eHampshire Conference - Work Smart Grow Smart - 7th November 2006. Over 170 people attended the eHampshire Conference at Winchester Guildhall, which focused on the economic and environmental impact of promoting mobile and flexible working styles. Delegates saw presentations from IBM evangelist Andrew Reynolds, eHampshire Director John Rees-Evans, MATISSE project manager Tony Corbin (interviewed here for Solent TV), BT Work Style business development director Peter Knowles, Chief Executive of Work Wise UK David Lennan and Director of Henley Management Centre Peter Thomson. Findings from the MATISSE project show that by simply doubling the number of mobile and flexible workers (currently estimated to be 380,000 people) the region could benefit by saving:

The conference also featured live interactive voting, during which the audience was asked to identify what it saw as the major barriers to doubling the amount of flexible and teleworking within their organisation: The audience (made up of senior managers and staff) reported that adapting management styles to measure outputs as well as learning to trust employees were two of the biggest barriers to embracing greater use of flexible and mobile working practices; technology issues were seen as a relatively minor problem. The audience cited poor management practice as the biggest barrier to increasing the amount of flexible and teleworking in the region. Almost all participants in the study reported increased productivity and a better work/life balance as a result of adopting the new styles within their companies. In an effort to reduce the environmental impact of the conference, delegates were handed a memory stick as they left, containing full copies of the conference programme, exhibitor information and each of the presentations they had seen. Also included on the stick was a copy of the MATISSE Report and Toolkit

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