Het ACC is het shared service center binnen Achmea op het terrein van het behandelen van materiële- en letselschade. Het ACC wil bijdragen aan de Achmea ambitie ‘meest vertrouwde verzekeraar’ door ‘world class claimhandlers’ te worden. Dit willen zij realiseren door haar vakmanschap, samenwerken, werken in partnerships en operational excellence. Dat betekent dat het ACC pro-actief werkt aan het verder professionaliseren van kennismanagement in relatie tot ‘ Het Nieuwe Werken’. Doelstelling van de casus is om te onderzoeken hoe inzicht geboden kan worden in en optimaal gebruik gemaakt worden van bestaande kennis in de ACC organisatie uitgaande van de HNW waarden en principes vanuit de Achmea organisatie.

Centrale onderzoeksvraag daarbij is te bepalen hoe de vier kernuitdagingen voor de kenniswerker (in sync, in touch, in flow en in control) een rol spelen in kennisdelen en onderlinge verbinding. Welke structurele, relationele en cognitieve barrières hierbij van invloed zijn en hoe de werkomgeving optimaal kan worden ingericht om inzicht in kennisstructuren te krijgen en kennisdelen te bevorderen.

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Het rapport gaat in op belangrijke ICT gerelateerde uitdagingen voor de professional rondom “Het Nieuwe Werken” en biedt oplossingsrichtingen hoe organisaties hun medewerkers kunnen faciliteren met nieuwe werkvormen om toch “connected” te blijven met elkaar. Immers flexibilisering komt met een prijs. Collega’s weten steeds minder waar anderen mee bezig zijn. Informele kanalen veranderen of verdwijnen. Vertrouwensrelaties komen moeilijker tot stand, waardoor het delen van kennis wordt gehinderd. Het rapport gaat hier op in en biedt bovendien een innovatieve aanpak om met kleine interventies de verbondenheid tussen professionals te behouden en zelfs te activeren.

Een PDF-versie van het rapport is hier te downloaden. Wilt u liever een hardcopy, e-mail dan even.

Sophia, Annemiek, Aljosha, and Dirk: congratulations and good luck in Edinburgh!

“On assignment for Future Workspaces we have looked into how to improve collaborative moments for knowledge workers using multi-touch technology. One of the most promising collaborative activities that could be improved was brainstorming. An interactive system already offers many advantages, and especially during the idea clustering phase the advantages of multi-touch can be leveraged. We have developed such a brainstorming application in collaboration with knowledge workers and validated the concept using focus groups.

With our application we try to bring a good deal more fun to the brainstorming process by providing brainstorm participants with interactive games. These games bring participants to the multi touch wall, and also release some of the tensions associated with selecting ‘winning’ ideas. Next to that, we also made large improvements on the clustering process. We feel it is important to be able to freely try different clusterings, and be able to play around during this phase. Using intuitive gestures, and using a ’bubble’ metaphor, brainstorm participants are able to create, move, remove, resize, rearrange, undo and relate clusters and ideas. During the entire brainstorm we support structuring the discussion with a ‘compare idea’ tool so participants can backtrack decisions and their rationale.

Are you curious to see how this all works together to support an entire brainstorming session, from creation of ideas to the selection of them? Then please, check out our movie prototype below. We welcome any comments you might have.”

When the Concept Game is played by more people in an organization, it can help that organization determine what aspects of future ways of working are important for the people in that organization. The Concept Game can be played in a workshop of 8 to 10 people. In the workshop, people first select their own favourite and not favourite concepts. Secondly, the choices are explained and discussed by the group. Finally, a coherent view is created on what issues and opportunities of future ways of working are most important for the organization. You can download a flyer about the Future Workspaces Concept Game Workshop here.

Steven’s research project has been a study towards new ways of working for system architects. System architects are responsible for the architecture of complex systems, like printers, MRI-scanners or radar systems. A series of interviews has been conducted with system architects at Océ, Philips and Thales to discuss concepts and obtain insights. This resulted in Project Buzz Tracker, a tool that couples activity information to project and workflow planning. Persons frequently give an update on their actions, thus showing the Buzz in a project. By observing this overview, the system architect can see concentrations or a lack of Buzz. These can be indications of problematic issues. Project Buzz Tracker will further strengthen team cohesion, especially if distant workers are involved.

General Findings
Using interviews, it has been found out that system architects do not have specific communication needs. The communication needs that they have are generally applicable. The system architects do have unique information management needs, because they are the only ones in a project specifically interested in architecting information.
System architects (at least the ones that were interviewed) highly value face-to-face communication. Currently, they succeed in having these face-to-face communications with for example co-workers and customers. Nevertheless, assuming that workers become more and more dispersed, system architects have to find new means of communication too. The tools proposed in this research can play an important role in this respect. By doing a literature study, several aspects of the communication process were identified that deserve special attention, considering the area of system architecting.
When developing future concepts it is better to develop them by satisfying needs than by solving problems. Problems often have a short term nature, whereas needs will still exist in the future. A broad spectrum of solutions was created. By providing solutions for all identified needs, a large and relevant subset of solutions has been created. By combining these solutions into concepts, it is ensured that the concepts are relevant and solve the right issues. The concepts that have been elaborated aim at providing overview in various large data spaces.

