 Yeah, that really is a great question and I think people come at this This changing world of work with a whole range of different Perspectives and from a range of different experiences and it would be great to know what we have in the room in terms of where people are at with with remote work Is anyone has anyone had a bit of experience working from home or working from a co-working center? Think about half of the room. Is anyone managing? Sure, can you you can't hear me that well, okay? Is anyone managing workers who work from home or who work from a co-working center? yeah, brilliant and Been doing that for a while or Yes Yeah, yeah, okay through multiple roles or thinking about managing staff From a from remote location anyone in that boat Not quite But thank you that is that is a great to know so we have a lot of people who are experienced practitioners in the room Who've done the kind of the work from home themselves? But really when we're thinking about What can business off what can business some do with this? Where can we take it? It's all about How it looks as a as a manager or as a leader and how do we build that into our businesses? So that we can really benefit from that and it's it's quite a different story from that side So let's have a look at some of the things to consider firstly the the massive growth in remote work and in mobile work Has surprised even the predictors so the international data corporation is an organization that predicts All kinds of things around digital economy one of them is mobile work and they had to revise their earlier prediction of 1.2 billion mobile workers up to 1.3 billion mobile workers by 2015 because the numbers were growing even faster than expected So but just how prevalent is that here in Australia? It is really quite prevalent. So we see that already 51% of employees in Australia using the internet to work away from the office and And a half of those are working two days per week the equivalent of two days per week in their hours Outside the office. So that means that you know out of out of everyone that you meet There's a good chance that at least one of them is working at least two days a week at home using the internet so it's it's it's really very prevalent and And sometimes enabled by cloud other times just email and phone But cloud is really where there's a lot more potential to increase the the power of of remote work and work from anywhere And I think that that comment that Dean made about cloud bit just being so powerful. I really see that in this space In fact one of the best ways to kind of understand What remote work offers a business as? opposed to what traditional work officer business is I think the difference between kind of a jet plane airplane Versus a car. So the car will kind of get you there, but as soon as we realize that A plane is going to be faster more powerful more direct In fact, it will get us there, you know so much faster That's the mode that people are preferring. So it's increasingly becoming mainstream The car is kind of becoming you know last century's work last century's technology So we're finding there's a whole range of different ways that we're trying to talk about this shift Telework is one of them just one of them mobile work working from home like some work hot desking activity-based work Telecommuting you'll you'll hear all kinds of things and really I might use just a range of those terms in this presentation today to talk about work that breaks free of that traditional model of nine to five in the office and Has a new flexibility So I think we haven't really decided on one term So it's hard to kind of to give one term, but I think probably remote work captures it best So the question is how can your how can your business capitalize on this emerging norm? And there's a new flexibility not just around Where the work takes place, but also when it takes place and how that work is going to get done and We'll talk a little bit more at the end of the presentation I give a few kind of stellar examples of companies in Australia that are really benefiting from Flexible work from remote work from from work from home but But initially every company has a set of fears around how they're going to do this this is kind of the the archetypal kind of managerial concept of What we think work from home is about He's working from home. He's got his laptop He's working right No, he's admitting to his friend actually not at all watching TV Got the computer down the other side Not working at all and this really is the predominant fear that managers have that some Organizations have that that remote work is really just a fantastic excuse to to get away for for their employees to get away with with doing nothing at all in fact, we see that the opposite is the case and The research consistently shows that I don't know if anyone was watching a show on the weekend Ozby's Asia There was a really large investment banking firm Interviewed and and they again their their Representative there was saying that they consistently see that people who are often flexible work options give more back to the company And and this is even more so the case with flexible with with flexible work that is remote work. So work from home Can can consistently achieve productivity gains of at least 20% and that's that's not an exaggeration so that's equivalent to If you've got a full-time worker working five days 20% is the equivalent of them working an extra day for your company in terms of the outcomes that they achieve The three main fears are the work won't get done also that the quality of interactions between remote workers and colleagues will diminish and That workers are more unsafe Doing this kind of work. So let's have a look at how all of these legitimate fears can be addressed And I should perhaps give you a little bit of a background to why I can talk to this topic as well and I Spend a couple of years working in the national in the federal government here leading the national initiative to increase telework in Australia It's part of the digital economy strategy Fantastic window into what some of our industry partners were doing and how they're doing this effectively We conducted research. We established a website called telework.gov.au We were giving people information about it and it was really for me a kind of deep introduction into the issues and the challenges that businesses face so So happy to kind of continue the conversation with you about that as well But this is a very quick overview Just gives you some of the things to think about some of the major things that are concerned So how to address it essentially these are a quick kind of snapshot of the things that you would need to look at your business It's activities and your and whether your workers suit telework the need to train managers the need to consider telework and innovation and To consider adjusting your work environment as well to really take advantage of the the productivity benefits that are available So we'll have a look at all these I've gone through the literature and I've looked at Businesses that are around and doing this successfully and it's it's possible We've done this as a team at telework at 2.com It's possible really to to distill these seven critical success factors So each business that does this well has these in place and the the academic literature Supports it quite strongly leadership is essential so the Change that's happening in an organization is is significant leadership is just as important as it is in any other change program, but It also is important because managers need upskilling and and because it's quite new and different people are Really in need of direction and clarity. So leadership is absolutely essential a willingness to innovate to treat telework as an innovation. It is a workplace innovation