Working in the new era

A lot has been said already about new working styles. Most of them are pretty positive about working styles that are somehow related to “the new world of work” where the information worker is put in a central position. When looking at the transition we are in now with traditional companies; the old focus around a physical building with the employees in it (either an office or a cubicle) as well as the newer styles with a mixture of traditional and virtual to almost completely virtual there are some challenges. Before diving into this and what this means let’s look at the past (still the present for a lot of companies).

In the industrial era, organizations were organized according to clear rules as defined in the classical organizational models (Fayol , Taylor , Mintzberg etc). Tasks were clearly standardized and defined as well as supervision (you just did as you were told by the boss). There was a high level of specialization in labor and top/down clear roles and responsibilities. Organizations were bureaucratic, labor hours were well defined and there was a very strong distinction between work and life in those times.

Over time this has been altered and tweaked into more social models; however, still looking at production work. Nowadays, services are becoming increasingly more important (eg The Netherlands is now a services economy and less that 10% of the labor population is doing a physical job). The growth of the service oriented jobs fit in the information era, where information technology creates possibilities. These are possibilities in services, to quickly respond to the environment but it also gives new possibilities in terms of organizational structures and culture.
These new structures and cultures are pushed by:

• The younger generation (Generation Y). They are used to doing multiple things at the same time (both private and business, so no strict hours anymore but a hybrid form where life and work occurs side-by-side in the same timeframe since they are online 24 hours a day). They are also much more individualistic than the baby boom generation and their life is partially virtual already. Generation Y is already asking for the use of social media etc in their jobs.
• Companies are faced with high costs per square meter office space. When they enable employees to work anywhere their office can be used as flexible as possible (currently the occupancy in a traditional office building is between 30% and 50%) and will act more and more as a social environment to meet peers and customers. The restaurant and coffebar will become more important than the individual offices/desks.
• The government pushing for creative solutions in managing traffic and the environment (global warming).
• Type of work, since knowledge workers take over from industrial blue collar workers, the power is shifting. Not being a manager gives you power, but having specific knowledge gives you power (and work). This means the balance of power is shifting. Supervision of the work is getting harder since the knowledge worker probably has more knowledge than the manager and the manager is depending on his staff instead of the other way around.
• The growing possibilities of technology and specially information and communication technology but also audio/visual technology (moving all A/V traffic over IP networks to the remote desktop as well; so it reaches beyond the limits of the office building)
• Knowledge is global (and so are suppliers and customers) thanks to the internet people and companies are not limited any more to local/regional available knowledge, customers and suppliers. This creates new possibilities in leveraging strengths, managing costs and increasing sales.
  

The new structures are either the new world of work with the traditional relations between people in an organization, but thanks to the above mentions factors, reworked to a new working concept or even a next step where companies are not the traditional employer-employee relation anymore. Instead, there exists a new form where highly skilled professionals have their own small companies that are working in a networked environment to cover a broad range of services they can deliver (and have some central facility for their administration, maybe a bit of sales etc). This fits in the culture of the Generation Y (individualistic, digital life and work style) and meets the demand of their customers (flexibility, highly skilled professionals).

This means you are independent as a professional and responsible for your own profit and revenue or even direction of development and selection of customers/jobs
In order to facilitate this and still give you the benefits of a traditional organization we need to embrace some new technology that enables people collaborate and communicate in a virtual environment (you created a virtual organization). Here you can think of:

• 3D worlds with avatars that do look like you (it still is nicer and easier to collaborate with somebody that looks like the person instead of a comic character). Protonmedia already made a great step here with their 3D world for enhancing the collaboration experience. The next step however need to be the avatars that look like you (however they already did a great step in having business like avatars instead of comic characters) and a 3D environment that actually looks like your company (either traditional company or networked company) and something like the use of RFID so your Real Life location and virtual location can be the same
• Distributed CRM systems (you share a CRM system but still have control over who can see and do what with your data) and finance/timetracker system
• Tools to stay up to date. Think about narrow casting/Digital Signage based on sharepoint instead of the traditional AV based systems where all participants can publish info to all or specific groups so the network stays up to date while individuals can still personalize their personal screen/view

Also from a facilitation view some stuff will be shared. Think of kind of clubhouse that facilitates meetings instead of offering bare office space so you can use meeting rooms when needed but also think about purchasing power. With more people in the group you get better deals on mobile phone plans etc