DISPERSED WORK – MANAGING VIRTUAL PEOPLE AND TEAMS

Is your workforce designed for the new realities of the everywhere workplace?

WFD offers a series of highly practical, action-oriented services for organizations, managers, and employees to enhance their ability to manage and work in a dispersed workplace. Grounded in unique, cutting-edge research that WFD conducted with the American Business Collaboration and The Conference Board (see links below), WFD offers dispersed workplace assessments, strategy and planning, dispersed team workouts, executive briefings, and learning and development services, including customized dispersed workplace toolkits

Dispersed Workplace Assessment Services

WFD’s workplace assessments take an organizational “snapshot” of current management and organizational practices. Assessments can be quantitative, qualitative, or blended. WFD assesses nine factors against which results can be benchmarked with its national database:

• Workforce Profile - Prevalence, characteristics and specific challenges of each of the six types of everywhere work arrangements
• Workforce Impact - A 360 degree view of the effects of the everywhere workplace on
  employees, including their own perspectives as well as those of their managers, co-workers, and families
• Work Processes- Work flows, processes, and practices
• Management Supports - Key management practices, guidelines, training, tools, and resources
• Personal Effectiveness- Personal strategies for everywhere work effectiveness
• Connectedness- The quality of relationships with other employees and managers
• Communications- The quality, modes, and frequency of communication with customers and co-workers
• Technology - Access to the right computers, software, high-speed lines, mobile tools, and technical support
• Leadership - The degree to which leaders create and reinforce the cultural characteristics that support everywhere work
  

Strategy and Planning

From extensive, data-rich planning processes that build the foundation for change to half-day action sessions, WFD guides its clients to develop strategies that enlist top management commitment. Each strategy includes specific objectives and action plans and a blueprint for communication and deployment, measurement, learning and development, and programs and initiatives.

Dispersed Team Workout

As a first step, data is gathered on the nine factors above from members of work teams, who are dispersed across time and location and often culture as well. Based on the results of that data, in less than a day, work teams:

• Identify the attitudes, skills, and practices, and map the work processes that
  reduce or impede employee effectiveness and satisfaction in their dispersed workplace
• Uncover key barriers and root causes of inefficiency that impede agile and productive dispersed operations
• Identify targeted, sustainable solutions that improve operations while supporting distance employees personal and professional effectiveness

Executive Briefings and Presentations

WFD provides highly interactive, research-based executive briefings and presentations on the dispersed workplace for a variety of audiences, including learning and development, talent, and HR organizations; business leadership groups; and functions, like IT and Sales, in which a large number of employees work at a distance. These briefings and presentations provide an overview of the research relevant to the particular audience and action steps that managers and employees can take to increase individual and organizational effectiveness. They are always designed with the unique needs of the audience in mind.

Learning and Development

WFD offers a variety of customized learning and development services, all deeply grounded on its global research, including:

• on-line, classroom, and blended training programs
• consultation to learning and development organizations on the design and development of dispersed workplace learning processes
• guidance on developing on-the-job development programs

Managing Distance Teams

At the foundation of its learning and development programs is its ground-breaking, e-learning workshop, Managing Distance Teams . Designed for managers of dispersed employees, it starts by addressing the myths and misconceptions that managers often hold about distance work and dispersed workers. It then provides skill-building modules on managing individual employees and employee teams and ends with a module on developing high performance, dispersed teams.

Managing Distance Teams is based on sixteen tools, tips, and templates that learners master interactively and then apply in a series of reality-based case studies. Tools, tips, and templates include:

• The Seven Principles of Managing Distance Work
• Distance Manager Self-Assessment
• Prospective Distance Employee Assessment
• Expectations Management Tool
• Guidelines for Building Distance Relationships: The Four Dimensions
• Distance Feedback and Coaching Do’s and Don’ts
• Core Best Practices of Meeting Management
• Tip Sheet: E-Mail Communications
• Tip Sheet: Running Video Conferences/Meetings
• Tip Sheet: Running Web Conferences/Meetings
• Tip Sheet: Running Teleconferences
• Distance Team Charter Guidelines
• Operating Agreements Checklist
• Tip Sheet: Best Practices for Maintaining Connections
• Distance Team Performance Assessment
• Intervening for High Performance Tool

The tools, tips, and templates can also be packaged in customized, standalone toolkits with step-by-step action guides. The toolkits can be incorporated into an organization’s own learning and development program or be made available on-line as an adjunct to training.

Additional Information on Dispersed Workplace

• Managing Distance Teams
• The Everywhere Workplace
• “Challenges of a Dispersed Workforce” Conference Board report
• “When the Workplace is Many Places” report