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Living with the new workplace watch your step
March 5th, 2008
The whole idea of a job is changing, and as usual, changing practices mean a new minefield.
Since the Industrial Revolution, the workplace has gone from village cottage industries to telecommuting between countries. The whole idea of social, professional, and job stability and security have vanished.
“Work” now covers a whole range of different activities and skills, in every job. The employer-employee relationship has changed. The employer is no longer a god, but someone you do business with. Hours of work range from anything you like to flexi time, to old-style 8 hour days and shifts, set in stone.
All of which means that “careers” now span whole industries, and workers have to navigate their lives, as well as their jobs. This is global, and it’s practically reversing the whole concept of employment, back to the worker, who can now operate independently of employers.
A few predictions:
In future, hopefully soon, you won’t “go to work or go to school”. They will come to you, because it’s far cheaper, more convenient for everyone, and a lot easier to manage on a daily basis.
Most jobs can be done either locally, close to home, or from home. There’s no longer any real need for “the office” or “the factory”.
Outsourcing, much as people loathe it when it affects them, will become an international job market of itself, open to everyone. Competitive costing means that whoever delivers at the lower price can get into a market very effectively, and very fast, as we’ve seen with China and India.
New Economy employers have better costing. The employee provides the workplace and most of the other overheads which are so crippling for businesses. Commercial property is so expensive that in terms of relative overheads, many New Economy jobs are literally hundreds if not thousands of time more profitable.
Some possibilities are dramatically different. Even manufacturing isn’t necessarily glued to factories any more. A commercial product run can be tooled up and done anywhere, at competitive contract prices. Orders can be filled, sales done, and administration outsourced, requiring only a relatively small workforce and a server to coordinate the work.
The change in requirements for industry means infrastructure can be planned more rationally. Instead of huge urban areas full of workers, services, traffic, billion dollar buildings, and the stress of cities on overload, people will be able to control where they work, how they work, and what they spend due to work.
The giant cities are becoming steadily less useful, and if anything too expensive to survive. Even basic costs like parking and commuting eat into wages, to absurd levels. Many domestic expenses are service-related, and those costs are way too high, relative to average wages. Trade and shopping do have to happen somewhere, but the average local mall can cover most of that. Most ordinary jobs can be done locally, and when they are, costs for employer and employee reduce drastically.
The professions can also benefit from decentralized work. Everything from architecture to zoology can be done locally, and many professionals are also stuck with overheads in terms of where they operate, and how. So are their clients. What used to be a convenient way to do business is now a nuisance, as the cities coagulate into unworkable tangles. The professions suffer from time and situation juggling in a limited number of hours. Professions don’t need added complexities any more than office workers.
For years, colleges have been setting up external campuses, grappling with costs and demand. The sheer number of communication and teaching aids now available will ultimately allow colleges to manage costs infinitely better, and handle demand much higher than current levels.
To give some idea how completely the workplace will change- even health care can become viable again. Hospitals have recently begun experimenting with online diagnoses and outpatient care, much quicker than traditional methods.
Only so many patients can be handled in one day. The need is for effective care and oversight, while being able to deal with the sheer number of new patients. It’s more than likely the house call, the check up, and other medical necessities will be able to go online, which will save billions for the health system, and make the workplace bearable for those in the health sector. That also means more jobs, because the crippling costs are almost completely removed for service providers.
Other service providers can also move away from the big building/ big organization approach. Even call centers and other remote information services are rapidly becoming obsolete, as VOIP and other methodologies become more effective.
Human-to-human services work better where contacts are easy, not in formalized structures with arbitrary KPIs and limited amounts of time for clients. You can’t guarantee to solve a problem in five minutes, as some KPIs demand. Service standards in these environments are lousy. The market is demanding better standards, and rightly so. A few more consultants, lower overheads, and better service, and you get more customers, and definitely happier customers. You also get a lot more business, because communications are vastly superior.It may not be a brave new world, but it might be a saner one.
It’ll definitely be a lot easier to live in.
Workers will have more choices, and more self-manageability.
Jobs will effectively have some sort of contract component, because of the responsibilities of handling someone else’s property and business.
But in terms of working conditions, and the ability to be mobile in the workplace like never before, work will be much less of a time consumer and more productivity based.
Old Economy jobs work on a single, limited wage, costs of getting to work, daily expenses, and a re very time-inefficient. Most people work 40 hours a week, and spend 20 hours just getting to work, let alone anything else that needs doing.
Even now, it’s possible to do most of these things in some jobs, but as the New Economy spreads, the job market will grow, as the benefits of reduced costs affect employers. They’ll be able to do more business, and hire more people. Profit has to be based on viable cost structures, and the Old Economy can’t compete, on any level.
So put your feet up, grab a cup of something, put on some good music, and enjoy your work
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