Chains, Whips, or Wifi? How to Motivate Your Digital Nomads

by Joseph Hunkins / Dec 23

Although businesses face many of the same challenges motivating their digitally nomadic workforce as their regular office workers, the growing number of mobile tools and techniques offer clever businesses a wealth of motivational opportunities so they and their employees can benefit from a leaner, more effective, and more productive remote workforce.

1. Connectivity. A key element for effecitve digital nomads is “always on” connectivity, so you’ll want to make sure that your mobile teams have access pretty much whenever they need it and wherever they go. Laptop cards plus wifi plus smartphone shoud do the trick in all but very rural areas where at least for the next few years connectivity will continue to face challenges. Consider offering as a perk to your home workers free connectivity and equipment in exchange for reducing the burdens of providing additional office space and amenities. As with any workers you’ll want clear and easiy trackable productivity measurements and expectations managed in a way that keeps the lines of communication clear and unambiguous. There are many online tools for this that can integrate time management with your accounting systems, saving data entry time and helping to keep the digital nomad on track with their own time.

2. Gadgetry. The number of tools for the digital nomad has exploded over the past few years. I’d argue the most important in most cases is a wifi enabled small laptop. Although there have been excellent ultra mobiles for some time they tended to be expensive but after the debut of the ASUS eeePC a slew of high quality, very inexpensive small form PCs have hit the market. The cost of providing this equipment to your team is no longer prohibitive.

Smartphones like the Blackberry, Treo, and iPhone are also a powerful tool in your nomad’s arsenal although the costs here may actually be more prohibitive than small laptops due to the decreasing cost of Wifi in the face of the relativey high cost of smartphone data plans. In some cases a smartphone will be needed but also consider options where some of your workers make good use of a laptop for records and then use basic cell phone services for voice. Nokia’s N97, expected to be out in the first half of 2009, may bridget this gap as it offers computer functionality in a very powerful smartphone.

3. People. Ultimately technology in the workplace is all about empowering your workers to be as productive as they can while maintaining a healthy balance between the “always on” work cycle and their lives.  Businesses that recognize and provide for the needs of their employees are likely to be rewarded with higher productivity, greater loyalty and greater worker satisfaction.   Making sure your employees are comfortable with their technologies is a key part of this equation and thankfully easier than ever as most digital nomads are already well versed in many of the technologies you’ll want them to use to promote your business.   From smartphones to social networks, your nomads are likely to be familiar with the landscape and anxious to use it to business advantage.   Harnessing this enthusiasm can be as simple as providing moral support and a small budget to the nomadic workforce and then cutting them loose to innovate and invent  their own technological productivity solutions.

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Are Your Digital Nomads Showing You The Money?

by Joseph Hunkins / Dec 11

Digital Nomads:

As fixed office workers move into the growing legions of Digital Nomads it is easy to see how in theory ROI would improve as a result of the increased flexibility, decreased need for office space, improved morale, and other factors.    However these clear advantages must be balanced against the challenges faced by businesses with a mobile workforce.   Are your employees as productive remotely in environments that are often unsupervised?    Are your costs to maintain your Digital Nomads balanced by savings or productivity improvements?

To answer most ROI questions it’s best to try to eliminate as many potentially confusing variables as possible, so a good initial approach to answering the question of ROI might be to task existing employees with the same jobs but allow them for *half their time* to work remotely, not check in to the office for extended periods, and work from home.   During this experiment measure productivity carefully in the two environments – office and mobile – and for most you’ll likely see clear patterns emerge.

Clearly however personalities will matter greatly and it may be wise to experiment with various options to see which of your staff is best suited to the mobile work lifestyle and who will perform best in the office environment.

Our own experience as our travel websites grew to dozens of workers was generally that *closely supervised* workers were generally more productive than unsupervised though we had problems in the office environment (which was very open and relaxed) as well as when we allowed people to work from home.

HP has an excellent series devoted specifically to the issue of improving ROI via a mobile workforce. They point out that the inexpensive availability of secure connectivity via wireless broadband, bluetooth, and other technologies has effectively freed up workers and businesses from the constraints of only a few years ago.

Obviously, some jobs lend themselves beautifully to working at home for companies far away – in effect a form of digital nomad “couch potato”.  As FastCompany reports, JetBlue manages a large part of their reservations workforce remotely using mobile technologies.   Jet Blue has a cadre of working moms who use mobile technologies to book flights all over the system.    Highly skilled workers are available who might otherwise not be for office environments, and all that is required are broadband internet connections and phone which can be VOIP.   In this example the ROI is easy to measure as these workers are doing *exactly the same* tasks in our out of the office.

