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Being on Track
Martin Morey, general secretary of the MCUG, looks across boundaries when it comes to mobile and lone workers, and peers outside the government sector
Regardless of the distinctions of the business drivers between public and private services there is now a real opportunity to develop ideas that are driven by the notion of quality of service, and which cut across boundaries.
Being specific, I want to focus on four areas of direct relevance to mobile working, where current practice is developing in the utility and service industries. These are scheduling remote workers; some of the hidden issues when choosing suitable mobile hardware; tracking your lone workers; and, last but by no means least, how to approach the shortfalls in data communication and session management and how to seize the initiative from the network operator.
Scheduling remote workers
Many service sector businesses have implemented automatic work scheduling systems. These systems seek to optimise the use of field staff, even if that means adapting work patterns and traditional geographic areas.
The two things that emerge strongly from those that have put systems in place are that without a clear business model of your service it is nearly impossible to achieve an automated process, and as soon as you start a process of manual planning to override the software efficiency drops, and all benefits hoped for vanish in a pool of frustration.
On this topic, at a mobile systems conference earlier this year we were working through the delegates’ comments when a member from Sky (of satellite TV fame) mentioned that since introducing a sophisticated scheduling system for fitting dishes some staff had expressed an interest in offering their labour on a wider timeframe than hitherto, and had wondered if the new smart scheduling system that provided defined customer appointments could also take flexible workers in to account.
The notion was that some staff might like to work, say, in mid evening, and that some customers might indeed welcome their digi-box being fixed at 9pm. Of course there are logistical and HR issues, especially if the flexible fitter is in Southampton, and the broken digi-box or new dish is needed in Glasgow, however, this is (or should be) where smart software can help. Could it be that the management tools developed to control the workforce efficiently might actually also empower the workforce, and tick the ‘family friendly’ and the ‘customer satisfaction’ boxes too?
Choosing suitable hardware
Scottish Water recently gave a presentation that touched on the issue of handing mobile computers out to field staff. It ranged wide over issues with their mobile systems, which, with the merger of all the many small water companies in Scotland, had to be rationalised, and then delivered over a massive geographic footprint. The two points here relate to hardware selection and the associated training needed.
Despite the difficulty of travel to far flung places, face to face training had been proven to be essential when imposing new technology on to a traditional and cautious workforce. Past experience where systems had been deployed without adequate attention to selection of hand held devices, or to making absolutely sure staff knew how to use them showed that these issues made the difference between success or project failure.
If you find staff abusing, and not using, equipment then look first at your training and the fitness of the equipment for purpose, and not at your disciplinary procedures. With a blue-collar workforce well-chosen devices and good training are not an optional extra, and must form a major budget element.
The other area of device selection that is often raised in MCUG is whether to deploy rugged devices or not. Purchase cost and reliability are the oft cited measures, however, I advise taking two other factors in to account before buying throw away devices: Members who have used consumer PDA devices often find that the short life drives continual expenditure on software adaptations to meet the requirements of the newer devices. Second, each new device needs a new ‘build’, and some re-training.
Take these two costs against the slower evolution of rugged devices, and you will find the equation starts to weigh against a quick purchase of gleaming consumer kit. Rugged devices are of course physically stronger, and will last longer, but that is only part of the story.
Tracking your staff
You may have noticed that one of the new and fashionable business optimisation tools is tracking either people or assets. Of about a hundred delegates in a recent mobile IT conference the following show of hands raised a few chuckles - whereas only two per cent of the delegates admitted to keeping the office informed of whereabouts, over ten per cent said they had a GPS in their phones. When asked how many had called home to inform their spouses where they were well over half of the hands shot up. That says something about our priorities, and tells you who you should ask when a member of staff goes missing.
Humour aside, tracking is now big business, and can save both fuel in wasted travel, provide verification of services, and protect lone workers. All these happen daily in private and government business. The recent code of practice for service providers of location based services simply makes provision for staff to have an ‘off’ switch for privacy, and places the requirement that the employer and network must regularly remind staff that they are tracked. Councils like Newcastle City use tracking to verify and optimise the journeys of the trucks that grit icy and snowy roads, and social service departments use tracking to protect lone social and care workers.
It may be worth pointing out that there are at least two technologies available to provide a location. The most common is GPS, which can pinpoint down to a few metres, whereas a humble and unmodified mobile phone can be tracked to within about 200 metres, just by cell position and dead reckoning. Employers like Scottish Power use tracking, but with the agreement that location, on its own, would not be used to initiate any disciplinary against a member of staff. There are anecdotal cases now where the very existence of location data has successfully been used to prove in the favour of staff, refuting complaints whilst showing that they were indeed on site and trying to deliver a service.
The code of practice is, in our view useful, and is available from MCUG upon request to library@mcug.org.uk.
Shortfalls in radio communication
The civil contingencies act requires the utilities to be able to communicate in an emergency, and the same holds true for government, in yet we all now depend on commercial data and voice networks where the battery life of many cell towers is measured in minutes if there is a storm and consequent power failure. Incidents where the media arrive and overload the networks, and the use by the public themselves when affected by a local or national emergency all call for a careful think about resilience.
Our MCUG working group, initially focussed on the water utility sector in the Southeast has decided to take action, creating private hotspots using in-house independent infrastructure to bolster their GPRS data, which is generally purchased from a single provider. Using a communications management server and modified session management software on the mobile devices the deployment to over 100 hotspots and nearly 200 staff has proved that automatic management of communications and a high degree of resilience is possible for modest deployment costs.
Utilities are starting to look very carefully at dependency and ways to avoid being vulnerable by using diverse and simple techniques rather than the old approach of over engineering ones own private and expensive communications system. This more light-touch approach enables the use of the commercial networks with transparent switching to the local private services, and staff, now having a large range of locations where they know for certain that communications will be available, even when the lights are out, and the media on the warpath. MCUG is looking to widen this project group; contact secretariat@mcug.org.ukThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.
Finally, another group of MCUG members who are dependant on GPRS data to manage workforces has commissioned the development of open source software tools to privately monitor coverage of the networks. Increasingly staff use ‘out of coverage’ as a work avoidance excuse, and the variability of data rates and coverage available need to be understood if mobile applications are to be designed properly. The ‘Warp Speed’ of some suppliers present 3G data offerings on high street posters seems not to be consistent with the practical experience of blue-collar mobile IT users who actually use GPRS and 3G for a living, except perhaps, that is, those few in the major city centres. Our special interest group of utilities is now keen to establish real figures, and to be able to measure and discuss performance, coverage, and reliability instead of pence per minute or pence per megabyte. Where staff work from home and only visit the office once a week the communications systems are quickly emerging as a key resource, or perhaps the weakest link - but one that we cannot do without.
Martin Morey is the General Secretary of the MCUG and a consultant in all aspects of the design and deployment of mobile data systems. If you are interested in any of the issues above, he can be contacted at secretariat@mug.org.uk
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