SMART WORK, Crisis breeds opportunity > Insight

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The changes brought about by COVID-19 were powerful enough to change the way human civilization works, but fortunately, mankind has acquired the knowledge that will be the key to overcoming through the development of information technology in recent years. Information technology has developed mobile devices to be able to connect anywhere to achieve extreme efficiency, and has built a broadband communication infrastructure to transmit and receive high-definition images, voiceovers, and large amounts of data.

Moreover, as we saw the possibility that the computational ability of a computer could exceed human judgment and calculating ability, we began to teach the computer the data. We have proven that 'artificial intelligence' can beat humans even in Go(Baduk).

Although technology has advanced remarkably, the level of trust for technology in the workplace remains low. 

We are still debating how to implement the 52-hour workweek, and we are still hesitant to implement the Flexible working system and Remote-work too. Face-to-face with employees is considered essential to evaluate employees. We've been working this way for nearly 30 years.

At this very moment, An epidemic with no known solution has spread all over the world. And in the United States, from March 13 to April 2, 2020, the number of people in remote working environments doubled from 31% to 62% in just over 20 days.

Overseas Smart Network before COVID-19 epidemic

COVID-19 has shown us that technology is essential to adopt a non-face-to-face, electronic, flexible and self-selective work mode that can be called smart work, and our working culture must be overcome. 

COVID-19 has created an environment that can overcome such a working culture more quickly.

Through the development of technology that mentioned above, even before the advent of COVID-19, there were some organizations that have realized smart work. According to a 2017 Gallup poll, 43% of workers in the United States sometimes worked remotely, and according to US Census data from 2018, 5.2% of workers performed all their work from home. 

This was the period when the spread of the highly developed broadband Internet network and the performance improvement of smartphones and mobile devices took place. Since then, the term used to refer to it has also changed. Working from Anywhere, rather than Working From Home, has become the standard term for Remote-work.

Of course, advances in technology weren't the only driving force behind all this. It is interpreted as a result of active participation in remote work among young people. They value Work/Life Balance. In a 2017 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research(NBER), workers answer that they could afford a wage cut of about 8% on average if they were allowed to work remotely. This is an example showing that work-life balance orientation is one of the factors that made Remote-work possible.

We can interpret this 8% wage difference as a willingness to pay for the flexibility of life that comes from Remote-work. 

The increasing difficulty of childcare due to the increase of dual-income couples, rising real estate prices in downtown areas, 

and late marriage/non-marriage will not be irrelevant.

The rising trend of the conversion into the remote working among the laborers in U.S.A. Gallup, 2020

Characteristics of Smart work developed domestically

Smart work, which first appeared in Korea, was introduced in a slightly different form. This is what you may have heard of a 'Smart Work Center'. It is a form of preparing an office space for Remote-work,  and going to work at a remote office at a fixed time through reservation and registration.

There have been practically many articles which markets the operation of the Smart Work Center before around the big domestic corporations and some of them also occurred in this year, as well. The SI field affiliates of the large corporation groups and large domestic mobile telecommunications companies use these smart work operation articles as a good promotional channel for companies. The Smart Work Center is also operated by the government, so public officials and employees of public institutions can make a reservation at the government Smart Work Center and work remotely.

The purpose of smart work centers before COVID-19 was to save time for commuters working in remote locations and to improve work efficiency of companies with distant business sites. What will smart work be like after the COVID-19 era, when social distancing in the workplace has become more important? It is ironic that the government Smart Work Center's announcement that only 60-70% of all seats are operated because the space between seats must be maintained for social distancing after the spread of COVID-19.

Even when operating a Smart Work Center or a virtualization system for Remote-work, interests seem to be particularly focused on the following.

‘How to prevent negligence by checking the attendance of employees?’

‘How will we ensure the productivity and participation of our members?’

Under these circumstances, individual commuting management, working time check, and continuous work behavior (even periodically monitoring whether the mouse is moved within a certain period of time) monitoring are considered essential in the Remote-work solution. Because of this focus, the form of collective Remote-work at Smart Work Centers was introduced 

as a standard for Remote-work in Korea.

Effect of Smart Work on productivity 

If so, does Remote-work, which is really vulnerable to time and attendance management and monitoring, really affect negatively on the labor productivity compared to the past working style? 

Of course, it will depend on the type of jobs and industries, but the research results is very interesting.

According to a study based on a survey conducted by a Chinese travel agency in 2015, when call center employees worked remotely, the productivity of these workers increased by 13% on average. 

The main factor for this productivity improvement was the reduction of absenteeism due to rest time and sick leave.

There are also cases where it is not a simple repetitive office job. In the case of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which has been operating a Remote-work program since 2008, among patent examiners who switched to Remote-working, productivity improved by 4.4% without degrading the quality of the examination.

In the case of USPTO, each region in the federal examination and processing of different patents required separate offices for patent examiners. As a result of changing their working way to Remote-working and increasing the proportion of Remote-working from 46% in 2008 to 88% in 2018, the effect of real estate savings due to the reduction in the need for offices in each region increased by 5 times during the corresponding 10 years.

