The Future of the Workplace: No Office, Headquarters in Cyberspace

[Marnie]

I'm wondering if anybody else here works like this: no office, just log on, have web conferences, exchange e-mails, etc., and get your job done, without ever leaving home. I've been doing this for some 5 years and I'll never work in a building again. I'm just curious as to how many of you work like I do.

The Story:

Imagine a work world with no commute, no corporate headquarters and perhaps not even an office in the physical world at all.

For Bob Flavin, a computer scientist at IBM; Janet Hoffman, an executive at a management consulting firm; and Joseph Jaffe, a marketing entrepreneur, the future is already here.

"These days we do so much by teleconference it really doesn't matter where you are," Flavin said.

Like 42 percent of IBM's 350,000 employees, Flavin rarely comes in to an IBM office.

"We don't care where and how you get your work done," said Dan Pelino, general manager of IBM's global health care and life sciences business. "We care that you get your work done."

IBM says it saves $100 million a year in real estate costs because it doesn't need the offices.

On the day we met Flavin, he was collaborating with computer scientists in British Columbia and Beijing from the on-call room of the local ambulance corps where he works as a volunteer.

The work force at the Accenture management consulting firm is so mobile not even the CEO has an office with his name on the door.

With no corporate headquarters, if you need a work space, you reserve it like a hotel room

[rtwo]

Personally, I'm in favor of any scenario in which parents can provide for their families, and still spend more time with them.

[kari21]

As if we all need another excuse to get on the computer...

[EricH]

For me (when I was in the secular workplace) part of going to work and interacting with people was the belief that God was already at work in people's lives there, and I would get to partner with Him in that work. Working from home removed those relationships at interactions.

[Marnie]

For me (when I was in the secular workplace) part of going to work and interacting with people was the belief that Giod was already at work in people's lives there, and I would get to partner with Him in that work. Working from home removed those relationships at interactions.

Yeah, this is true. I have Client Appreciation weekends twice a year, where most of my clients and I get together for a BBQ and other activities, which usually include a church service on Sunday. To my surprise, almost all of my clients stay over for the service. Most of them are not believers, but this kind of fellowship is a great opportunity to plant some seeds.

[meagain]

Sounds like the perfect deal to me

[Guest]

Working at home is not possible at my current job.

I've got a neighbor who does work from home and he seems to enjoy it.

I wouldn't mind the chance to try it out, especially if the money was good...................

[Marnie]

Wow! I cannot believe I am the only person who works from home here!

[buckthesystem]

Marnie. I'm not "getting at you" really, honestly! But you seem to be assuming that we all do, or want to do, office work for a living.

My sister said to me once, years ago, "you work with your hands while I work with my brain". She worked in an office and seemed to think that that made her better than me. I've never felt more like strangling someone before, nor since. I didn't ever say anything to her about it though because I really don't think she realised what she'd said.

But to me computers are for recreation purposes. I had a job not long ago where I used a computer to write CVs for people, scan in old photographs and print them out, or type up essays for them or submissions to parliament (funnily enough it was mostly submissions). I didn't need a computer, a good word processor would have done, but I worked for a computer sales place and was supposed to be demonstrating what their computer could do.

I remember one of my customers saying to me "I am going to be driving a digger all next week" and he was really excited about this. Recreation to me is anything that you don't do in the workplace, so if you worked from home, you'd never get away from it.

[Marnie]

Marnie. I'm not "getting at you" really, honestly! But you seem to be assuming that we all do, or want to do, office work for a living.

Oh no! Not at all! I work from home but what I do is hardly "office work!" And I know for sure there is one other person here who runs a landscaping business from home; that constitutes "working from home."

And to answer somebody's else's comment a few posts ago. Working from home is not a dream at all. When you "go to work," usually you work for a specified number of hours then come home. But when you work from home or are self employed, you are "at work" 24/7. I keep a log (OCD here, again) and last week I worked some 60 hours, and it was a slow week, I took a day off!