New Wireless Networks and Devices Create More Productive Workforce

CIO —

Two years ago, Capital One CIO Gregor Bailar gave up his private office in suburban Richmond, Va., with its view of the woods, in favor of a conference table that put him in full view of his staff. The bold move was calculated to allow rank-and-file workers at the company—not to mention Bailar’s C-suite colleagues—to see for themselves how a cubicle-free office environment supported with wireless technology could change the way they worked for the better.

Bailar quickly found that he and his staff talked to each other more—and more often—which led to greater productivity and better collaboration. Five-minute meetings, which once had to be scheduled up to two weeks in advance because everybody’s calendars were jam-packed, started to occur more spontaneously. The open environment "made access to people easier and made the energy level much better," Bailar says.

Capital One executives and employees alike felt such collegiality had been lost as the credit card purveyor grew from its launch in 1995 to the $12 billion behemoth it is today. Executives wondered: "How do we keep that feel of that small, entrepreneurial company alive inside of this relatively massive company?" recalls Bailar. The wireless, cubeless work environment, dubbed the Future of Work, turned out to be the answer: A year and a half after rolling out the plan, 11 percent of the company’s 21,000 employees, executives included, have given up their fixed desks for unassigned spaces and work areas with more sunlight, advanced videoconferencing capabilities and wireless connections.

Capital One’s realization of a leading-edge wireless work environment earned it a 2006 CIO 100 Award. But when Bailar and HR chief Matt Schuyler first proposed their plan, some top executives didn’t like it one bit. "I was dead-set against the move and came [to it] with a pretty closed mind," one office-dwelling bigwig reported in a survey, which summed up the general thinking. Bailar’s decision, along with Schuyler, to be the first to ditch their offices for a prototype Future of Work environment was a key part of their strategy for managing the massive change.

Like Capital One, more than a third of this year’s CIO 100 honorees are using wireless technology to different degrees to transform how their employees work. They include:

CSX. Rail operator CSX installed a wireless "black box" in its locomotives that collects information about how engineers are operating the trains. By using the data to coach engineers to drive better, the system has helped CSX save millions in fuel costs.

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