Project Buzz Tracker
Because of limited time, only one concept was worked out. This concept is called Project Buzz Tracker. It makes innovative use of the upcoming phenomenon of social media. Project Buzz Tracker provides a clear, graphical overview on which persons are working on what tasks, something that is relevant in architecting. It shows small status updates (buzz) that are mapped on a project planning. The planning can be zoomed, revealing more detailed tasks. It may be less useful in small, closely located, project teams, but extremely useful in dispersed project teams, as there is less sense of what is happening in the project within these teams. Several filters can be applied, to find information more easily.

As this tool has to be used by a complete project team to be useful, it has been described how personal objections against using the tool can be taken away, and which benefits the tool holds for stakeholders. It is clear that the strongest focus must lie on making the tool suitable and beneficial for the whole project team. It is suggested that coupling this tool to to do software is a strong choice in this perspective. Also, providing incentives by integrating Project Buzz Tracker with already used tools should be pursued (i.e. integrate with Outlook). Thus, in further elaborations of Project Buzz Tracker, there should be a focus on making the tool useful for the complete project team.
Second, it has been noticed during various presentations of Project Buzz Tracker that the benefits of this tool were not emphasized enough. People who were presented with the concept, liked it, but failed to see the advantages. For each stakeholder group, a SWOT analysis was made which presents the advantages of the tool more clearly.

If you would like more information, the whole research report can be found here or you can contact Geke Ludden (Geke.Ludden@novay.nl).

The booklets illustrate insights, best practices, and lessons learned during two years of research, concept development, case studies, and special interest sessions with experts and industry. We plan to regularly update the series with new booklets.

Currently, the series contains the following four titles:

• Connecting professionals: How to stimulate corporate conversations through social media by Robert Slagter
• Lab: New tools for new ways of working by Geke Ludden
• Generations@work: Embracing young talent by Ellen Szwajcer
• Four challenges for knowledge workers: Effects of working anytime, anywhere by Ruud Janssen

We hope you like the booklets and we welcome any feedback.

• Startmeting. Elke Future Workspaces klantcase begint met een startmeting. Het doel van deze meting is om een ijkpunt vast te stellen: hoe gaan de individuen in het team om met informatie (welke strategieën hanteren ze) en hoe gaan ze om met kennis delen. Verder stelt deze startmeting vast welke typen kenniswerk de teamleden doen en worden persoonlijkheidskenmerken gemeten. Dit laatste is bijvoorbeeld relevant om uitspraken te kunnen doen over de effectiviteit van verschillende strategieën en technologieën voor verschillende typen mensen. Bij wie is de kans groot dat een wiki of een blog aanslaat?
• Interviews. Aan het begin van de Unplugged klantcase zijn een reeks interviews uitgevoerd met de leden van het Unplugged team. Het doel hierbij was om een beeld te krijgen van de situatie waarin het team zich bevindt, waar quick wins te bereiken zijn en om belangrijke randvoorwaarden voor de interventies boven water te krijgen.
• Cultural probe. Dit middel heeft als doel om input te verzamelen vanuit het Unplugged team over wat zij op dit moment al echt Unplugged vinden aan hun manier van werken en waar dat nog te wensen overlaat. Bij de cultural probe is een tiental Unplugged medewerkers gevraagd om gedurende een aantal weken foto’s te maken van situaties waarbij ze het gevoel hadden echt Unplugged bezig te zijn, maar ook van situaties die niet bij de Unplugged filosofie passen. Door hiermee bezig te zijn en de resultaten met elkaar te bespreken, begint feitelijk al een interventie.
• Workshops. We hebben een workshop georganiseerd om de Unplugged leden de resultaten van de cultural probe te laten bespreken en een workshop rond Unplugged samenwerken. Deze workshop diende om ervaringen, tips en trucs rond nieuwe manieren en tools voor samenwerken binnen het team te delen.
• Inspiratie bieden. Om de Unplugged leden zelf en bezoekers van de Beneluxstaete inspiratie te bieden over de mogelijkheden van innovatieve (virtuele) hulpmiddelen hebben we twee richtingen gevolgd: 1) informeren van de Unplugged leden via e-mail en presentaties, en 2) door concrete prototypes te laten zien op de Werkplaats – de plek waar bezoekers (van binnen en buiten de Rabobank) een kijkje kunnen nemen in de toekomst van Rabo Unplugged.

The participants of the workshop were divided into two groups. One group played with the Virtual Media Office demonstration, prepared by Sefan Burgers from Ericsson. The second group played with the Second Life demonstration, prepared by Bart van den Hooff of the VU.

The result was a nice discussion from which the following elements struck me:

• Staying in touch with colleagues can be facilitated using virtual worlds however currently it cannot complete replace face to face contact. For example, drinking coffee at a coffee corner is still very valuable. Maybe a good virtual coffee machine could be a way to go.
• Choosing (remote) team members using virtual worlds could become more objective as politics and personal aspects play a lesser role.
• Virtual worlds (including avatars) could become a intuitive graphical interface on top of the resources of a worker.
• A lot of workers use tools with a lot of (unintuitive) features (e.g. email), virtual worlds could provide a intuitive interface that discloses all these features in a more natural way, after a learning curve has been taken.
• Not all tasks of a knowledge worker may be suitable to perform in a virtual world (e.g. editing excel).
• The more important decisions become, the more face to face contact is needed to also grasp indirect communication aspects (e.g. body language). Current virtual worlds are less suitable to grasp indirect communications and hence may be less suitable for very important/delicate decisions.

Mike from Jam visualized outcomes of the discussion. More of the results (also from the other workshops) can be found here.