However, a prerequisite was necessary for the improvement of actual productivity. The productivity was improved only when geographical accessibility was ensured so that members performing similar tasks could meet regularly to work. 

This showed that job content sharing and mutual learning were possible in the face-to-face state. 

In other words, a certain level of contact is still required to create informal learning effects and share growth among members (especially those with short careers).

Stages of Smart Work introduction

Even though we have an efficient smart work infrastructure, we may have given up on the productivity improvement that smart work can bring due to our familiarity with traditional work methods. 

Now we have to face the inevitable smart work era, so what kind of change is needed?

First, the spread of culture that values work autonomy and flexibility

In NBER's 2017 study introduced earlier, the wage gap of 8% for which workers were willing to pay can ultimately be interpreted as a cost of flexibility and autonomy. In order to transform the value of smart working provided to them into the value that the company provides to its members (EVP: Employee Value Proposition), smart working should provide employees with less micro management and more autonomous work processing. Rather than managing time and attendance or monitoring, it is more important to support the belief in autonomous work processing and smooth work-oriented communication.

The first thing to do is to form an agile organization that enables the formation of a flexible culture and the autonomous contribution of each individual. In the hierarchical organizational culture, the standardized thinking through reporting is emphasized rather than the autonomous division of work. If an organization wants to experience productivity improvement through smart work, it is necessary to ask whether the organization's work is based on diversity and creativity, and ultimately whether there is a culture of autonomous individual work and peer collaboration.

Second, improvement of the real time sharing and transparency of all the task

If an organization wants to maximize the efficiency of non-face-to-face work through smart work, it must be possible to share 

not only individual work, but also share and identify organizational work in real time. All communication, including formal/atypical communication when working in the same space, and communication through physical sharing of dialogues and documents, should be shared. 

Solutions that can support this have already been continuously developed before the era of COVID-19. Overseas, solutions such as Slack, Teams, Jive, and Yammer are being used for messaging based on messenger service, sharing work content and tracking history.

In Korea, messaging app-based services such as Lineworks and Ajit also exist. In the case of business management solutions such as Performance Plus, these can provide not only Kanban-style business management, sharing, messaging services but also linkages for tracking of task-related behaviors, reviewing, and goal evaluating.

Of course, the most important task is the transformation of a work culture that handles all kinds of work paperless. The above-described social network-based business processing can further improve productivity.

Third, maintenance of the positive aspects of the atypical work experience felt by members 

by providing a sense of continuous belonging

According to Tsedal Neeley, a professor at Harvard Business School, in relation to the management of distributed team organizations, the loss of atypical encounters occurring in the company has had the greatest impact on the psychological state of members since the COVID-19 pandemic. In other words, the loss of a sense of belonging to the organization caused by the disappearance of chance to meeting someone when you go to get water from a water purifier or having short conversations with 

a cup of coffee has a large impact.

To overcome this, team managers are encouraged to offer as many virtual events(happy hour, video coffee break, sharing lunch experiences, etc.)  as possible through virtual contact channels. Also for individuals, performing Ritual can help keep them mental. For example, wearing similar clothes to going to work, maintaining the rhythm of commuting to and from work, and interacting with members in various ways.

Difference between what you can do but do not do 

and what you should do

Smart work has been raised by the work environment created by COVID-19, but the growth of smart work will continue indefinitely in the future according to future technological development. As smart work experience is accumulated, the number of data(work record) increases, and the large number of data will soon serve as a good textbook for machine learning of computers. 

Through the analysis of accumulated work data and result, the machine will be able to reveal what kind of work behavior/personal characteristics, and furthermore, what lifestyle/collaboration form/work method preference can maximize work efficiency for each job.

When smart work data is sufficiently accumulated, artificial intelligence will be of great help in human resource management areas such as recruitment/selection, evaluation, and placement of talent. We will be able to manage human resources more rationally through artificial intelligence.

In addition, when the connected worker starts to appear due to the generalization of wearable equipment, smart working will become essential in all production/office work sites, going beyond simply supporting Remote-work for social distancing.

Now, questions such as whether productivity can be maintained through smart work, whether time and attendance can be managed properly, and how to overcome the face-to-face gap become outdated questions. Technology is already advancing towards smart work, but our awareness is still stagnating.

Regarding the slow spread of smart work due to our stereotypes, we can say to ourselves, “Originally, humans are afraid of the new unknown.” Or you may still think, “If there is a technology and culture that you are not sure about, you should fully review and accept it.” However, when a new unknown disease appears, smart work suddenly spreads rapidly and it proves that it is possible to continue our work without face-to-face working. 

Is it because our awareness and organizational culture have matured, or is it because of human survival instinct?

1)“Valuing Alternative Work Arrangements”, Alexandre Mas et al. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2017

Written by Soonwon Hong, Director, Consulting Biz Unit (swhong@e-hcg.com)