Advances in technology allow workers to be less tethered to the office

by Paula C. Squires
for Virginia Business
April 2006

Today’s work force is becoming more mobile. With an assist from technology, many workers are saying goodbye to the morning commute, preferring instead to work from their home, or other places, with only occasional trips to the office. The trend is evident at some Virginia companies as the definition of work and office continues to change.

For instance, at Richmond-based CyMed only 5 percent of the company’s 800 medical transcription workers operate from a traditional office. The rest work from home, says Dale Kivi, CyMed’s vice president of business development. Meanwhile, nearly 40 percent of Capital One Financial Corp.’s Richmond work force is participating in a pilot program that gives employees choices on how they work.

High-speed Internet access, instant messaging, voice recognition editing and security encryption are some of the technologies that allow Cymed, the country’s third-largest domestic employer of medical transcriptionists, to operate a virtual work force. With workers in 45 states and various time zones, the company offers clients 24-hour coverage. “We’ve got people typing up reports in Florida that live in Hawaii,” says Kivi.

Companies such as CyMed have been able to move medical transcription workers from the hospital to the home only in the past five to seven years. The results of the shift, says Kivi, are cost and space efficiencies for hospitals and flexible work schedules for employees.

Federal law requires doctors to make a medical record of a patient’s diagnosis and treatment, a document that starts the billing process. Because hospitals can now outsource this function, some are seeing big cost savings. One of Cymed’s major clients, Rockford Health System in Illinois, spent $1.8 million on medical transcription in 2002, says Kivi. After switching to CyMed, the company spent $800,000 in 2004. “We were able to save them a million dollars and to reduce their costs,” notes Kivi (by more than 50 percent).

In addition, an employee who used to type in a hospital office can now work from home and knock off at 3 p.m. if she has children returning from school. According to Kivi, 95 percent of CyMed’s transcription workers are women in their late 40s and early 50s, and some have children and want a flexible work schedule.

How does CyMed manage its virtual work force? With the same technology that makes worker mobility possible. Account managers use instant messaging to interact with workers and notify them quickly about changes in workflow or priority status for reports. A quality control team monitors misspellings, productivity and turnaround time. “Because of the distance and the fact that you don’t visually see employees, you have to manage them by the technology of how they do their jobs,” says Kivi.

Technology is one of the driving forces behind a move at Capital One to try out a future-of-work program. Of the credit card company’s 4,300 employees at its Goochland County West Creek campus, 1,700 are enrolled in a pilot program that gives them several work options. After getting manager approval, workers can be anchor or resident employees (with a desk at the office), mobile workers (where they come and go without a permanent space); or they can opt for a flexible arrangement (working primarily from home). “What we have found is that it is so popular to be mobile that many more people want to be mobile,” says Larry Ebert, Capital One’s vice president of corporate real estate.

Mobile employees are equipped with laptops and a wireless network, so they can plug into Capital One’s network from almost anywhere.

Communication also occurs via e-mail, instant messaging and through use of BlackBerries. “They can come in, go to a meeting, work outside in this treehouse space we have, work from home,” says Ebert. Does such freedom pose supervisory challenges? “If you have a highly talented, knowledge-based work force and they understand their goals and performance objectives, our folks don’t need someone looking over their shoulders telling them what to do,” says Ebert. “They’re motivated.”

The company is seeing cost benefits from the pilot program, though it won’t release figures. The buildings at West Creek were designed to house 600 workers, but Ebert says they can now accommodate up to 1,000 since not everyone works from a desk at the campus every day. “If you can fit twice as many people in a building, you can reduce your portfolio, which obviously results in cost savings. That enables you to invest in technology and training and the amenities we provide.”

As the company continues to research the pilot program and survey employees, Ebert expects it to be offered to other Capital One business lines. “I think as we see the aging of the work force and more young people coming in, you will see more of this, because that’s the way young people are used to working”

Still, employees have one reservation: If they’re not visible around the office, can they still get promoted? That question came up during a recent summit on work sponsored by the Greater Richmond Technology Council. Speakers there said success depends largely on a worker’s productivity and performance, which tend to remain constant, no matter the work environment.