BC Systems Corporation in Victoria, British Columbia provides information technology services to the public sector throughout the province. The BC Systems pilot is well known throughout Canada as one of the more successful attempts at telecommuting (See Telework International Spring '94, Fall '93 and Spring '93). The pilot was run from December 1992 to September 1993.
I recently interviewed Ms. Rhonda Schellenberg, Manager Human Resources and Telecommuting Co-ordinator for BC Systems. Rhonda has been involved with telecommuting at BC Systems from the beginning and is now the Corporation's key contact in this area.
Today, two years after the pilot, BC Systems has increased the number of people telecommuting from 31 to 88. The original pilot included 20 people working from home and 11 from a satellite office. Earlier this year BC Systems decided to withdraw from the satellite office experiment. Of the 11 employees working there, 8 became home-based telecommuters, 1 retired and 2 decided to go back to working full-time at the central facilities.
At the completion of the pilot BC Systems anticipated 40% of their Victoria head office staff telecommuting by the end of 1997. The 88 current telecommuters make up more than 10% of the head office staff. Schellenberg expects to hit 25-30% by '97. She explains: "The 40% was targeted to meet expected growth and space requirements. Changes have slowed the expected growth and a review of our space needs shows it is not going to be as tight as we anticipated. We will, therefore, lengthen the time it takes to reach this goal"
Schellenberg describes the Human Resources role in telecommuting as having evolved significantly since the pilot. "We have the basic telecommuting processes down pat. The challenges now are in working with groups who have a much larger penetration of telecommuters than in the pilot. The HR role becomes one of helping the work groups rethink how they function and how to coordinate their work efforts with several members telecommuting."
The growth in telecommuting is primarily coming from areas who already have telecommuters. Schellenberg estimates "in each group of 20 new telecommuters, 19 are from groups who already have telecommuters." She also finds most of the growth in telecommuting is from technical roles. Administrative roles have been slower to adopt the concept.
The BC Systems executives continue to be very supportive of telecommuting. In early 1995 the executives jointly agreed to all telecommute 1 day every two weeks to help them manage their growing workloads and to reinforce their commitment to telecommuting.
Senior managers at BC Systems have not been as supportive. Some of them are still resisting the move to telecommuting. These managers are not convinced of the "real" business benefits associated with telecommuting. BC Systems plans to restate the telecommuting business case to help bring these managers on board. Schellenberg explains: "We have asked our telecommuters to help us with this business case by providing specific examples. For example, by handling emergency calls from home rather than coming into the office two employees have provided savings of $7,000 to their business unit. We hope this type of information will help to drive the benefits of telecommuting to our managers."
The next stage in the evolution of telecommuting at BC Systems is the move to flexible workplace design. Starting in July a work group of 30 employees with 8 telecommuters and 6 part-time employees will start piloting the use of non-traditional space. This pilot is one of four components of the BC Systems overall workplace strategy. Other components include creating standalone shareable space, developing more flexible common space and the final result being the creation of a long term strategic space plan.
In closing, Schellenberg explained the benefits of piloting telecommuting. "The pilot was definitely worthwhile. We were very honest with staff that this was an experiment, it represented our best guess of how telecommuting should be implemented and reinforced that we planned to learn from the experiment and make change as required. This sends the right signals to managers and certainly helps them buy-into the concepts."
CONTACT:
Rhonda Schellenberg Phone: (604) 389-3953If you have any ideas for articles, would like to submit an article or have new telework related links to add to our site please e-mail them to help@klr.com
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