Research Plan

To fully quantify and evaluate the proposal of virtual teams with workers who can telecommute, I proposed the following stages of research:

1. Literature review of best practices in advertising agencies and creative teams as it relates to productivity and performance in-office vs. virtually via telecommuting. There are many empirical studies of telecommuting; the challenge will be to find studies specific to our industry. The outcome of this step will be a summary and series of metrics, both operational and financial, describing contributions and limitations of this proposed strategy.

2. Attitudinal and performance-based surveys of existing team members who have worked in-office and in virtual teams will first be completed. Second, 360-degree feedback of teams who have employed virtual meeting workspaces online and virtual team formats will be done. The goal of these steps are to determine if there are any hidden or unforeseen problems in adopting this approach.

3. Evaluate the current technology that the agency has and determine if it can scale across several teams working virtually at the same time. Also included in this analysis will an assessment of security, mobile device support including advanced graphics systems, and secured VPN access over the Internet.

4. Quantify the tax benefits of having a telecommuting workforce and reduction in parking, utilities and associated costs. This will be part of the Return on Investment (ROO) calculation to underscore the value of this strategy.

5. Create and present the final results of this study from both a hard and soft factors standpoint, showing...

I am so passionate about this subject and see it as such a competitive advantage for the firm, I am willing to work a Saturday for no pay to do this, I am just asking for 7 hours over 30 days to interview team members who are working virtually, and also use business hours to do research on our cost savings as a result of telecommuting.
Conclusion

We're winning business in a very challenging economy, and communicating the value of public relations and advertising to our clients. We've also been able to take very large, profitable accounts away from our competitors by allowing our creative design teams to work at home during the hours of the day they are most creative. The recent account review by Nike and their selection of Waggoner-Edstrom would not have been possible using traditional project scheduling. The flexibility of designers working from home made it possible to meet Nike's challenging deadlines. The alchemy of all this success is freeing our people to focus on their projects at a depth not possible before. Creating opportunities for our key employees to take ownership of their work and be productive during their most productive time is working -- we just need to make this a formal program and recognize the early wins we are having already. Finally, the bottom line is that with less commute time, there are more billable hours.