The Skills Challenge of Today’s Mobile Workforce
By Alan Bellinger 

One of today’s big growth areas is the combination of mobility and working-from-home employees. The explosion in communications and the wealth of new devices make both mobility and home working a realistic way to improve both company productivity and morale. And that’s fine for the business, but it plays havoc with skills.
There are two impacts on our ability to train this segment of the workforce, the first is skills delivery and the second is skills needed.

You’ll be able to overcome the skills-delivery issues if you have an
e-learning strategy in place, backed up by a good LMS, although you’ll still have to look closely at motivation. And, as ever, you’ll find creating carrots far more effective than using conventional sticks.

But the real issue is that both home and mobile workers need skills that office-based workers do not.

The first skill is the ability to handle interruptions. One of the communication strategies in which both home and mobile workers are less well-versed is that chance meeting in the corridor or at the coffee machine. However, they will have good communications capabilities and with the growing always-on networks, interruptions have become a way of life for them.

So having good prioritization skills and the ability to filter out noise (as well as being tolerant of out-of-hours interruptions) needs to be part of the out-of-office worker’s skill set.

The second critical skill set is confidence in using collaboration tools effectively. The ability to include both home and mobile workers in ad hoc virtual teams will be critical to the organization. You’ll need to gather all available talents - from in and out of the office.

Collaborative tools are the applications that enable effective team-working on a remote basis. Many of these tools are still in their early stages, so plan on continuing training rather than doing a one-off program.

The third skills issue is to find ways to replace the informal support network that exists with office-based personnel with digital tools. Combined with trigger points and metrics that will highlight when stress, resistance to change, and resentment start to hit out-of-office workers, these approaches are essential to maintaining staff effectiveness and contribution.

Finally, be aware of the legal issues that can develop from out-of-office practices, because they can be complex, and you’ll need to be sure the people involved are fully aware of their rights and responsibilities.

The prospect of working at home is attractive, but from a training perspective it creates many issues, and the methods of providing the skills needed for effective out-of-office work are still uncharted territory.

Alan Bellinger is editorial consultant for IT Training