It's a different way of doing things and there's ways that we handle that. So we look at trialing piloting Assessing doing it in an agile flexible kind of way. So it's important to to treat The shift to work from home in that same way as an as an innovation and as a learning process Having a suitable workforce usually this means knowledge workers Team members are not excluded. So teamwork is is is not Excluded from a work and in fact some remote work teams can be some of the highest performing teams in in businesses Manager training, this is just an essential You see it everywhere. You read about remote work. It's just an essential There's there's a fair amount that managers need to do to upskill and I'll go into that shortly a general level of flexibility in the company Flexible workplaces have flexible work policies. It just kind of goes together Capacity to measure performance against outcomes. So this is a really important midway step between having absolute trust in someone and Completely losing control. So it's it's more more done the trust end But it's it's the important midway step where an organization looks at results and decides to measure that on and on perhaps a less frequent basis, but They support and upskill their their team members to to do that work And then planning so planning is is just really important not least because you've got to have the right technology You've got to be able to decide when people are having meetings When are we going to do this face-to-face when are we not but it's it's important in a lot of different ways So just quickly some of the roles and tasks that that suit telework We've got a just a snapshot there professional scientific type technical roles information media and telecommunications Finance and insurance administration support. So these are kind of a general description It's essentially knowledge work work that can be done at a desk Can probably be done at a desk at that person's home with the right technology and the right management in place I'm a point that I make is if your goal is to improve Productivity across the organization and it really is important to To do to implement telework across the organization So there's this research and there are reasons behind that But that is that the those organizations get the best results when they make it possible for anyone to Telework and then they allow people to opt in as opposed to telling them that they must Remote work. So that is the best way to do it But you also need to have manager training and a trial with each employee So not just a trial with an area, but a trial with each employee And make the point as well that part-time telework is often the ideal again The research supports this that the technology just hasn't got to the point yet Where it's really going to replace face-to-face most of the time. So in fact part-time kind of achieves a balance of Contact face-to-face and work from home And it's probably the best place to start to start trying to you know to see what what is the best arrangement in your organization? So it's important just to think about how managers do this They have a lot to do they have a have a fairly significant load to bear and So this is these are just a few things that that really stand out in what a manager's job is is now about Clearly articulating the results that are needed rather than monitoring a person's activity at their desk and That does require a bit of forward thinking and thinking what is this person's job about what? What can I assess about this work? When are we going to check in on the progress and the outcomes and how am I going to describe not just the Work that needs to be done But are there any quality standards as well things that I am saying don't do it like this But do it like that that's important to the organization that represents our culture and values those kind of conversations so written performance plans become very important as to kind of weekly updates and Checking in reports and the manager's job becomes less about Monitoring and more about leadership and empowerment coaching. Thank you great so Even though there is a fair amount tops a fair amount of upskilling to do managers can have happier more engaged teams workers love the opportunity to do remote work and There there is plenty of evidence that people will will seek that out was they'll seek out a flexible work arrangement They'll seek out remote work arrangement if they can find one But the demand far Exceeds the supply at the moment. So if you offer remote work in your organization, you really have a fantastic opportunity to Attract the best and brightest So this is just a few more of the things that managers I don't need to do provide certainty around the team's mission. So that's when leadership is coming back to that point Leadership really important use other technologies. Email shouldn't be the primary mode of technology of communication Maintaining that social contact is essential. Some organizations will just make a call every week, you know Hello, it's just a social chat. How are you going? It's the dog sick still Making an effort to keep employees in the loop. So Social network can can be fantastic for that if they weren't there for the birthday cake At least I see a photo on Facebook about it And keeping communication open and steady between staff is really important as well so There's with that point about the technology that I made there is that These this is kind of the ideal placement if you like for these technologies, so there's If you think about communication as a complex task Some communication is very complex and others other communication is not so complex And we have a lot of information that we're trying to get there a person's facial expression. They're in their intention. They're the context and So email doesn't give you much information Shouldn't be used for complex communication High-definition video conferencing. It's just like you and I almost it's almost just like you and I meeting face to face Except I can't actually hand you that glass of water that you that you need if you're you're coughing But yeah, it's for complex communication Negotiations liaison, you know team brainstorming stuff like that. That's your idea or gives you the most amount of information And then it's worth mentioning mobile devices enabled by the cloud These social collaboration tools that are possible now Skype is becoming one of them where you can share your screen Etc. And virtual private networks are One of the ways that people manage this securely because they provide a great high performance Secured secure network So the last area is your physical work environment just to mention WHS because I raised that as a fear that people have the government's advice on this is to know what your What the legislator what the regulator in your state? it What their advice what their advice is so But I that and that doesn't give you much more than just kind of having to read through Their advice, but there is a fantastic book by a company called work pro that I'm aware of it's an e-book It's a free download It's fully legally compliant, and it gives you all step-by-step how to manage the WHS So some businesses are reaping the rewards and what you don't see here are the logos of the companies And due to perhaps due to the shortness of time I won't go through what all of these benefits are but their productivity attraction and retention of staff Saving costs so the companies like Westpac Media Bank ABC National Australia Bank large companies in Australia and the question now for us is as work has become a place Not a place to go, but a thing that we do How are we going to adapt to this new powerful work mode? That really is taking over in terms of the way that that work happens in mainstream work So I'll leave you with that thought. Thank you