Green Telecom Part X: Nortel expands employee options

One key to the program is that nothing is forced on employees – the agreements are based on job requirements – the need to use a piece of equipment or a lab, for example – as well as work-life balance, Dunn said. “The agreement is a handshake between an employee and a manager that recognizes what choices are being made.”

For example, Dunn himself is primarily home-based, although, as a road warrior with a global job, he is on the road a lot. “The tool kit for me is simple. I have a laptop and a unified communications tool – a soft client allows me to have secure access to the network and use a laptop as a voice communications tool. You call my office number and you find me from anywhere I am in the world. And I have secure access to the network for both voice and data – all I need.”

About 17% of Nortel’s current workforce is “free-address workers,” which means they don’t have an assigned office or cube. Just under 10% globally are teleworkers, but more than 85% of the total worker population has the full mobile worker toolkit, Dunn said. So when there was a blackout in the Northeast, and Nortel shut down its Ontario operations to aid in support of the power grid, the company maintained 80% of its productivity because workers could continue working from off-site venues, such as their homes.

Nortel believes teleworking saves the company around $12 million annually in property and utility costs. “That actually represents just the smallest number of hard dollars,” Dunn said. “The opportunity to transform the work environment is much more than that. It is the recognition that people are working in such a mobile fashion. We are beginning to see that behaviors are shifting so much around mobility. The first big wave of change through mobility was telework. The next big wave of change is recognition that people are working out of second places and working at different times and focusing much more on social and collaborative opportunity. There is a changing profile and the need to change our traditional approach to buildings as well.”

Dunn, who talks to Nortel’s enterprise customers on this topic, sees enormous benefits for employees as well as employers if the concept of when and where work happens becomes more flexible, which telecom technology certainly enables.

“There is a huge proof point here that when you unleash mobility and choice within an enterprise, you don’t just affect how, when and where people work but how they feel about work, how they feel about the company they work for, their productivity, their satisfaction with their employer and feelings about contribution to the environment and social responsibility,” Dunn said. “It’s the Holy Grail of people, productivity, technology – all interwoven as a win-win-win scenario.”