By Patrick Avenell
In an effort to improve communication between head office and all store staff, Dick Smith has implemented Google Apps across its workforce. According to Linda Venables, director of IT at Dick Smith, all staff from the casual sales consultant up to CEO Nick Abboud will have a Google account to stay connected.
“With more than 4,500 staff in 323 stores across Australia and New Zealand, we have a lot of people to communicate with,” wrote Venables in a post on the Google Australia blog. “It’s always been hard for us to keep in touch with casual staff who make up a significant portion of our workforce, as they don’t have corporate issued devices or email accounts.
“And even with our permanent staff, our IT team has grappled with managing the rise of personal mobile devices at work. We have also been looking for ways to improve collaboration because, until now, communication in stores has been a hierarchical one-way process through the manager.
“When we looked for solutions to these challenges, we decided on Google because it was a great cultural fit, as well as being intuitive, easy to maintain and packed with features.”
Google Apps acts a web-based replacement for traditional workplace IT solutions such as Microsoft’s suite of office products. Employees retain custom email addresses, such as the ‘@dicksmith.com.au’ suffix, while accessing their email, calendar and cloud storage (Google Drive) through a Google login. Users can choose to use the Gmail web interface or a third-party email client to access their inbox and associated services.
“One of the best things about everyone having a Google account is that all our staff will now have IT identities so we can communicate with them and they can be involved. And as many of our staff already use Gmail as their personal email, the training time is really minimal.”
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In addition to large national retailers, Google Apps can also be an effective tool in small businesses. Successful hair care importer Jerome Laxale, MD of Laxales Hair and Beauty Supplies, has been using Google Apps for three years.
“Google Apps is perfect for SMEs,” Laxale said. “There is no need to purchase expensive software, you can still use it with Outlook or choose a different email platform, and it synchronises with all your devices, including iPhones, which is what we deploy.”
“One downside, however, is that you are limited to what Google says. For example, it recently changed its Gmail Compose Email form, which has frustrated some users.”
Venables did not mention any drawbacks in her blog post, however, focusing instead on the broad suite of tools Google offers. In what could resemble a scene from George Orwell’s classic 1984, Dick Smith has plans on issuing CEO directives via video statements from Abboud on through Google’s YouTube platform.
“Building community and fostering a collaborative culture is another significant benefit of going Google.
“We’re looking forward to using Google forms to get staff feedback and comments via regular staff engagement surveys and the integration of YouTube videos means that when our CEO has an important announcement we can record this for all our staff to review at a time that suits them.
“This is a great way to overcome some of the logistical challenges of having a casual workforce working across different time zones.”
Communication with casuals is important? Irrelevant? Impossible? Tell us what you think