Fads Versus Reality: What's the Best Way to Boost Workforce Productivity?

There's been much debate about the best way to encourage employee productivity. Insurance & Technology's IT Resource Management Guide offers insights into this challenge and other strategies for getting the most out of staff, budget and IT partners.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's directive that employees' work-at-home arrangements no longer will be allowed may or may not be the policy that transforms and revives the company. But it definitely has succeeded in revealing the wide spectrum of attitudes, assumptions, concerns and hopes our society has about the workplace.

The reactions to the announcement ranged from dismay to anger, ridicule to support, skepticism to affirmation. And the responses no doubt had more to do with people's own work environments than with any objective analysis of Yahoo's long-term business prospects.

It's not surprising that people would project their own feelings about work, productivity and collaboration onto Mayer's plans to change Yahoo's culture. Change is unsettling to employees, whether they're rank-and-file customer service reps and programmers or senior-level technology chiefs and line-of-business heads. At the same time, there are many who view changes such as those Mayer is imposing as validation of their own practices and views.

However, insurance technology executives face daily challenges in getting employees to perform consistently at a high and productive level. They have to maximize budgets and successfully deliver complex projects, while coping with changing business models and new competitors.

To help insurers deal with these realities (as opposed to the fads and fashions of workplace trends), Insurance & Technology presents the 2013 IT Resource Management Guide, which provides insights into the ways visionary carriers are deploying IT resources -- including staff, budgets and systems -- to meet today's market challenges and growth opportunities. As CIOs and their peers evolve from pure technologists into strategic growth leaders who offer a portfolio of capabilities, effective resource management may be the most important skill. The ability to create and lead productive teams, and to identify and align with vendors and partners offering leading-edge and differentiating solutions, is essential. That's true whether you're in the corner office, hoteling in a cubicle or even working from home.

Katherine Burger is Editorial Director of Bank Systems & Technology and Insurance & Technology, members of UBM TechWeb's InformationWeek Financial Services. She assumed leadership of Bank Systems & Technology in 2003 and of Insurance & Technology in 1991. In addition to ... View Full Bio