Productivity and Technology Go Hand-in-Hand
August 3, 2010
Written by admin, in Latest OfficeLinks News
A Brigham Young University study of more than 24,000 IBM employees in 75 countries revealed 25 percent of those surveyed reported work interfered with personal and family life. The study showed under traditional working conditions, an employee can work happily for 38 hours per week, whereas an employee with workplace flexibility can work up to 57 hours per week without sacrificing valuable personal and family time.
Survey results likes these highlighting a boost in worker productivity and satisfaction when workers have more autonomy over how, where and when they work, is leading companies to implement strategic technology solutions empowering employees to work in a more mobile and efficient way.
We all know the continuum of people working outside of conventional corporate boundaries will only rise in the future – shifting the focus from fixed office space needs to technology needs. Most experts agree the number of professionals working in a virtual environment could constitute 40 percent of the workforce within a few short years. As workers access information through different devices and need to collaborate and share content with colleagues across time zones, companies need to ensure they have a technology platform, which allows workers to be connected – professionally and socially.
New technology is fundamentally redefining work. Businesses that align their technology strategy to these new work styles will improve their overall performance while providing an ideal virtual work environment for their employees.
Most technologies pertaining to collaboration and networking are kind of old already. It is not the so-called “new technologies” that are turning around the way we work. If you looked further, you might have observed that the new trends are not essentially brought about by the “new technologies” (there is not much new technology since the invention of computers, really).
What’s new is that businesses are starting to embrace “social networking” as part of the business and as necessary vehicle for establishing brand.
So the new trends that we are seeing are not essentially based on clamor for new technologies but for genuine human interactions.
As far as “mobile working” is concerned, working-from-home does not really address the issue of the life-work divide. Even if you are home-based, you still have to put a division between work and the home portion of it. The “physical” sense of working away from work does not really fulfill what others call “mobility or flexibility”. Even you are working from home, you still must sacrifice time. Something has to give.