A recent Decima Research survey reported that more than half of
Canadians would spend more time with their family and friends if
they had collaborative tools to reduce the amount of in-person
meetings they needed to attend.
The survey was commissioned by Microsoft Canada earlier this
year. It also noted that 64 per cent of respondents who had used
collaborative tools in the past believed they improved their
overall work-life balance, with almost half adding that the tools
also decreased their stress levels.
Stresses such as long commutes, daily meetings and family
commitments have created additional pressure on people, meaning
that many struggle over when to shut work off. The Ontario
Association of Community Care Access Centres (OACCAC) is one
organization that has adopted collaborative technology to address
this imbalance.
One of its challenges was finding a way to make it easier for
staff in 42 community access care centres across the province to
get together for regular meetings.
"A lot of collaboration is required all over the province. We
can't bring everybody into Toronto for meetings," said Ken
Sutcliffe, director of IT services for the OACCAC. "These half-day
meetings often involve a night away and long journeys to get
here."
He added that it would cost the OACCAC about $500 per person to
bring about 15 staff members to the meetings. "Any opportunity to
offset the cost of attending meetings and being an effective
participant without leaving the home is important and leads to a
more productive day for staff," said Sutcliffe.
The OACCAC used such tools as Microsoft's Live Meeting 2005 to
help conduct meetings. One benefit of using Live Meeting, said
Sutcliffe, is that it allowed him to instantly send presentation
updates to all participants so that each person will have the same
version.
To help improve its meetings and further reduce face-to-face
meetings in the future, Sutcliffe hopes to use Microsoft
Roundtable, a device set to be released in 2007 that gives
participants a panoramic view of the meeting room and also focuses
in on the active speaker during a meeting.
Aisha Umar, senior director of unified communications for
Microsoft Canada Co., said a benefit of using tools like Live
Communication Server 2005 and Office Communicator is that they can
detect the attendance status of an employee, such as if they are on
the telephone, away from their desk or in a meeting. It can also
advise on the best method to reach them.
However, Catherine Middleton, an associate professor at the
school of information technology management at Ryerson University
in Toronto, said that understanding the capabilities of these tools
is essential.
Cecile Peterkin, a career and life coach for Cosmic Coaching
Centre in Toronto, added that having to learn additional
technology, such as collaborative tools, could be a barrier to get
people to actually use them.
"How long is it going to take me to learn to use this in order
to make my life easier?" Peterkin said. "It is one more added
technology that I have to spend time to learn."
She said that collaborative technology, when used right, is an
effective solution that can create a flexible work environment to
help achieve some work-life balance.
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