Author: Frederick Pilot

It’s official: Working from home is the worst

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“If it’s just about you banging out emails or writing a report, sure, you can do that wherever,” Waber said. “But the vast majority of stuff we do at work today—teamwork, not individual work—that is the stuff that really measurably suffers.” For big companies, that decline in productivity can be worth millions of dollars a year.

In a 2012 poll, 62% of employees said they found telecommuting to be socially isolating. And “jobs where individuals are most likely to be telecommuting involve sitting in front of a computer,” Allen said, so it makes sense that people working from home would get less exercise than those who have to commute.

Source: It’s official: Working from home is the worst

For many if not most knowledge workers, that is exactly what they do most of the day: sitting in front of a computer and writing documents and emails. And in many workplaces, they are expected to do that with minimal interaction with others, which is viewed as socializing and break time in the tradition of the water cooler — not working. The cultural ethic is nose to the grindstone in the style of the Industrial Age assembly line.

Tolan is certainly correct that in organizations that encourage collaboration, being face to face is ideal. But as Tolan suggests, most knowledge organizations do not operate as full time focus groups or think tanks. Constant co-located and spontaneous interaction among their members isn’t an organizational expectation. Tolan is also right in pointing out that not all knowledge workers have a suitable home office environment. A growing industry is stepping up to address this need with shared co-working office space in communities where knowledge workers live.

In addition, Tolan ignores the enormous business and personal cost to both knowledge organizations and their constituents to maintain what I term in my book Last Rush Hour: The Decentralization of Knowledge Work in the Twenty First Century as centralized commuter offices (CCOs) that involve hours of wasted time spent each week traveling between home and office, often entailing significant distance and time. CCOs are unnecessary with today’s information and communications technology that is rendering the Industrial Age daily commute trip obsolete.

What Your CEO Should Know about Productivity, Profits, Work, and Family | Anne-Marie Slaughter | LinkedIn

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But we actually have a growing body of data in support of the proposition that working less means working better. This relationship between working better and working less holds particularly true in any job requiring creativity, the well­spring of innovation. Experts on creativity emphasize the value of nonlinear thinking and cultivated randomness, from long walks to looking at your environment in ways you never have before. Making time for play, as well as designated downtime, has also been found to boost creativity. Experts suggest we should change the rhythm of our workdays to include periods in which we are simply letting our minds run wherever they want to go. Without play, we might never be able to make the unexpected connections that are the essence of insight.

Source: What Your CEO Should Know about Productivity, Profits, Work, and Family | Anne-Marie Slaughter | LinkedIn

Anne-Marie Slaughter bores down to the essence of where value is added in knowledge work: freeing the mind to operate creatively — and not as an Industrial Age machine putting in set hours in an office or cubicle in a centralized commuter office.

As I wrote in my book Last Rush Hour, a lot of this creative thought is stimulated by something sedentary and often obese and out of shape  knowledge workers desperately need: prolonged exercise that gets blood flowing to the brain — the knowledge worker’s essential tool — and releases beneficial hormones. Stimulating that creativity thus offers the added bonus of potential enhanced health and lower health care utilization.

“Telework” is outdated in age of location independent work

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There are still a remarkable number of offices filled with modern-thinking people, trying to solve modern day issues that look like they were constructed in 1984. And while I love nostalgia as much as anyone, you don’t see Google and Facebook flaunting photos of high, padded cubicle walls and flourescent lights. Why? Because they want the most out-of-the-box, creative and collaborative employees working on their future-thinking initiatives.One of the biggest barriers I face in my work, promoting workplace flexibility, is the notion that employers think I’m talking about sending everyone to work from home. Again, “telework”, a term coined in the 70’s is also antiquated. It is in fact rooted in the notion that you have to be anchored somewhere to work, which is just not the way your average employee operates in 2015.

Source: Transforming the Workplace | Calgary Economic Development

Robyn Bews nails the transformation that’s taking place in how knowledge work gets done. She makes a key point I discuss in my book Last Rush Hour: the terms “telework” and “telecommuting” are based on the Industrial Age notion that knowledge work must be performed in what I term “centralized commuter offices” or CCOs for short. Under this outdated paradigm, “tele”working in another location is the exception rather than the rule.

For once and for all, please stop with this ‘death of the office’ stuff – Workplace Insight

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Even hugely disruptive factors such as the proliferation of co-working space appear to be nothing more than an important new addition to the market.

The reasons for this attachment to creating places to bring people together are explored in typically lyrical fashion by the incomparable Neil Usher here. All that remains to add is that so long as people work on the same things and need to develop relationships, they’ll want to share physical space.

Source: For once and for all, please stop with this ‘death of the office’ stuff – Workplace Insight

Of course the office isn’t dead. Knowledge workers will continue to need them. However, the maturation of information and communication technology (ICT) in the 21st century is redefining the office. The office no longer has to be in high cost towers in urban centers — what I term in my book Last Rush Hour as centralized commuter offices or CCOs.

For example, the co-working office space to which the author refers enables knowledge workers to avoid the enormous personal cost of commuting to distant CCOs when these co-working facilities are located in their communities. There, they can serve multiple organizations and their members residing in a given community.

