by Shane Henson — July 11, 2012—Advanced Workplace Associates (AWA) plans to use the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London as an opportunity to study telecommuting, as many London-based organizations are asking their employees to work from home during the events in response to the predicted pressure on the city’s transport infrastructure. If widely adopted, says the multi-disciplined and independent management consultancy, this strategy will effectively be a large-scale flexible working experiment.
The AWA study, titled Gold Medal, will assess the experience of staff, the effectiveness of working arrangements, and the impact on productivity. It will also examine personal effectiveness, team effectiveness, relationship management and communications while also identifying obstacles to effective “distance working.”
“This could be a stepping stone to increasing the level of interest and acceptance of agile working as a legitimate alternative to trudging into the center of London at peak times every day,” says Karen Plum, AWA’s director of consulting. “We think it’s important to capture formally and to quantify feedback about ‘distance working’ both during and after the games, to give organizations a firm base on which to make judgments and future plans.”
