My last articles’ subject was the motivation for Digital Transformation from a company’s point of view.
But the movement in this area is also bringing questions for the “other side” on the table: How do we as employees WANT to work? If the work-life is changing, can we maybe make some wishes?
As more and more people are working as knowledge-workers or creative workers instead of working on a big industry machine needing tons of material resources, their workspace needs less space – if it’s enough to have a mobile and a laptop with you, you are far more flexible where and when to get your stuff done.
For example, if you are a parent, you could think of getting some work done in the early morning hours before your kids wake up, make them ready for school and be in the office a little bit later then the rest of the team, but with some work already done before the rest even woke up.
OR if the winter is dark and rainy again in Europe, you could just grab your laptop + smartphone, fly to a nicer place in the world and work where the sun is up in the sky boosting your energy bar up !
So far, that sounds pretty good, right?
But on the other side – if there are no official office hours for the whole team, it will happen that there is no time you are really “off” – if the team is big enough, somebody will be sending messages at any time or even try to call you…. that’s why it’s important to have some rules or policies that help you to set some recreation time for your brain where you are just not working.
The term “New Work”
When you google the term “New Work” , you will get quite a number of interesting insights. Companies trying to brand themselves as “new work”-leaders to attract new employees. Conferences bringing CEOs, HR-Experts and even philosophers together to discuss how work can be organised in the future.
I recognized that several aspects are being discussed again and again:
- Flexibility of your workplace: from home, in the office or from a Co-Working place
- Flexibility of your working hours: it seems to become less unusual that employees don’t necessarily need to be in the office from 9-5 but can adjust that to fit their personal life better
- More direct cross-team communication without involving the team leader as postman
- Creating a culture of life-long learning
Matrix / Network Organisations
When analysing classical organisations inside companies, it seems like departments and hierarchies are the way to go: every employee has a manager and that manager has a manager and so on… but is that still valid to “serve only one master”?
What if you, for example, are working for your companies Software UX division and therefore became a master in design programs like the ones from Adobe for example. Wouldn’t it gain a lot of synergies then if you’d team up with the marketing team that is working with the same tools (although creating different stuff)?
Or if you are expert for Test automation in software development in the team that develops your company’s webshop. Why not shout out to your network and find peers in different development teams doing also test automation? Team up, share your experiences and become experts in your topic!
Some of the sources I read:
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