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Case
studies - Canada |
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General case studies
here |
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Canadian Federal Government |
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Others include:
Creative Labs; Bank of Canada; Nortel; Bell Canada; IBM Canada
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Compaq
Canada officially rolled out its Virtual Office telework
program in the spring of 1999. Managers and employees can consult an
internal Web site for information or to apply for the program. About 500
employees are currently participating, including 100 permanent staff that
handle customer service in smaller towns. They work on-site with customers
or at home offices, and Compaq provides the equipment. “For
customer-interfacing employees, going back and forth from office to
customer is a waste of time,” says Daisy Ng, vice-president of human
resources for Compaq “Instead of an
hour drive to office, they’re equipped to do work at home and can go
directly to customer.” Composed by Grace
Casselman for Ebiz magazine |
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Innovatia,
Innovatia (headquartered in Saint John, NB) and its parent company Aliant, permit
some employees to work from home. Most are issued laptops which can go
directly onto the network or connect to the corporate VPN via home cable
or ISDN connection. Some work from home on a full-time basis, from
Ottawa and Newfoundland, to give two examples. Sent by Cliff Esler,
Innovatia Documentation |
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Ucora Corporation, a Vancouver based software development firm, recently
implemented a telework program among members of its senior management.
Over the past months, Ucora has discovered that aside from impacting
productivity, teleworking can also give companies some surprising
insight into the strengths and weaknesses of their own policies and
procedures. Ucora's managers began teleworking because they were finding
that daily interruptions at the office left them little time to focus on
long term planning and development. They needed to spend some time in an
environment that would allow them greater focus. Technologies such as
fax machines, the Internet, e-mail, and Terminal Serving have made it
possible for them to remain connected to the office while working at
home. There were other more difficult challenges, however, that Ucora
did not predict.
No matter how high tech business has
become, much of it remains based on social interaction. Ucora was
surprised to find that despite having well established procedures and
information systems, decision-making was being delayed as a result of
the decreased face-to-face contact that comes with teleworking. Having
employees work from home, even on a part time basis, quickly exposed how
dependent companies have become on ad hoc, informal interactions. This
type of exchange is sometimes healthy for a business, but not always.
Teleworking revealed to Ucora that too often decisions are made in
passing, as a result of chance meetings in the hallway or at the water
cooler. Having been alerted to this, Ucora has since strengthened its
procedures and policies, building a more solid business foundation.
Overall, teleworking has offered Ucora a
viable solution. Not only has it enabled management to focus more of
their time on important issues, it has helped them to see the company
from a different perspective. In many ways a healthy business is like a
living thing - it should be able to exist independently of the people
who run it. Thanks in part to its teleworking experience, Ucora now
knows that it can. Sent in by Carolyn
Robertson, Ucora Corporation. 1-800-434-2804, ext. 101 |
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