what and when” with actionable dashboards and predictive analytics.
• Build high-performing collaborative distributed teams by coaching and guiding them, to ensure that they end up with a sustainable, repeatable model.

DWS Framework:

Our approach is based on our custom “Distributed Workforce Framework”. Our framework consists of multiple tightly integrated and interdependent components.  Full implementation of each of these components is essential to ensure successful and lasting transformation to Remote Workforce.

Project Ramp Up and On-boarding

To ensure that critical business functions continue as you shift to a distributed workforce, we implement an outcomes-based project methodology with clearly defined expectations of deliverables, timelines and quality of work.

Tools and Technologies

Members of distributed teams are empowered with a suite of productivity tools that facilitate team communication, collaboration, project controls and knowledge management.

Software Automation

Our team facilitates automation of common and repetitive processes using DevOps tools to ensure timely software delivery. This allows for immediate recognition of software errors, improved consistency and reduction of deployment outages.

Business Process Automation

ETI helps consolidate, organize, optimize, and automate your workflows and rules to simplify their maintenance, consistency and understanding.

Performance Reporting

We work with your team to develop KPI based dashboards, communicating timely progress and results to the organizational stakeholders.

Workforce Policies & Training

We work with your Human Resources department to develop and modify workforce policies and train your teams in the application of these as they transition to remote team.

Mentorship and Skill Building

We onboard and coach product owners, managers and individual team members, and provide continuous hands-on training.

Security and Data Access

Identity and access management (IAM) protocol helps mitigate risks while keeping remote teams secure. We help incorporate security and compliance measures to protect your systems and data.

Objective Benefits achieved

Many of our clients have benefited from shifting to Distributed Workforce.  Their pool of talent sourcing expanded without limit.  Their methods and level of communication increased significantly.   There was an objective realization of continuous progress and transparency in day-to-day operations.  Productivity of a team as a whole was steady and increasing with the focus on deliverables and results.  Estimation accuracy led to more predictable project timelines and scope management. Concise and timely communications led to better responsiveness to business changes.  Process acceptance and adoption led to overall productivity boost and built confidence in the workforce throughout the organizations.  Project participants became ambassadors to the rest of the organization in promoting best practices and leveraging innovative technologies.

Let us be your partner in this transformation and let our experience and expertise guide you throughout the process.