Beam me up Scotty - More Blended Learning

There is a lot of talk about virtual classrooms and allowing groups of students to log in to a classroom from home moderated by a teacher. The advantages go way beyond servicing students that can't make it to school for medical reasons or have complicated schedules dominated by competitive athletics or the arts. Some traditional schools are using blended learning to expand courseware beyond what is within a traditional school environment. Examples include well-known examples like Khan Academy and MIT's Open Courseware Project. 

How about solutions for students that want to actually attend class but can't make it to school. Consider students that attend a middle school but want to augment their education with a class offered across town at the high school? Is there a solution that will just allow the student to attend a class that already exists? 

Putting that information online can be costly and many teachers don't know the skill set to produce online courseware that will provide the collaborative environment or replicate the classroom experience. If only you could beam the student into that classroom. How much would you pay for that technology?

There is a solution that does not involve scattering a child's particles through space. Suitable Technologies has come up with a solution called beam. Beam allows a student to control a "comprehensive remote presence solution for instant travel and engagement." This device allows the student to roam the halls, speak with anyone they encounter and carry on conversations in real time. While beam was designed for traveling professionals of large corporations, it has excellent applications in education.

Schools could install a bank of these devices at a school and allow students to log in to them and use them to attend a couple of classes. Students from other schools could use these devices to "attend" classes not offered at the school they are enrolled in. Students that had to stay home because of illness could still attend classes as well. 

Another application could include internships and advanced real world experiences. Consider a student wanting to fully immerse herself in the biomedical sciences. A school could develop a partnership with any company or hospital and place a beam unit at the facility and allow the student to interact with the staff at that site without ever having to travel there. 

Devices like the beam allow students to attend classes and have experiences that otherwise would be time and space prohibitive. Beam is just another tool schools can use to provide a comprehensive blended solution. 

For more information check out http://www.suitabletech.com. 

Yahoo! has it WRONG...

Emerald Data Solutions is a fast growing, innovative company with dedicated and effective people -- and everyone works from home. I've seen statistics that say 10% of workers work from home "at least one day a week." I don't know how many workers don't go to the office less than 1 day per week, but my guess is that is it closer to 5%. From my perspective, it should be more like 20%. 

Marissa Mayer, the new CEO at Yahoo!, believes that having ALL staff members come to work every day will enhance innovation and collaboration. I guess she is looking for something like the environment depicted in Samsung's fictional Unicorn Apocalypse ad. I don't think she has considered the cost. Let's take Emerald Data Solutions as a case study. 

Since we closed the office and started a policy of working from home, only one employee has voluntarily quit and I bet $10 he would come back. Turnover is costly to any organization. While we have a good process for recruiting, identifying and onboarding new talent, it is time-consuming and requires a lot of time and resources. With a few exceptions, it usually takes 6 months to onboard a fully effective staff member. High turnover also contributes to brain drain. I feel that if there is a revolving door here, we would be constantly losing valuable knowledge. We also know that staff members who are happy with their work environment are more effective at delivering services. Like many managers, I look at low turnover as a key performance indicator of job satisfaction and the health of our workforce. While working from home is not the only reason folks stay with the company, I believe it is a key component. 

Let's look at efficacy.  Emerald Data Solutions generates over $4,000,000 in sales with 20 staff members. That means that each staff member generates $200,000 in revenue. That is LOW, even Yahoo! nets $460,000 per employee. So on the surface, our virtual office strategy does not look so good and yes that number should be closer to $500,000 per staff member, however, our profit per employee is over $25,000 and that is HIGH. With the average profit per employee for 2011 in the US being $15,278.72 according to Sageworks. Have you ever talked to an entrepreneur that says they are "working for the rent"? In most cases, maintaining office space is a huge expense. You can see that our bottom line benefits from some pretty low expenses in these areas: rent, office supplies, heat, electric, water, cleaning, building insurance, office furniture even the break room coffee. Most analysts will tell management to budget about $2000 per year for physical office space expenses for each employee. That would deplete a vast majority of our profit for 2012.

So why is Yahoo! changing the policy to force folks to come to the office every day? Collaboration. Many studies show that a great deal of collaboration and innovation takes place in the hallways, break rooms and in the downtime between tasks. Marissa Mayer came from Google, where they work very hard to keep people at work. Google provides lunch, dinner, has awesome work out facilities, spas, you can get your hair done, send out your dry cleaning, daycare, go to a game room and even sleep at work if you like. With a workplace like that, why would you want to go home? The benefit is extreme innovation that has made Google one of the most successful tech companies ever!

But not everyone needs to innovate and some folks would benefit from working from home. A great leadership team would find a way to innovate within the new virtual work environment not squelch it. If Marissa were to ask my opinion and I bet she never would, I would offer these suggestions:

• Keep the telecommuting policy as is. This will reduce office expenses and turnover.
• Create innovation zones that duplicate the Google model and recruit the best people to join those teams. 
• Like Apple, take projects out of the innovation zones and allow team members to choose and join those any project. 
• Create project incubator spaces where folks work to bring that project to fruition. 
• Successful projects go to market and the team members get rewarded.

Existing projects and support folks can continue to work from home because every organization needs folks to implement the plan, support staff members and keep the organization running. To force these folks to come to the office to innovate could get in the way of developing an innovative environment and may actually poison the creative sprit. 

Lets keep an eye on Yahoo! and see if the board will give Marissa the time she needs to be proven, or disproved in her vision to turn Yahoo! around. Because recently the biggest revolving door at Yahoo! has been the one leading to the CEO's office.