Report on presenting and participating in the Going Virtual conference

Going Virtual – the future of work:  2nd Asia-Pacific Conference on Remote, Virtual Work, Brisbane, Queensland  September 8-9, 2005 www.goingvirtual.com.au

Chris Capel gave a 40 minute presentation titled “Rural teleworking – what all the fuss is about!!” outlining as a case study her own situation as a teleworker of 8 years in 3 different state government roles. She also spoke about participating in a number of voluntary, state and national level Boards/committees from home on a remote sheep/cattle property 90km from the nearest town Longreach.

She reports:
“I am extremely glad I was offered a place to speak as this meant I could attend this quite expensive conference for free. The range and quality of speakers was exceptional. I was the only speaker from a rural/remote area and the only case study as such.


A representative from the large international companies, Siemans, spoke about managing virtual teams across numerous countries. Monika Altmaier, the first key note speaker from Munich, spoke about their emphasis on building relationships across very different cultures (eg Mexicans with Japanese) so their people could work efficiently on joint projects. She emphasised the importance of some face to face (although the majority of work was done virtually) and in maintaining relationships in a virtual environment. She gave examples of major cost savings and other benefits including competitive advantage through using virtual teams. Her comment on virtual teams was that it was 90% about people and 10% about technology which other speakers (including me) supported.


A representative from Comalco who is working with Australian Institute of Management on joint projects spoke of their efforts to manage virtual teams and like Siemans (and the model under which I work) maintain the importance of some face to face contact and of managing relationships/communications amongst workers and with managers.


Dr Laga Van Beek (Dept of Communications Technology and the Arts - DCITA) was the second key note speaker and spoke about their role in managing the Australian Telework Advisory Committee. The committee was established to look at the role government could play in increasing the uptake of teleworking in Australia. A national inquiry has been held with 29 submissions received from various organisations and one from FAAW. This committee held their only rural/remote meeting in Longreach and have taken the advice of the group I convened in Longreach who had input and have included rural/remote as a 5th target group including disabled, carers, mature age workers, mainstream industry and now rural/regional and remote. She spoke of the future needs of an aging population to work longer for financial reasons and that people may opt in the future for eg from the age of 50 to work part time and stay working part time virtually till they are 80 (just as an example) The inquiry will put recommendations up to the Federal Government in February and as yet these are unknown.


A number of academics spoke about various aspects of teleworking/virtual teams. This included the element of trust (some managers do not trust their workers enough to manage them by outcomes and not face to face), time management and not allowing constant interruptions via email, mobile and phone to interrupt your real work - how to manage that as a teleworker. Another from Monash University spoke about the need for silence and uninterrupted time spans for people to be creative. He said the virtual environment could provide the right environment with certain provisos. He refuted the popular belief that people need to be face to face to brainstorm in order to spawn the most creative group ideas.


Mike Sinclair from Shell Australia is working on Shell to do more work via virtual teams. They have just allowed one work group to distribute and have set up their Melbourne office so that their people come in one day a week (and he referred to my west region DPI&F model of working this way as well) and share information/collaborate and work together in teams. They have revamped their office so they can do this  - no individual work stations – all collaborative work spaces – and they work from home in rural Victoria for the rest of the week as a virtual team. He spoke of the issue of having to move to a new style of management with virtual teams and that people who suddenly move to this environment over-report in order to prove their worth/make their work visible. He said this needed to be managed in order to achieve life/work balance and managers/teleworkers needed to work out best methods of reporting/communicating so teleworkers could be judged by their outcomes. He had just been moved to the Hague, as he manages international IT projects, and is hoping this will not be necessary in the future.


Quite a few speakers referred to work/life balance and Dr John Gundry from London (an organiser of the conference) spoke interestingly about the Protestant work ethic and how we have all grown up with hard work (and being seen to be working hard) as a strong value and that working virtually can give back some work/life balance if virtual teams are well managed. Conversely the opposite can happen as many teleworkers report working many extra hours.


Dr Kathy Egea from Central Queensland University spoke about research she was doing on students working as virtual teams on joint projects with some interesting findings including a proforma they had developed and used with the virtual group to give personal background on people in the team. She found that students in the research who worked face to face did not develop relationships as well because they did not use the proforma and did not explore background info as much.


Judith Monaghan was the other speaker from state government (Dept of Industrial Relations) to speak on the experience of the Queensland government in establishing the Telecommuting Framework and Management kit which most departments have largely adopted without tweaking including DPI&F. When I was teleworking for Office of Rural Communities (Dept of Local Government and Planning) we (3 home based teleworkers in rural/remote Queensland) had input into a paper that provided a basis for a cabinet submission on the kit and Judith referred briefly to the ORC model and our input into that paper.


Other speakers included – elearning tools, training flexible workers. Last but definitely not least Toshiba spoke about their new guide on flexible working available www.isd.toshiba.com.au/sig.downloads or by phone 133070. Their manual contains a definition, issues, benefits and tips. They also showcased their latest technology.
I found the big picture thinking and interaction between speakers extremely interesting/worthwhile. My presentation got positive feedback and many speakers referred to it in part when they presented. One aspect amongst others I highlighted was that during drought the benefits of paid work socially and financially were enormous, the value of professional development, a career path, spin off employment (childcare) etc etc. Monika from Munich commented that she had not realised Australia had country like that (drought photo of one of our paddocks juxtaposed against photo of the same paddock after rain). I also spoke of the efforts of the various voluntary groups I have worked with to progress teleworking including FAAW.


Free membership of a virtual network was offered as part of the conference and I have joined this and hope to continue the productive conversations.”

Chris Capel
Manager Communication and Information
DPI&F Longreach