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December 2, 2005

A New Look at Distributed Work

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Posted by Jim Ware

I just posted this note over at my own Future of Work weblog but wanted to share it with FutureTense devotees as well.

I am very pleased that several of the Future of Work corporate members (Forest City Covington, Agilent, Boeing, and IBM) and the Business Community Centertm concept that Charlie Grantham and I are promoting are mentioned in the December 12 issue of Business Week ("The Easiest Commute of All" - paid subscription required to access), now available online and scheduled to be in print on newsstands everywhere on Monday, December 5.

Special thanks to author Michelle Conlin for her interest, enthusiasm, and perseverance in getting the story written and published. I especially liked Michelle's description of remote and mobile workers as "post-geographic."

I think this excerpt from the article says it all:

"More and more, the creative class is becoming post-geographic. Location-independent. Office-agnostic. Demographers and futurists call this trend the rise of "the distributed workforce." Distributed workers are those who have no permanent office at their companies, preferring to work in home offices, cafes, airport lounges, high school stadium bleachers, client conference rooms, or some combination of what [author Richard] Florida calls the 'no-collar workplace.' They are people who do team projects over the Web and report to bosses who may be thousands of miles away."

Michelle really gets it:

"Indeed, at many companies across America, the most innovative new product may be the structure of the workplace itself. Today, every knowledge worker has the tools to work from pretty much anywhere: a laptop, a mobile phone, and global, high-speed Internet access that is becoming as ubiquitous as pay phones used to be. Teams are increasingly transnational, warming undersea cables with Net meetings, conference calls, and collaborative projects involving large, far-flung groups. Increasingly, no one is sure of where anyone else is anymore; what's amazing is how little it appears to matter."

Among the important examples and data she cites:

  • Charlie Grantham's prediction that by 2012 fully 40% of the workforce will be distributed

  • At IBM 40% of the workforce has no office at the company

  • At ATT one-third of the managers are post-geographic

  • At Sun Microsystems close to 50% of employees are equipped to work from just about anywhere; and Sun's virtual workers "are 15% more productive than their office-tethered brethren"

  • Agilent closed 48 offices in 2003; today 70% of its workforce is connected remotely (and Agilent estimates that its virtual workers cost the company 60% less than their in-office peers)

Finally, at Boeing, Jeffrey Hobbs, Director of the Workplace of the Future, says that distributed work is a necessity.

"It's a key to retaining younger workers as well. At Boeing, the average employee is 46 years old, says Jeffrey Hobbs, Boeing Co.'s (BA ) director of the workplace of the future. So to draw younger workers, the company has no choice but to offer the flexibility they prize. Yet its virtual work program is a smash with all ages. 'Of the 8,000 employees participating, I've only heard of a few who have said they want to come back to a regular office,' Hobbs says."

Do you have a good distributed work story? What it's like, how it works, what it's worth? I'm always on the lookout for more case examples, and I'd love to hear from any of you about your experiences.

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Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Distributed Work | In the News | Management Practices | Trends | Workplace Design



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