Trust and technology: Work‐life blending at Unisys
| Published date | 01 November 2004 |
| Date | 01 November 2004 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14754390480000571 |
| Pages | 8-9 |
| Author | Bob Illingworth |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
8Volume 4 Issue 1 November/December 2004
Trust and technology: work-life
blending at Unisys
“We no longer had a one-size-fits-all
situation,” says Illingworth. “We had a
new audience and had to adapt our
policies to suit them.”
New HR for a new audience
Unisys continuously monitors the
technology its people are adopting and
how their work patterns are changing
alongside formal feedback channels
such as employee opinion surveys. It
calls its early adopters of flexible
working practices “smart employees.”
“We spot what these people are doing
and monitor the technology they’re
using to help them do their job. For
example, we trialled PDAs that come
online for e-mail and found that
although these had limited success some
employees were very keen on them.”
However, flexible working isn’t a new
thing for Unisys. “Even 10 years ago
when we began going through change
we started seeing that some employees
had a desk in more than one place. But,
when they started ordering a PC for
each desk it really made us sit up and
take notice. We saw a trend starting to
emerge – people were working in
different locations on different days.
From that we built a flexible solution –
business centers.” Unisys business
centers are flexible work locations
available across the UK.
Overcoming the barriers
Although Unisys is now one of the
companies leading the way when it
comes to offering a range of flexible
working options, this hasn’t been
achieved without overcoming some
barriers. Illingworth pinpoints managers’
attitudes toward flexible working as the
primary barrier to its successful
implementation. “Some of the
management style was more oriented to
managing presence rather than output,
and supervising rather than coaching
and mentoring. We’ve had to focus on
that as an issue to make some of these
things work.”
But being a technology company does
give Unisys many technological enablers
such as mobile computing and mobile
telephones.
A second barrier is the difficulty in
providing flexibility to all employees
equally. “You have to get the right
balance between job, performance and
commitment to your customers,” says
Illingworth. “If you commit to your
customer that you are going to have 20
people on site as part of a contract,
then you have to deliver that. Where
the job works and the performance
profile fits, we try and give people as
much scope as possible to do work
where and when they want to.
Managers have to be encouraged to
trust employees to deliver to the
required quality and on time.”
O
ver the last 10 years Unisys has
undergone a transition that is
familiar to many companies in its
sector: moving from a technology
supplier to an IT services and solutions
business. The implications of this change
include a radical shift in HR strategy,
notably the gradual introduction of a
work-life balance policy.
“I’ve seen the company transition
from what was primarily a technology
supplier within the business community
to an IT services company,” says Bob
Illingworth, the company’s HR director.
“We have global revenues approaching
US$5.91billion – 80 percent of this now
comes from people-delivered services.”
During this shift the company has
seen a significant increase in its
employee population; it’s now a very
different group to the traditional IT
sector workforce of 10 years ago. As the
company entered the graduate
recruitment market it realized that its
different groups of employees were
beginning to demand different
workplace solutions. This was also
reflected in employee survey results.
HR at WORK
,
Short case studies that demonstrate best practice in HR
Unisys is a worldwide information
technology services and solutions
company. It operates in over 100
countries worldwide and employs around
37,000 people worldwide.
UNISYS
Bob Illingworth, HR director at Unisys, describes how the organization has implemented flexible working as
part of its shift from a technology supplier to an IT services company.
© Melcrum Publishing Ltd. 2004. For more information, go to www.melcrum.com or e-mail info@melcrum.com
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