DOMESTIC-POWERCO: SUPPORTING KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND USE AMONG DISTRIBUTED WORK TEAMS DONALD HISLOP
This case study examines the way management and HRM practices are used to support the work and knowledge activities in an organisation whose workers are geographically dispersed and isolated, with few opportunities to interact and meet on a face-toface basis.
Organisational context Domestic-Powerco is a UK-wide company whose main business is installing, repairing and servicing heating equipment in the homes of private individuals. During the 1990s, Domestic-Powerco management implemented a large-scale cost-cutting and restructuring programme, as such changes were believed necessary to allow the company to remain commercially competitive. The research this case study is based on was carried out during the first half of 2003, with two colleagues of the author from Sheffield’s Institute of Work Psychology.

The research looked into the characteristics, knowledge sharing and communication dynamics of work that could be described as mobile telework, where people make extensive use of information and communication technologies as a central part of their work, and whose work requires geographic mobility between sites. The research study was small scale, and exploratory in nature and, in Domestic-Powerco, involved extended, semistructured interviews with six people who worked in the service, repair and installation division, in Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire. Before the restructuring process it would have been inappropriate to describe the service engineers as mobile teleworkers, as while their work required them to be geographically mobile, the engineers were not required to use ICTs, and they all operated out of central depots, from which they started and finished their daily activities. During this period, while the engineers were required to work in customers’ houses on their own,

the fact that they began and finished work each day from a central depot, and had to return to the depot if they needed particular spare parts, meant that there were extensive opportunities to interact with, and share knowledge between engineers. This can be illustrated by the following quote, from one of the engineers interviewed, I can remember just before the depot shut, we had some outside assessors come in to look at our training, and . . . the best training they saw was the informal training, with everyone stood around the locker, you know, and someone’s got a part in their hand, and it’s ‘oh, don’t take the right side off, do it from the left, it’s a lot easier’. The transformation of service engineers into mobile teleworkers The changes involved in the restructuring project were extremely radical in nature, and involved reducing the workforce from approximately 10,000 to 4,000.

Further, there was also a programme to close an enormous number of the 450 depots that existed in the UK at that time, with offices and depots being rationalised into regional centres. As part of this process, the service engineers lost their bases in local depots. These workers no longer had any physical location at which they were based. While historically they had gone to the depot to be allocated jobs, under the new system this process was no longer necessary. Instead, each engineer, who had their own van and set of equipment, laptop and mobile phone, received their work instructions electronically. Thus, in terms of knowledge sharing, this change in working practices significantly reduced the opportunities for the type of interaction and knowledge sharing among peers illustrated by the first quote. This was summed up as follows by one of the engineers interviewed, [Isolation] can be an issue. I think the one thing we have lost is the word-of-mouth to engineers, the group gathering in the morning.

It is like taking a part of the social life off you . . . A lot of the engineers would say the main thing they have lost is the contact with other engineers [about] this job. As will be seen in the following section, DomesticPowerco have recognised the consequences of these changes and have dealt with the loss of this informal means of knowledge sharing relatively successfully, through a number of mechanisms. However, among the engineers interviewed it was apparent that the organisational means to support interaction, communication and knowledge sharing did not totally satisfy their needs, and many of them developed their own informal means of doing this out of working hours, as illustrated in the following quotation, We all go . . . to pick up our parts, and there’s a canteen there and there’s often four or five of us in the morning, so we’ll go up and have a cup of tea and a chat, so we’ve gone together – we still do meet each other, you know go in half an hour before the shift starts. Managerial and HRM-related support for Domestic-Powerco’s service engineers Domestic-Powerco was relatively successful at providing support for its service engineers. Despite the fact that many of the engineers felt their work did not give them adequate formal opportunities to interact with colleagues, which were substituted for by the type of informal meeting described above, those interviewed were relatively happy with their work. Further, there was no evidence that they were unwilling to do their work, utilise their knowledge and share their knowledge with colleagues where appropriate. Categorising Domestic-Powerco’s strategy for managing the knowledge of its workers is difficult, as it doesn’t fall neatly into any of the categories developed by the academic literature. For example, in terms of Hansen et al.’s (1999) framework, as will be seen, there are elements of both a codification-based strategy, where electronic means are used to collect and disseminate codified knowledge, and a personalisation-based strategy, where means are used to facilitate and encourage interpersonal knowledge sharing. There are three broad knowledge processes that Domestic-Powerco’s engineers are required to utilise in order to be able to effectively do their job. First, they need to utilise and apply their acquired knowledge.

