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My Employees Aren’t Working From Home. They’re Watching the Olympics!

Jan 23, 2012 » by Cali & Jody

Image: Flickr user law_keven

As London prepares for the 2012 Olympics, many organisations are thinking about the difficult problem of getting employees into the office.

Consider the enormous changes that will be coming to Town (according to the Daily Mail):

Around 5.3 million people are expected to turn up for the 16 days of the London Olympics. On the busiest day, they estimate 800,000 people will be using public transport.

This puts a financial and logistical strain on businesses and employees who just want to get to work. In fact, Transport for London (TfL) has urged small and medium-sized businesses to change their working hours or allow staff to work from home to help ease the pressure.

London officials are hoping to learn from past games, where similar troubles plagued host cities:

  • 1996 Atlanta Olympics became known as the ‘Glitch Games’ after transport chaos caused many competitors to miss their events.
  • London transport commissioner said he hopes London will copy the Sydney Olympics of 2000 when 27 per cent of workers took leave from their jobs.

Of course, we know that giving employees the freedom to work remotely is one way to solve some of these issues. But the fear for bosses who have never managed virtual workers is: will your employees actually do any work?

How do you know they won’t be watching track events on the telly all day?

Well, that’s a good question. But how do you know they won’t be watching track events while they’re at the office?

As with workers you see face-to-face, remote workers must be measured on results. Are you setting specific, measurable goals and looking at results? If so, you need not worry about when your employee is working, and when they’re cheering for Team GB to win the gold.

We’ll be addressing this issue in depth on February 9, in a free webinar: “My Employees Aren’t Working From Home. They’re Watching the Olympics!” This lunch-time session will look at a simple yet incredibly effective methodology for ensuring you get more out of your employees than ever before, and they’ll still have some time to watch a few of the track events. There is limited registration, so sign-up today.

Olympics or no, we have the same issues in the States. So, U.S. readers don’t forget you can register for the webinar coming up this Thursday, “Managing the Virtual Workforce.”

What do you think? Will the 2012 Olympics force some changes to the traditional workplace culture? We’re rooting for that, too.

 

 

  • Anonymous

    Nah, instead we’ll see the round of “productivity losses” articles, like this one.

    Really, what we need is an epic, two-week snowstorm that forces office workers to be remote for 10 days straight.

    Somebody put in a call, please!

    • http://twitter.com/caliressler Cali Ressler

      Robby – my eyes are burning! Those March Madness articles seriously make me insane. Every. Single. Year.

      As for the snowstorm that you’re putting the call in for (yes, just nominated you): I’m afraid not even that can change mindsets. Case in point: The U.S. Federal Government. Check this out: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/opm-overhauls-snow-policy/2011/11/03/gIQAV89ijM_story.html. Instead of getting clear on results, an overhaul of the snow policy sounded like a great idea. How about we remove the policy along with the snowdrifts and let common sense reign?

      • http://twitter.com/PersephoneK PersephoneK

        OMG Cali!  The last line of that article John Berry says 
        “But we understand that federal offices are pretty nice.”  I have to say from personal experience that no, most federal offices are not as nice as my comfortable house, and as someone who has been caught up in many federal government “early dismissals” and “unscheduled leave” (which is the funniest thing ever… it just means that your manager shouldn’t give you a hard time for calling in to say you’re not coming to work, but you still have to take it out of your PTO bucket), there is definitely a long way to go in changing mindsets of the peeps in DC.  I can recall “being allowed” to leave 2 hours before my regular home time because of snow… typically I would get home about 3 hours after I normally would have gotten home.  And once I attempted to brave the ride into work (because I’m a tough Minnesotan and it was personal pride), but my bus went into the ditch while I was on it, almost tipped over, waited for a bus to pick us up, took us to the Metro (train), waited to be herded like cattle onto a free train for about an hour, got to work about 3 hours late, only to leave 2 hours early… that was a productive day, oh my!  

      • http://twitter.com/caliressler Cali Ressler

        Agreed – long way to go in changing the mindsets of the peeps in DC.  The journey continues.  It’s painful, but it continues :)

      • http://twitter.com/PersephoneK PersephoneK

        No pain, no gain!  :)

  • Maru

    I don’t see what the problem is. I personally work very well (when at home) with some news channel or suchlike on TV running in the background. I even know a programmer who codes while listening to audio books. Why shouldn’t the Olympics be just the same?

    It’s called multi-tasking, and most employees do it anyway, paying attention to more than one thing at a time. Having another attention thread labelled ‘Olympics’ braided into your time line while working isn’t going to chage results much.

    Why don’t employers not even trust their people to do what any common WIndows XP computer routinely does??

    • calica

      It’s proven that around 97% of the population can’t multitask effectively, but nearly everyone THINKS they can. That is, you are not aware of your own impairment when trying to do two things at once, but you are nevertheless impaired. Most humans can’t run multiple threads the same way a computer does.

      This is why cell phone use while driving – even with a hands-free set – is so dangerous. People are distracted to a degree equivalent to driving drunk, but they don’t realize it.

      That said, background noise while working can help some people focus, but studies have shown that having the TV on while doing other tasks (as opposed to listening to classical music or similar) worsens performance.

      Of course, none of this is an argument for the juvenile and insulting practice of requiring your employees to be where you can see them.

  • Ed Dodds

    Elance asks the question “Want to build a virtual team”? and gets $16 million in funding. Somebody is figuring out that it is #Results that matter…