We spend more and more time working. For thousands of people, the office is a place where they spend more time than in their own homes. At the same time, it has ceased to be a space limited by four walls and has come to exist wherever the company’s employees are: in their homes,
at clients’, in cars, and in hundreds of other places around the world.
How will we be working in 10 years? Will we be connected by the internet, and will we only know the faces of our colleagues from photos and video conferences? <\/div>
at clients’, in cars, and in hundreds of other places around the world.
How will we be working in 10 years? Will we be connected by the internet, and will we only know the faces of our colleagues from photos and video conferences? <\/div>
The Institute of Directors (ID), an organization bringing together about 55,000 managing directors of enterprises around the world, tries to answer these and other questions. Together with OKI Printing Solutions (a company providing products and solutions in the field of business printing), the ID <\/div>
has prepared a report on the office of the future. The authors of the report invited European experts in communication and organizational behavior, new technologies, and interior architecture to the discussion. As they say, by combining knowledge from the fields of psychosociology and ergonomics with new <\/div>
technologies, it is possible to increase work efficiency in offices. A friendly office = a mobile office. Organizations have a geographically dispersed structure because they work for clients located in various places. Wireless LANs are becoming increasingly common, allowing them to maintain connectivity outside the company headquarters. Wireless Wi-Fi, UMTS, or GPRS networks, enabling access to office applications at home and on the highway, support the development of telework. Many organizations are introducing so-called teleworking days for their employees. <\/div>
During this day, they can perform their tasks at home. According to data from the German Empiria Institute in Bonn, at the end of 2002, 20 million people were teleworking, twice as many as at the <\/div>
end of 1999. Increasingly sophisticated security systems have made companies less afraid of providing mobile employees with access to corporate networks, although a lack of security is one of the most frequently cited barriers to the development of mobile technologies. Despite enormous technological progress, offices will not disappear from the face of the <\/div>
Earth in the coming decades. For one simple reason – people want to see each other and work together. <\/div>
Direct contact is still very important to us. However, people in the office of the future will work according to their own rhythm so as to make fuller use of life. As experts predict, before 2008, the industrial structure will be replaced by a flexible network enterprise. Meanwhile, by 2015, the centralized, inefficient, and expensive office culture will disappear.
The article comes from the magazine <\/div>
e-F2006-1s29.pdf<\/a>
The article comes from the magazine <\/div>
e-F2006-1s29.pdf<\/a>