What changes is the way how people work, the tasks they perform, their relationships with other people in the workplace, as well as the overall surrounding

4. The material workplace

              General trends are toward an ever-bigger concern about the health of the employee and everything related to ergonomic. Information Technology, will become increasingly user friendly and will give the possibility of greater access to greater range of data. The big question arising is about the location, whether we will start working at home?  Whether we will still work in today’s environment ? whether today’s jobs are still the same & available in a couple of years time ?

3. THE WAY OF WORKING IN THE FUTURE.

         

              Business Reengineering breaks down the traditional functional organization and brings about work organization around processes.  People will increasingly work in teams which is the most suitable entity to take end to end responsibility for a project. The same person will be member of several teams in one time, they may perform other duties allowing people to try themselves in different specialties. Businesses must no longer simply be places to work and to produce a profit for the shareholders Instead  they must become "membership communities."

 

                  Not everyone in the core has to be a member. There can be some people with whom you enter into ordinary contractual relationships and who simply work there. But the people upon whom your long-term future depends must be members. The long-term future of a corporation depends upon its professionals just  as your survival depends upon the Doctors in the emergency room. Decisions have to be made where the knowledge is. So Professionals should have rights within the organization. Those people--by virtue of their professionalism--are at the heart of the high-commitment organization. To run an organization like that, one really have to base it around relatively small, long-term, continuing units where each member has a high level of commitment. Employers have to seek critical thinkers with broad, multi-disciplinary knowledge, analytical and technological skills and who can adapt to change.

              Alternative methods/way of future workplace 

1. WORKING AT HOME  ( TELEWORKING) - NO OTHER WAY?

                   

              "Will we work at home?". Information technology will with no doubt allow people to perform the office tasks on computers at home. The approach to the answer should be first by defining which the part of work is to be done on computers  & to see whether it can be performed from home too. Working at home has the following negative and positive aspects: -

            NEGATIVE                                                                          POSITIVE

1. No social interaction.                                          * You have your own time & space to work 
2. There might be overlap between                         *  Saving time & costs of travelling  

    "Professional role" and "Family role".            *  Save space & cost of office

3. The quality and time of                                        *  Avoid Harassment & Bias

       the work can be affected.

4. Team working is much more difficult.

              There are certainly more aspects and it is difficult to determine whether working at home is good or not. Some will work at home, others not - is that the compromise?  Or is there an alternative ?

1.1   TELECOTTAGES  

              An interesting solution  could be "Work Centres”. This is not traditional office , They would be located all over  and people living nearby would be going there to work thus ensured  social interaction.  All the negative elements of  teleworking would be rectify. The "professional role" and "family role" would be distinct and the quality of the work would not be affected by household matters. Secondly, the "Work Centres" would eliminate/reduce the long journey to work and company would save on huge overhead on prime city-central office or even do not have to rent anymore. The "Work Centers" would be ideal for work that does not need plenty personal contacts with co-workers would. More than 75 countries have joined the International Nation of Telecottages. There is now nearly 70 telecottages scatter around remote districts in the UK,with BT as one of its pioneer which reckon a saving of $6000-20000 per annum per employee.

1.2      HIGH TECH  MOBILE SUBURBAN OFFICES

              Suites of small offices were set up near inhabited by commuter which would equipped with all usual facilities, including secretaries. This suburban office is rentable by the hour. The Neal’s yard Desktop Publishing Studio in Convent Garden is a good example.

         

              It provide a Mobile office to any company which employees might be doing teleworking in normal time but need an office space in some team meeting/conference then these suburban office come in to play. This office provides central space for meeting and for work not ‘do-able’ at home.              

2.  GLOBAL  ORGANASATION

              As Technology age would continue at pace that is unstoppable. The traditional organization would become truly international and team might be group together all over the world. Hence, the traditional face to face contact between colleagues might be impossible. Videoconferencing is one way where people  can communicate  over machine in video & audio form. This allow people to communicate all over the world in /under the same roof in the same room. So that things can be discuss & decision can be make simultaneously.

