With its commitment to the computerisation of the workplace, Adam Tinworth discovers that BT is indeed practising what it preaches.
Why not change the way you work? That is the question that BT has been asking for the past few months. The cheek of it. What right does a telephone company have to tell us how to do our jobs? Healer, heal thyself.
Well, actually, it has. In 1993, BT established the Workstyle 2000 programme – a familiar name to any agent dealing with the company’s recent property requirements. From Sevenoaks, to Brentwood and Leicester, the company has been acquiring offices in the name of this scheme. But what is it?
To answer the question, I arranged an interview with Neil McLocklin, development manager for Workstyle 2000. It then became clear that McLocklin’s way of working is different, for, as the PR explained, McLocklin did not have an office, and instead asked if he could come to EG’s office.
What is Workstyle 2000?, I asked when he arrived. “The question is the answer,” came the rather Zen reply. Laughing at my evident confusion, he continued. “It’s open-ended. We’re constantly thinking of new and better ways of working, taking advantage of new technology.”
There is no better example of this than the BT intranet. An intranet functions like a mini-version of the Internet, but it is accessible only to the company’s staff. While the intranet is connected to the Internet itself, a function called a firewall prevents unauthorised people accessing it.
Of no fixed abode
Because of this, McLocklin does not so much work from home as work wherever he is. He takes out his laptop computer, hooks in to a phone extension, and logs onto the Internet. A constantly changing security code is provided by a little electronic device which he carries with him, and he is through the firewall and into the vast library of information that is the BT intranet.
Suddenly, BT’s change in working practices becomes obvious. All the information needed for the job can be accessed from almost anywhere in the world.
I throw the usual problems of teleworking at him, but the intranet seems to provide solutions to them all. Want to know where someone is? No problem. People’s diaries are held within the system and can be accessed freely.
There is always going to be a time, video-conferencing notwithstanding, that you need to be in a meeting room. Simple. Use the property section to search for the nearest BT office. The building’s page gives users detailed travel instructions and facilities for booking rooms, ordering stationery and so on.
Discussion boards allow workers to talk about issues as and when they need to, as if they were around a table. At the time of the interview, one was featuring a debate on where best to locate a new office. But then, “geography is history”, as McLocklin points out.
What is the point of it all? I asked. “The aim is to improve productivity and time management. The intranet involves complete personal mobility:anywhere, any place, any time, you can access information.”
Cost savings
So, the intranet is useful for any profession that requires both mobility and access to information. As McLocklin says: “It’s not just a question of installing new technology and it’s not just training people. It’s about re-engineering the whole office.”
The benefits are clear. “The information is up-to-date, there’s only one source and one owner, so you know you’re getting the latest version,” says McLocklin. The system automatically keeps a register of how often information is being accessed and at what time of day, enabling the modification of pages according to demand.
It is also better targeted than previous paper- or e-mail-based systems. McLocklin explains: “For example, look at the health and safety bulletins, such as new guidelines for climbing poles. Now, I’ll never have to climb a pole, but many of our staff have to. But everyone would get sent the same memo, and most of us would just put it in the bin. With the intranet, only those who need it have to read it.”
McLocklin takes on an almost evangelical air. “It makes the organisation more democratic. Everyone can have their own pages where they can have their say.”
But what about tangible, cost benefits? “It’s extremely low cost and has theoretically infinite capacity. We estimate that it saves £600m a year,” says McLocklin. The figure is derived from a combination of saving on printing, internal mail, couriers and employees’ time. That represents a return on investment of about 1,500%.
The intranet is also good news for people who have e-mail, because the system reduces e-mail overload. Instead of mass mailing to the company, items can just be put up on the intranet. “Web access is growing faster than e-mail access,” says McLocklin.
The figures are big. The original 2,000 pages have grown to about 2m. Content ranges from the home pages of chairman Sir Iain Vallance and chief executive Sir Peter Bonfield, including speeches, messages and biographies, to individual project groups’ sites, used by only a few people.
Open access
Perhaps frighteningly for the project managers, building construction and refurbishment schedules are accessible to all. Most staff have CV and experience details online, which allows others in the company to search for the in-house specialists that they need for a project.
However, the intranet is not yet a complete system. So far, only 65,000 people in the company have access to it, but this number is growing rapidly. By the end of the year, most of BT’s 126,000 employees should be linked to it.
“It’s a move from man, machine and money to knowledge as the key,” says McLocklin. “It’s become the central nervous system of the company.”
But have people adapted to it quickly? “People who had barely used a PC six months ago are now talking fluidly about URLs,” he says.
The intranet really has changed the way BT works.
“The aim is to improve productivity and time management. The intranet involves complete personal mobility:anywhere, any place, any time, you can access information.”
Neil McLocklin, development manager, Workstyle 2000, BT
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E-mail Internet Intranet World Wide Web URL |
