The Hindu Business Line : Study on globally distributed workforce: Findings soon

FOR HR managers and top leadership, it will be worth the wait. By next year, some early results of a study on `how to make globally distributed workforce (GDW) more effective and productive' will be out.

This massive study by a consortium of six organisations basically analyses the problems of the IT sector, but will have some generic conclusions for the industry as a whole.

Highlighting the focus of the study, Mr Bob Hoekstra, CEO, Philips Innovation Campus (one of the companies involved in the research), said, "We are sharing experiences and research on how to address issues such as time differences, culture differences, work habit and lifestyle differences. How can we reduce the `friction', or ultimately how can we make those differences create a competitive edge?"

The global consortium involved in the study comprise both corporates and the academia: Philips, TCS, MphasiS, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Erasmus University (Rotterdam) and Florida International University are jointly studying how such global systems function and are expanding the understanding of the issues and solutions. For instance, Philips Innovation Centre, with a 1,600-people strong R&D centre in Bangalore, has product creation centres in the US, Europe and Asia.

Some focus areas of the research would be on how to measure the performance of a GDW, what are the key performance indicators, what is the ROI, division of tasks between different locations, how to optimise the use of capabilities and limit the friction loss (loss because of the overhead of managing multiple locations), how to do the communication, how much personal (jet enabled) contact, how can e-techniques be applied (e-mail, collaborative work tools, videoconferencing, teleconferencing), how can culture differences be a challenge, and how can they be actually used for maximum benefit).

Though the study essentially focuses on the experience of the IT sector, it will look at generic challenges and opportunities for GDW.

The study was initiated in July 2004 and some early results are expected to be out by December this year, though "typically results will only come after the second year, ie., may be one year from now, and the bulk will come in four years," according to Mr Hoekstra.

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