For example, the diagnosis of problems is one important task they carry out, going into customers’ homes with a vague description of a problem, which requires them to identify the precise problem and sort it out. Second, they need to continually acquire new knowledge, for example learning how to install and repair new types of equipment. Finally, as with the photocopy engineers studied by Orr (1996), there is a need for engineers to search for and share knowledge with their peers. The following section outlines the range of processes Domestic-Powerco management utilised to facilitate and support these activities. Training There were a number of aspects to the training provided by Domestic-Powerco that supported the work activities and knowledge processes of their service engineers. First, there was a formal apprenticeship scheme, which was the basic training programme that new recruits with no previous experience were put on to learn the basic skills and knowledge of the job. This programme ran for a year with half of it being classroom-based, and half of it being on-thejob training in the region where the apprentices would finally be working. For the on-the-job part of the training apprentices went out with specific engineers and learned through both observing the engineers at work, and also by being allowed to do some tasks themselves. The second aspect of Domestic-Powerco’s training scheme, a buddy system, follows on immediately from the formal training programme, and is an extension and continuation of the engineers’ on-thejob training with new engineers working full time with experienced engineers. Thus in this period, new engineers do not visit any customers’ homes without a more senior engineer with them. This process serves two purposes. First, it helps the new engineers develop their diagnostic skills in applying their formal learning to specific domestic situations.

Second, it also allows new engineers to develop good working and social relations with a number of more experienced engineers, which helps them develop a network of people they can contact if they require support and advice in the future, as most engineers do. Third, to provide the engineers with opportunities to update their skills and knowledge when necessary, there are a number of mobile training centres that tour the country, which groups of engineers take turns to go to. These centres are customised, articulated lorries of which there are eight in the UK. For example, when a manufacturer launches a new piece of equipment, the mobile training centres may be used for this, as it allows the engineers to get hands-on experience looking at and working with the new equipment. Finally, there is a system for providing staff with regular technical updates, in the form of codified knowledge and information that can be uploaded onto their laptops. This is discussed more below in the section on codified knowledge. Managerial support An intrinsic element of the support system for the service engineers is provided by their managers. Groups of engineers are organised into geographically based teams of between 30 and 60, with one area manager being responsible for all the engineers in a particular area. For the ‘small’ areas that have only 30 to 40 engineers, the area manager is likely to have sole responsibility. For larger areas with over 50 engineers, the area manager will usually also have a supporting assistant manager working for them. With these supervisory ratios, the managers interviewed emphasised the importance of trust. Managers support and supervise their engineers through a combination of phone calls, team meetings (see below) and face-toface meetings (close to customers’ homes or when they are picking up parts from distribution depots). However, supervisory ratios mean that managers are only typically able to see and/or contact each of their engineers once a week. Therefore, a hands-off style of management is a necessity rather than a positive choice by managers. The day-to-day performance of engineers can be examined by managers via the performance management system that exists, which requires engineers to complete weekly, electronic activity sheets detailing what jobs they have been working on (see below). Team meetings/social events Another mechanism used to bring teams of engineers together, which offers the manager an opportunity to interact with them face to face and allows the engineers to share relevant knowledge and information, and retain a sense of team spirit, is monthly team meetings. These are coordinated by the area manager and are typically relatively informal and ad hoc in nature, providing engineers with a forum to raise and discuss issues they regard as important. The staff interviewed also attended regular, team-based social events, organised outside working hours, but these were not a formal part of the management system and were organised at the discretion of area managers. Codified knowledge A lot of codified knowledge was also used to support the engineers in their work.

For example, their laptops had extensive step-by-step lists of instructions supported by relevant diagrams for how to do most types of repair, on most types of equipment. Thus, theoretically, whatever model of equipment the customer had (with the exception of very old and outdated equipment) the engineers had, through their laptops, the resources to help them repair them. There were also regular (quarterly) updates of technical information sent to engineers on CD-roms. Finally, engineers also received some technical information as paperwork, via the postal system. Technical support The final form of support provided to the engineers ‘in the field’ was access to a ‘technical helpline’, which they could call up at any time if they found problems that they were unfamiliar with, or the information on their laptops did not cover. Thus, a lot of formal mechanisms existed to support the service engineers in their work, which acknowledged the isolated nature of their work, and provided mechanisms to search for and share knowledge and ideas when necessary. Pay/performance management The final issue examined is the pay and performance management system that the service engineers had. While searching for,

sharing and effectively utilising knowledge were key aspects of their work, there were no direct pay-related incentives or rewards for doing so. These activities were assumed to be an intrinsic element of the engineers’ work, and it was therefore not deemed appropriate to provide bonuses for conducting such activities. The main aspect of variability in pay that existed was where extra pay was available for working weekends or holidays and where engineers had to work overtime. The main way their performance was measured and monitored was on the quality of their work and on their work-rate. Thus each engineer had to complete a weekly activity sheet detailing all the jobs they had done. Every type of job they could do was allocated an amount of time to complete, and engineers had to ensure that they carried out enough jobs so that the time allocated to the total number of jobs they had done added up to the amount of hours they were meant to work in a particular week.
Questions
1 Is there more that Domestic-Powerco could have done with its payment and reward system to encourage/ reward appropriate knowledge sharing behaviours among engineers?
2 What would be the benefits and disadvantages of Domestic-Powerco providing formal support, within work time, for the informal pre-work meetings that many engineers used to organise? Is it better to leave these meetings to be managed by staff informally or by management?
3 Is the ratio of managers to engineers adequate, or too high? Reflect on the benefits and disadvantages of either increasing or decreasing this ratio, for both managers and engineers. Is changing this ratio significantly likely to have any impact on the knowledge sharing behaviours of the engineers?