Virtual Office Team Assembly

Background & Introduction

Over the past few centuries, human’s lifestyles have been changing significantly with the development of high technology since the industrial revolution. “Working models are changing (Ware & Grantham, 2003), evolving over several decades towards flexibility and mobility,” which means that workers would be able to work with long distances and cooperate with each other as well. “Back in 1980 Alvin Toffler coined the concept of the Electronic Cottage (Toffler, 1980); this was essentially the idea that people, particularly those engaged in ‘knowledge work’ would in the future be less bound to a traditional workplace as technology increasingly made working elsewhere possible.” (1, Cliftona, et al)

The disappearance of the fixed workplace has made collaboration between employees more flexible and efficient. workers can be assigned to the projects that best suit them without being limited by their work location. The online assigning approach also has the potential to boost productivity since it takes less time passing the message. As mentioned by E.J. Hill et al “these arrangements as a business imperative needed to achieve stra-tegic business priorities, such as reducing costs, increasing job performance, enhanc-ing job satisfaction and motivation, augmenting job retention, ameliorating stress caused by workload, and enhancing career opportunities.” (Clark, 2001; Hammer,Alan, & Grigsby, 1997; Hill & Weiner, 2003; Rapoport et al., 2002).

Our goal is to visualize the relationship between managers and workers while they work with distances about how the projects would be assigned to different departments with different functions efficiently and organically. This will help the companies and organizations to see how teleworking works. The concept of teleworking is: “a flexible work arrangement whereby workers work in locations, remote from their central offices or production facilities, with no personal contact with coworkers, but the ability to communicate with co-workers using ICT.” (Bentley et al. 2016) Our model is meant to imitate the communication and job assignment environment of the telework system.

Model Setup & Rules

The agents in this model were grouped into teams based on their department, the project requirements, and the max group size (9). While the original plan was to have agents keep their links for a certain amount of ticks based on an efficiency rating, this was not able to make it into the final model. Instead, teams will be made at each tick representing the baseline of a worker to manager ratio effect on team size. Once the team is created, the managers kill the links, change projects and make a new team.

Worker agents belong to one of four departments: sales, marketing, IT, and HR. These are represented by different colors (blue, yellow, green, pink) and the ratio of each is random at the beginning of each run. The workers are set up in a circle of 100-200 depending on the input.

Manager agents are all red and make up the inner circle of the model. They each have a randomly selected label consisting of projects one to four. These projects vary in the required and allowed amount of workers allowed to each team from each department. The randomization is set up for the manager to link three of the four departments with either 1 or 2 random workers. The fourth department allows the managers to link with either one, two, or three random workers. The fourth department is different in each of the four projects. (see below)

Simulation & Results

As the model runs, each project links to their random agents that are reporting that they are not in a team. The links are differentiated by each project having a different color. The model runs, managers making new links with new colors at each tick with the average team size being recorded for each. After 10000 ticks the model stops and the links stop.

We ran our model in a behavior space running 5 simulations for each variable of worker number and manager number. The runs would vary from 1-10 managers and 100-200 workers at the rates of 1 and 2 each simulation respectively. Each run reported the number of workers, managers, and links which were reworked in Excel to find the manager to worker ratio (# managers / # workers) and the average team size (# links / # managers). The statistical analysis showed a correlation of -.264 between the ratio and average team size showing that the more managers present the smaller groups become. Additionally, we found the tipping point of the manager to worker ratio was about 6 managers four every 100 workers. The tipping point can be described as the point where group size and managers present even out.

Limitations & Conclusion

Admittedly, the model was not as in-depth as it could have been and is missing many crucial factors that determine why and how managers group together workers. While it might be underwhelming, the results can still help companies and organizations learn how to alter their managerial staff and how to optimize their manager to workers ratio ensuring the teams consist of the right people and follows the vision of the institution.

References:

Hill, E., Ferris, M., & Märtinson, V. (2003). Does it matter where you work? A comparison of how three WORK venues (TRADITIONAL OFFICE, virtual office, and home Office) influence aspects of work and personal/family life. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 63(2), 220-241. doi:10.1016/s0001-8791(03)00042-3

Reuschke, D., Clifton, N., & Fisher, M. (2021). Coworking in homes – mitigating the tensions of the freelance economy. Geoforum, 119, 122-132. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.01.005

Bentley, T., Teo, S., McLeod, L., Tan, F., Bosua, R., & Gloet, M. (2016). The role of organisational support in teleworker wellbeing: A socio-technical systems approach. Applied Ergonomics, 52, 207-215. doi:10.1016/j.apergo.2015.07.019