Summary:

Generally I would suggest that mobile workforce ROI will remain highest when you are dealing with highly motivated staff such as management and commissioned employees, and worst (in fact negative) when you are trying to “mobilify” employees who are generally just putting in their time.

Source links:
HP: http://www.hp.com/sbso/productivity/howto/wireless_improveROI/plan-it.html
Fast Company:  http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/82/jetblue_agents.html

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It’s About The People

by Joseph Hunkins / Nov 20

Huge advances in mobile technologies such as smartphones, widely available broadband, videoconferencing, and cloud computing have all but eliminated the *necessity* and the importance of centralized office environments.    However I think too often technology solutions are presented as improvements or innovations in *technology* when what is most needed are solutions that more effectively manage all of the people and relationships in the equation.    These solutions need to make sure productivity levels remain high, workers cooperate effectively when needed, and the morale and comraderie that is often ca key factor in business success is enhanced – or at least not crippled by worker mobility decreasing social interaction to the extent that co-workers hardly know each other.

What are some of these non-technology solutions to the challenges of the nomadic workforce?

*  Encourage, sponsor, facilitate socializing outside of the work environments.    Perhaps the most dramatic example of this approach is Google’s sponsorhip of parties, events, talks, movies, and other socializing events both at the Google campus and outside of the company environment.  This appears to have created a dramatically loyal workforce willing to go to great lengths

* Maintain a formal and regular meeting structure where project leaders present progress reports and all team members have a chance to express concerns and ideas.

* Maintain a clear definition of leadership roles and accountability.  In a power vaccuum leadership will take questionable and often inefficient form, so those most responsible for the success of the project should be held accountable and also be given the power to hold others accountable for their parts of the project or company.

It is only theoretically that a distributed workforce with the latest technologies will be more efficient than a conventional workforce.   Humans are very social creatures and for the forseeable future will continue to require the types of interaction and guidance for which we are evolutionarily programmed – the interaction and guidance from other people.

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Digital Nomads Gone Bad: Good security technology does not necessarily mean good security.

by Joseph Hunkins / Nov 3

Security discussions usually focus primarily on how to make sure devices are secured with software and how data or access is encrypted (e.g. wireless network security like WEP, WPA, LEAP, etc).  Yet despite these legitimate technology considerations in many cases the security problems come from behavioral issues with employees.

These behavior security challenges can take the form of simple accidents like lost laptops and phones but can also come from employees failing to follow company protocols either out of ignorance or indifference.   Simply sending an email or text message with sensitive data or accidentally forwarding to the wrong person can have significant security implications, yet these behavioral challenges cannot be prevented with any software.   More ominously an unhappy or malicious employee may choose to intentionally work to distribute confidential information or steal valuable data.

Palisade Systems conducted a study of security suggesting that: …Read More

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Will Smartphones Be The Next Security Challenge?

by Joseph Hunkins / Oct 24

As wireless connectivity becomes an essential standard for the mobile workforce many experts believe that significant security problems are in store for many businesses.   As smartphones become the most used standard device for virtually every digital nomad working remotely (and often also used working from home and offices), the smartphone has become a potential point of vulnerability in terms company and individual security.

The huge increase in use is combining with open software platforms to create something of a “perfect storm” for smartphone security challenges.    Apple has opened their iPhone platform to developers while Symbian, a key operating system for many phones such as the Treo, has announced they are moving towards open source as well.   Perhaps most significantly Google’s Android smartphone operating system is open source and appears destined to become a huge player in this market – in fact my prediction is that Android will be the most used phone operating system within two years.

Although open source solution do not necessarily bring more trouble, they do mean devices no longer enjoy the protection of proprietary code.   Some would argue this effectively “lowers the bar” for what it takes to become a smartphone hacker since many details of the OS are both available and details are under continuous online discussion.

CTIA-The Wireless Association, a nonprofit based in Washington D.C., is the key international group representing all sectors of wireless communications from smartphones to mobile radio.  This week at CTIA’s “I.T. and Entertainment conference a panel of experts discussed how to secure mobile data.

Mark Kominsky of Bluefire Security noted that bandwidth improvements, easy developer access to the OS, and the ability to actually load programs to the device are the factors that led to an explosion of viruses in the PC environment.

Khoi Nguyen of Symantec noted that Symbian is already struggling with viruses designed to exploit vulnerabilities in Symbian OS number 7 and 8, which is why Symbian 9 is less open than earlier versions.

Panelists discussed problems with malicious programs that can activate phone cameras or audio and then collect sensitive data or create charges for the user they don’t want, but the panel appeared to agree that data theft and data loss are the key threats to an enterprise that depends on workers with mobile phones.

Although one should note that these speakers are in the business of providing security and therefore have a vested interest in people following this advice, the solutions recommended by the panel included the following:

* Protect employee mobile phones with the same security policies and procedures applied to other devices and data.

