Abstract
Local authorities are under ever increasing pressure to provide better quality services at less cost. They need therefore to extract more value from their assets including people and real estate. Studies of teleworking show that the productivity of workers can be increased and real estate costs reduced.
Salford City Council first explored a model from BT PLC called Agile Working but the business case did not work. Salford decided instead, to press on with a pilot implementation of a model from Cisco (the networking company) called The Cisco Connected Office. This model combines traditional teleworking concepts with a bespoke office design structure. The author.s unit (Audit and Risk Management Unit - ARMU) was selected as the pilot implementation.
This dissertation sets out to track changing work patterns, gauge employee attitudes, establish any business benefits and identify any residual barriers to maximising the success of the pilot implementation.
The pilot was planned to commence in a newly refurbished area of the main campus but unfortunately financial pressures first delayed the move and then necessitated a move to non-refurbished accommodation. Although the office areas required in the Cisco work style were provided, they were in discrete offices rather than an open plan one. The postponements resulted in a compressed settling in time during which the team could test the boundaries of the new work style and restricted the volume of test data.