I concur with the author that people naturally want to develop relationships with their colleagues and ideally share physical space. But for knowledge workers, that’s not necessary on an 8-5, Monday through Friday basis. Much work can be done apart from colleagues along with the benefit of quiet concentration. Collaboration can be done via ICT and avoid the major expense and time suck of daily commuting.

Telecommuting USA: Stuck on the threshold of change | The Stack

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Information and communications technologies have swept across the globe and their economic impact affects every community throughout the United States. Not only has this revolution accelerated the growth in the information economy but it has also facilitated the rapid transfer of American jobs to other countries. As America struggles to find its policy footings regarding these swiftly advancing services and technologies, fundamental changes to social and economic structures are well underway. While classical views on the future of metropolitan communities, regional economic development and sustainability planning approaches provide strong emphasis (if not sole) on the transportation and mass transit infrastructure or focus on increasing densities, they exclude any mention of information and communications infrastructure as a tool for planning 21st century communities.

Source: Telecommuting USA: Stuck on the threshold of change | The Stack

As I argue in my book Last Rush Hour: The Decentralization of Knowledge Work in the Twenty-First Century, in this article Michael Shear also portrays the rapid development and proliferation of information and communications technology as a hugely disruptive socio-economic force. It’s obsoleting the twentieth century, Industrial Age pattern where people live in one community and commute to another to work. Now they can work in their communities, either at home or in local shared office space that Shear terms “distributed workplaces.”

 

A Toxic Work World – The New York Times

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Still another woman wrote to me about her aspiration to an executive-level position and the predicament of doing so with a 2-year-old at home: “The dilemma is in no way the result of having a toddler: After all, executive men seem to enjoy increased promotions with every additional offspring. It is the way work continues to be circumscribed as something that happens ‘in an office,’ and/or ‘between 8–6’ that causes such conflict. I haven’t yet been presented with a shred of reasonable justification for insisting my job requires me to be sitting in this fixed, 15 sq foot room, 20 miles from my home.”

Source: A Toxic Work World – The New York Times

So writes Anne-Marie Slaughter of the outdated notion that knowledge work requires a separate, time-defined space in a centralized commuter office (CCO). Her correspondent is right: there really isn’t a logical rationale. It’s Industrial Age custom and practice and no longer necessary and appropriate in the 21st century when the information and communications technology tools knowledge workers need to do their work are widely accessible outside of CCOs. These tools disintermediate the time and distance constraints that place an unneeded and heavy burden on individuals and families.

Zappos is Leading the Way for Bossless Companies – The Atlantic

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A radical experiment at Zappos may herald the emergence of a new, more democratic kind of organization.

Source: Zappos is Leading the Way for Bossless Companies – The Atlantic

This article posits that the proliferation of information and communications technology (ICT) is driving decision-making to lower levels of the traditional hierarchical organization, making its top-down, command and control management structure based on all information flowing upward less necessary.

As work goes virtual, time zone becomes the new location

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As more knowledge jobs go virtual and eliminate the daily trek to commute-in offices, location for some still matters. But rather than a specific metro region, the time zone in which the knowledge worker lives is showing up as requirement in job postings for virtual positions. Such as this one posted this week — and quickly filled — seeking applicants residing in the U.S. Eastern Time Zone.

LAC Group is seeking a full-time, experienced, Research Analyst, to work virtually for our Library as a Service (LaaS) platform.  The Research Analyst will staff a busy and diverse virtual research desk, performing and managing requests for legal, corporate, business development and other research from LaaS clients. All research and communication will be performed online and by phone, using both paid databases and open sources. The Research Analyst will report directly to the Research Manager and work with other analysts to complete research requests in a timely, professional, and cost effective manner. Research will be delivered directly to clients using a virtual reference desk platform.

This is a full-time virtual position. Candidates must reside in the Eastern time zone.

The Last Rush Hour is coming

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Ever made the daily trip to the office and wondered why you spent the time and effort getting there simply to write reports and memos, make phone calls and exchange emails and chat messages with colleagues and have an occasional meeting?

Plus knowing you have easily started on those communication and collaboration activities in your home office or community co-working space not long after waking and having your first cup of coffee, boosting your productivity while gaining more control over your work schedule?

In today’s world with information and communication technology more readily available almost everywhere, is it really necessary to make the commute to a distant office every morning and back home at the end of the work day?

Plenty of today’s knowledge workers are increasingly asking themselves these questions. Pressed for time with their busy daily schedules, they need more of it every day for exercise and sleep and spending time with their families and in their communities. Particularly when health experts are sounding the alarm over a rise in costly, chronic health conditions that can be prevented or reduced with more healthful lifestyles.

Their organizations are also re-examining the need for commute-in offices and the large cost of maintaining those spaces – especially when their staff members don’t necessarily want or need them.

The questions from organizations as well as those who work with them represent a tipping point that is being reached in the transition between the Industrial Age of the twentieth century – when work was centralized in offices and factories and people went “to” work — and the information and work anywhere, anytime era of the twenty-first when work comes to people.

A new eBook, Last Rush Hour: The Decentralization of Knowledge Work in the Twenty-First Century, describes the forces driving this transition and how it will benefit individuals and organizations and ultimately how it will impact where people choose to live and work.

The book is thoroughly researched, containing nearly 100 reference citations. Last Rush Hour is available through all major online book retailers including Amazon, iBooks and other online eBook retailers.