* Use security software on the phones.

* Update the mobile security applications regularly.

* Inventory mobile devices.

* Disable non-business features on the devices.

* Use password protection on data.

* Encrypt your data.

* Have a remote data wipe capability for devices.

At the same conference Sybase 365’s Bill Dudley noted in an interview that that mobile widgets may present new security challenges for the smartphone.   Since the use of widgets/Google gadgets/ etc is exploding online and on mobile devices, the fact that these may contain malicious code presents a new set of problems.  Dudley suggested that one aspect of the solution can be for companies to run some of the applications through content aggregators who in turn can make sure the applications are clean and the environments are secure.The “Securing Wireless Data” video interview with Bill Dudley is available here:
http://daily.ctia.org/wirelessit08/

PC World reports on the CTIA Security Panel

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Being A Digital Nomad Has Its Good And Bad Sides

by Joseph Hunkins / Oct 7

The mobility explosion challenges both employers and workers to find a healthy balance where the mobile applications enhance productivity and innovation, but don’t stifle or overwhelm the workers or the employers with too much irrelevant or redundant information.

In my own case I find that mobility has both hindered and helped me.    A great example of mobile helpfulness was at the Computer Electronics show at CES in Las Vegas last year.    My Treo phone combined with a Flickr photo uploading application allowed me to snap photos of the Bill Gates Keynote and other events and post them online *almost immediately*, literally reporting / blogging the story in real time.   I was intrigued that many legacy media reporters at the same events would often take hours or even a full day before they had stories online where my use of a smartphone and blogging system in some ways let me “scoop” those reporters.

On the other hand, that same mobility makes it difficult to pull out of the frantic 24/7 online social and information world.  In addition to keeping up with breaking news and business items of interest, there are social media applications like Twitter and Facebook that have some business value but can also become as distracting as they can be helpful and informative.

In terms of workers I remain somewhat concerned that the almost entirely “virtual” workforce we now have at our travel websites is as productive as it would be otherwise.    Our office environment with the same people increased the number of personal interactions and personal distractions, but at least we could see those going on and more easily monitor productivity.  There is also something of a camaraderie when people work together in person that is lost in the virtual work world.   Humans are still socially evolving within the technological context, and I think we have a long way to go.

It remains hard for me to follow up on whether employees are very productive or not, especially when the tasks are creative or innovative in nature so there are no easy benchmarks in terms of “pages created” or “words written”.

In an office you quickly get a sense for those who “surf” vs “work” but with a virtual workforce this is more difficult.

I’d suggest that the solutions to these challenges involve two key factors:

First, the employer and employee need to agree on some quality measures of productivity and check in regularly (e.g. daily) with each other to confirm that expectations are being me and deliverables are getting….delivered.     In one sense the mobile worker is treated more like a consultant.   They’ll enjoy more autonomy but also should expect a high level of accountability.

Probably equally important should be mechanisms to make sure the employer/manager respects that their employees do not owe them attention 24/7 or even 12/7 for that matter.   A workforce under the constant stress of little downtime hurts everybody, so in the same way productivity should be measured it may be wise to develop systems where employees can enjoy clear and uninterrupted days off, and are encouraged to enjoy this downtime.

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What About Security?

by Joseph Hunkins / Sep 19

Forget about mobile security.   Seriously.  The ship that prevents us from having a robust level of online security sailed long ago, leaving us with a choice of participating in a somewhat insecure environment, especially as we jump on and off of hotspots or insecure home networks to do our online banking.    I suppose it’s possible that I’ve just been lucky, and I certainly take the normal levels of precaution, but I think that worrying, for example, about your employees encrypting their email and surfing activity while on the road (or off the road for that matter), is an exercise in futility.

The key security holes are as much a product of an employees risky behavior as they are a product of your company’s efforts to protect everybody.    I’m obviously not suggesting you conduct any sensitive mobile computing without virus protection and firewalls, and also obviously if highly confidential information such as credit card records or medical histories is involved very high levels of security are called for, and great mobile networking precautions should be taken.

Most importantly you’ll obviously want to monitor any money related online transactions – but since you must monitor these after the mobile transaction fact anyway, trying to insure security throughout the process may be cost prohibitive.   Again obvious caveats apply, but credit cards and banking systems have fairly extensive security systems and good processes to settle online fraud already in place.

However under the normal mobile networking environments of your employees I think security issues are not so much overblown as they are outside of your control.    Outside of establishing basic common sense protocols for your workers, it may be best to simply make sure that highly sensitive informtion is not handled using mobile devices unless you’ve established a highly secure environmenent, and that normal transactions are monitored with the common sense principles you’d apply to any online activity.

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