Is the employee of the
future going to be a young, be-suited man or woman sitting at a
desk from nine to five? Could it be that future workspaces will
be made up of meeting space, and the concept of having your own
desk at work no longer existing? The notion of nine to five
might gradually disappear, with staff working ad-hoc hours.
Workplace
Offices will probably disappear and instead mini-business
centres could spring up near satellite offices. Increasingly
people will work from home as organisations cut down their
overheads on office space and use remote locations as the new-age
workplace.
Wi-Fi streets
These communities will build up around 'streetscapes' with
services for workers such as hairdressers and cafés. Workers
will only come to the office to collaborate. Better technology
infrastructure will make distributed working easier. Gone will
be the days when cafes, hotels and petrol stations, were Wi-Fi
hotspots, workers of tomorrow won’t need such limitations.
Instead they will blog on the train, in between sips of coffee
and uploading files before filling up the car or send a few
emails in the school car park. Of course, all of this will have
a positive impact on health and stress levels.
Tomorrow’s leaders today
Already our new-age leaders are considering employee value based
on performance rather than a 9-5 office attendance. They are
working out mobile and remote agreements on how their teams can
manage flexible working. They are investing in the right
technology for new-age employees to work from home or on the go,
not just broadband connected laptops, but phones with mobile
email access. It will all be so simple it won’t feel like
anything else except the ‘norm’. There will be nothing advanced
or special about sending ‘granny’ the weekend’s party pix and
the ‘boss’ Monday’s Weekly Report while standing in the queue at
Sainsbury’s.
Recruiting remote workers
With this new-age worker in mind, many employers are now
considering remote working and working from home as viable
options in their recruitment drive. Websites such as remote
employment will come to the fore and take the lead in recruiting
‘tomorrow’s workers’. Currently, around £3.1 million people
usually or regularly work from home and this is likely to double
in the near future.
New business opportunities
The staggering figure of ‘one in seven’ mothers who currently
work flexible hours with 12% of them using a ‘term time’ working
arrangement will explode and more than half of the ‘mummy’
population will own businesses. Home working franchises and
online businesses, allowing mums to pursue a career and maintain
an income with the opportunity to work from home, will be ‘old
hat’. Dads, too, will be entrepreneurs of the future juggling
all sorts of enterprising start-ups around the kid’s meal times.
Virtual recruitment
Ken Sheridan, managing director of Remote Employment, believes
the recent emergence of 'virtual jobs' and ‘virtual communities’
is changing the way companies attract and retain skilled
employees. Smarter organisations reduce employment costs by
adopting ‘remote working’ as a regular employment solution.
Remote Employment is an online web service specialising in
remote working, work from home positions and home based
appointments. They promote work-life balance with employment
solutions such as flexible working, remote working, mobile
working and working from home. Adopting this modern day approach
to our working lives will increase business productivity and
competitiveness, reduce transport congestion and pollution,
improve health, assist disadvantaged groups and harmonise our
work and family commitments.
Sheridan adds: “The new-age worker’s 'green agenda' will
increase home working, which will make it much easier for
families to combine work and caring responsibilities. Flexible
working at senior levels will be more acceptable, which will
encourage more men, particularly in younger age groups, to ask
for flexible arrangements enabling them to participate more
fully in family life at no cost to their career ambitions.
Remote Employment hopes thousands of companies and organisations
will follow the new-age worker by implementing flexible working
practices to the benefit of their business, their employees, and
the country as a whole.
|
