Future workplace: it will look nothing like this

Or should that be 'Will there be a workplace of the future?' As the concept of work as we know it changes over the next decade or so, the idea of having a physical, fixed workplace will become irrelevant. Technology has already begun making work mobile. In the US, research and advisory firm, Gartner Inc. estimates that more than 25 million of the 112 million people in the domestic workforce have a mobile job requirement. This means one in four people often conduct their businesses away from their office or workplace. That trend will grow stronger till workplaces shrink to become nothing more than nodes that help in connecting everyone who works in an organisation.

Yes, that part-science fiction, part-fantasy scenario is a long way off. Particularly in India. But trends have already gathered momentum to provide us with a preview of what is to come. Large organisations like banks, consumer product marketers, and even manufacturers, have already begun withdrawing from basic functions like selling, outsourcing such activity to amorphous networks of mobile workforces that do not even have to visit their offices. Elsewhere, in some industries, like information technology, telecommuting has already emerged as a viable means of working that also has other benefits like reduced absenteeism, increased productivity and better morale.

Physically, the workplace of tomorrow is already taking shape. With a greater degree of team-work in most industries, the layout of the modern office will change-cubicles or cube farms will be replaced by open offices where workers share terminals or work-stations when they need to rather than be tied down to the same spot. People can come in, hook up, and finish their tasks in pretty much the way we use an ATM. Much of this will, of course, depend on how or what the organisation does and the domain in which it operates.

The not-so-pretty side to all of this is in inhibiting human interaction among employees. True, there is a price to be paid for increased efficiency, but the real challenge to companies will be of balancing not just the work-life equation of their employees but also of finding the right virtual-real quotient of the work it does. For, if it is not its people, what is an organisation?

The Employee Of The Future

Circa 2022. You are based in Malana, Himachal Pradesh, because you love the outdoors and always wanted to try your hand at tending your own apple orchard. Yet you are working for four organisations-two of them in the US and two in different parts of India. You're an information technology consultant, advising companies on implementing customised marketing solutions that address their ever-fickle breed of consumers. Plus, you are a contributing editor of an in-your-face edge-of-tech net magazine and are also writing a retro sci-fi novel. You're 65 years old, but thanks to leapfrogging in medical science, you have a good 15 years of active working life left, your grey cells are buzzing and physically... well, let's just say you run 12 kilometres a day, wind, snow or rain.

Meet the employee of the future. A manager, a worker, a strategist, a visionary, all rolled in one. His or her job description changes continuously. He's a mini-entrepreneur helping a group of people start and finish a project. Next, he's a deal-maker bringing two organisations together, leveraging their joint skills to the benefit of both. That done, he becomes an hr counsellor, the human link between scores of people across the world who are collaborating to work on the same project.

Some of this may seem far-fetched but as organisations and the work they do change, the employee of the future will be a different person: multi-skilled, lateral thinking, right and left, brain type, self-regulated and self-starting. Building 20 years' experience in a single function will no longer be a sure-shot for success. Employees with talent will want to be where the action is to build their resumes.

Organisations too will hire differently. Apart from a core base of individuals, organisations will have a large, loose band of employees connected informally to the organisation. Paid probably by the hour, these e-lancers will work for more than one firm at a time.

The bottomline: Professionalism as we know it today will be deconstructed. The rules of the workplace will be laid down by the employees, who will be highly skilled, both very young and fairly old, tech savvy and socially conscious. Call him or her an entrepreneur-cum-employee and you may not be wrong because that's the profile Future Inc. will want.

The Wired Company

The life-line of organisations tomorrow will be information. Therefore, processes will ride on information superhighways that allow access, analysis, and utilisation of data. There are two reasons why this will happen: one has to do with cost and time, and the other with ease of control. Networks will lower operating and transaction costs, just like e-mail and internet telephony have slashed communication costs at companies today. A wired organisation would allow distribution of work over a bigger geography-imagine an engineering design team-and yet allow the corporate office to keep track and call the shots.

There would be a perfect flow of information internally and externally, adding to the transparency and quality of data. Decision-making and response times will be dramatically reduced, thereby increasing market opportunities for the corporation. Teams will work with each other across continents, relying on sophisticated audio-video technology. In fact, most of them won't be working out of brick-n-mortar offices at all.

The biggest benefit, however, will accrue to the consumer. Technology will make mass customisation possible. Consider this: Tomorrow, instead of picking, say, a car-off-the shelf, the customer would actually be able to 'build' his own car via the internet. The supply-chain will be self-managed. Buyers will place their orders directly to the factory, which, in turn, will check for and pull in the relevant raw materials and parts to fulfil the order. Inventories consumed will be automatically reordered with the concerned supplier, depending on the order-book.

The implication for process costs will be huge: parts will move along the supply chain with greater precision, and arrive just in time. That will free up crores of rupees in inventory-savings that will be real, not virtual.