The future of work
It’s work, Jim, but not as we know it.
Tuesday, December 13 2011 || Features || BY Amanda Sachtleben
Wanted: A productive, creative collaborator who can sift through information overload. Work on contract, choose your workplace (any country considered), your hours, tools and rewards.
Even if there are no newspapers left to print job ads in, this is what you might see if you’re in the market for a new role in the not so distant future.
How, why, when and where we work are all changing. So what’s the workplace of the future and who is tomorrow’s worker?
Some jobs — like a web designer — simply didn’t exist a couple of decades ago. Go back a bit further and companies routinely shouted their veterans a gold watch and lamingtons for 20 years’ service.
Now the concept of employment is morphing as companies cast their nets widely for ideas and people in a web-connected world.
We may dream, as the job ad says, of choosing when and where we work and for how much. But the upshot of the new reality is a blurred line between business and leisure, a slew of online information and, with Google searches close at hand, no excuse for not knowing how to do something.
Sam Rye is one of the emerging breed.
A connector and business developer at Wellington’s Enspiral — which runs startups with a bent for social good, does web development and design projects and offers legal and facilitation services — Rye works from home or the office as needed and is free to work a day a week setting up the Wellington office for Conservation Volunteers. Enspiral’s model is about facilitating work not controlling workers — and about measuring results not the labour or time spent achieving them, says Rye.
“Flexibility is a really good place to start. It enables you to relate differently to the way you work. Autonomy is a hugely powerful intrinsic motivation. The ability to decide your own day and not be controlled can make people more motivated.
“The traditional view is if you’re not watching someone at work, they’re not working. That’s simply not true.”
The Enspiral team uses a suite of web-based tools to communicate and manage productivity, including time tracking software Minutedoc, corporate social media programme Yammer and Skype. The technology costs a small monthly fee and saves Enspiral money, says Rye. “Ten years ago [the tools] probably would have cost us a million dollars.”
Work is done on contract or per project and payment is a fixed fee or billed hours. There are no salaries. Those who choose to get involved in Enspiral’s startups can earn equity as these operations grow.
“We have a co-working space where people can buy a desk. Our idea is don’t control people and tell them they have to be in the office, give them the option and see if they see the value in it. If we can pay people as much as possible they can choose whether they can see the benefits. Traditionally you’re told, ‘here’s your office, that’s where you work from’. You have no choice over the costs or those overheads being chosen for you.”
"We may dream, as the job ad says, of choosing when and where we work and for how much."
Whereas the reality will be dictated to us. You will scramble for the privilege of certain hours here and there, use your own equipment whether you want to or not, have no job security, no sick leave, holidays. Hey - it's called being a contractor ins't it?
Posted by Anonymous at 07:24 on February 8, 2012
Back in 1977 I attended a conference in Palmy North run by Industrial Engineers (I am an industrial designer). The head of IBM New Zealand, Basil Logan (more recently known for heading the NZ Y2K Commission), spoke about 'the office of the future'. He spoke of computers no longer filling rooms but sitting on desks - maybe we could all have one! There would be machines that send pictures over phone lines (faxes) and telephones that you can take out and about upon your person!
"The office of the future may not exists,: suggested Basil, "because people may be able to work from home." And then he said something that shows how male dominated the workplace was 35 years ago: "In the end it will come down to how much value we place on those chance conversations that take place as men stand shoulder to shoulder at the urinal!"
Posted by Michael Smythe at 05:21 on February 9, 2012
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