NWoW: a means not an end

The New Way of Working (NWoW) is a means and not an end in itself. I notice that some advocates of NWoW do not always keep this in mind. Even when I talk to management executives who want to 'do' NWoW I sometimes feel they want to do it, because everybody is doing it. At least that is the case here in the Netherlands, where NWoW has become a national theme.

NWoW is good for people and also good for society. But the prime driver for NWoW is that it is good for the organization, good for business. I always use the picture below to talk about the results of NWoW for the organization. I will only very briefly discuss it here. Chapter 4 in my forthcoming book is totally devoted to the results of NWoW for the organization.

As you can see there are two sides. On the left are the positive results that one anticipates and on the right we see some possible side effects. I often call NWoW the medicine against the industrial mindset that still rules in many organizations. Most of these side effects we can prevent by reading the patient information leaflet that accompanies the medicine. Let's just briefly concentrate on the anticipated positive effects.

The results that are the easiest to demonstrate - and have indeed been demonstrated by most organizations 'doing' NWoW - are cost reduction and employee satisfaction. Cost reductions are most often in reduction of office space, less travel, less absenteeism and the end of internal moving that is people that have to move physically to another workplace in the building. Employee satisfaction is easily demonstrated by a series of surveys over a longer period of time. One can imagine that it is not too hard to measure reputation and customer satisfaction as well. However for one reason or another not many organizations that measure their progress on NWoW report on these factors.

On the other hand more and more organizations are starting to measure their CO2 footprint. Once that is established it is easy to measure the progress. Less office space, less travel and also 'smart' commuting (for example, see blog April 1) are a direct result of NWoW contributing to the decrease of CO2 footprint. Many organizations integrate 'green' initiatives into their NWoW programs like green buildings and green IT. But - and that is a matter of definition of course - I prefer to separate 'greening' from NWoW.

Surprisingly, measuring increased revenue is hardest of all whereas this is one of the prime drivers for NWoW: increasing the effectiveness of the organization. Why is this so hard? Well there are so many variables involved in revenue that it is very hard to ascribe it to some specific intervention like NWoW. Besides most organizations in the public sector do not measure revenue. Most organizations however do measure the increased perceived productivity of their workers due to NWoW. And indeed in almost all of these measurements organizations report improvements in perceived productivity.

So let's not forget that NWoW is a means and not en end in itself. We really could use better measurement instruments, but even though the results so far are encouraging.