              Videoconferencing at the stage it is now developed does not provide whole spectrum of feelings that a personal meeting does. It is just a matter of time that technology accelerate &, more perfect solution would emerge

3.   A FUTURISTIC VISION.

              In the future, we may imagine a computer machine, which after you switch it on, creates a virtual reality office. Inside there, you take files, do you work and go to shake hands and show the documents to your boss who is actually taking a bath in his bathroom at home but has the same equipment on.

              Let's go further - does the boss really have  to wear the helmet at the same time? Perhaps with the help of a advance electronic management support tools, the boss can create a virtual boss who would possess  all quality of the genuine person. Your meetings would be all a simulation. Too good to be true ? Why not? This would allow every person to be in many places at the same time, as the machine would simulate many of such meetings at the same time and would be able to predict 80% of each person’s actions there. The negative interpretation is that  we will be ruled by machines, but the positive one is about greater use of human potential, only supported by machines.

              Is such a scenario too much a fantasy? I do not know but there will be soon intelligent TV sets that will choose by themselves the programmes you like from the great variety that will be offered, as no one will be even able to read the TV programme (is there anyone now with say, 400 programmes?).

  IV. WILL THE "JOB PACKAGE" REMAIN?

             

              An interesting observation in the US Unemployment did not fall but only half of the reducing labour-force company improve profits. Business need to improve their productivity continually just to stay in business. A conclusion could be that the job as a social entity is vanishing. Labour-based industries have been displace by skill-based industries, which in turn would be replaced by knowledge-based industries.

             

              The future economy can only be faster than the today’s one. The future workplace can not be based on the job anymore. It must be effects - oriented. People will have to assume greater responsibilities for the entire process they are working on. It will not be possible to say "That's not my job" as the actual job of everyone will be to work for success and that will be only possible if people feel they are the ones responsible. Employees will take an increasing part of today’s management responsibilities. As they are the ones closest to action, they should be the ones to know best what to do.

              What will then be the role of management in such a case? There will probably be two kinds of managers. First, those responsible for the right functioning of processes. They will be high level specialists in a given field. Second, Managers will have similar roles to a coach. They will rather take care of the right functioning of teams, will improve the communication there, help to resolve conflicts and so on.

V. SUMMARY

              The future workplace will probably be much different from what we know by now and what we are used to. The character of the work will change continuously as we will live in a fast moving economy with high competition and changing consumers' needs. The employee will be able to adapt to the changes via lifetime education. He will be effectively backed by Info-technology. It will not be a must to work in fix location. Work will be performed in the place where it will be the most effective, probably in several places - like Teleworking and "Work Centres". The "Job package" will tend to disappear and will be replaced by self-management and work according to actual needs. The workplace of the future seems to be a promising one. Putting everything into a nutshell :-

• Your working life will span 25 years, not 45 years.
• Most of your education will take place outside the classroom.
• Corporate retirement funds will become a thing of the past.
• Half of all jobs available will be part-time, not full-time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Bridges William, "The End of the Job", Fortune, September 19 (1994), pp. 62-74

2. Byrne John A. "The Horizontal Corporation" Business Week, December 20 (1993), pp. 16-21.

3. Collins James C., Jerry I. Porras "Organizational Vision and Visionary Organizations", California Management Review, Fall (1991), pp. 30-52.

4. Davidow William, Michael Malone "The Virtual Corporation: Structuring and Revitalising the Corporation of the 21st Century" (New York; Harper & Row, 1992).

5. Davis Stanley M. "Future Perfect" (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1992).

6. Hammer Michael, James Champy "Reengineering the Corporation" (New York, Harper Business 1993).

7. Handy, Charles  “The age of unreason”  Hutchinson 1989

8. Handy, Charles   “The future of work”

9. Handy, Charles  “The empty raincoat-making sense of the future” Hutchinson 1994

10. Hines Andy, "Jobs and infotech", The Futurist, January-February 1994, pp. 9-13.

11. Nohria Nitin, James D. Berkley "Whatever Happened to the Take - Charge Manager", Harvard Business Review, January-February (1994), pp. 128-137.

12. Parker Douglas R. "Designing the Future Workplace", Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science, June-July 1994, pp. 21-22.

13. Semler, Ricardo  “Maverick!”  Arrow Books 1994

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