Work 365?

By Matt Ballantine, Guest Contributor

For some time now I’ve been parroting the idea that “Work is no longer a place that you go, more a thing that you do”. But I’m starting to change my mind.

For some people, undoubtedly, work is a physical place where they need to be. As a rough rule of thumb, if it involves a uniform then you are probably tied to a specific physical workplace (although in the case of the emergency services, that physical place will be indoors and out, and surprisingly large). Include in “uniform” safety clothing and you’ve probably covered 90% of “need to be at work” workplaces.

For the rest of us, drones in the office world of “knowledge working” the tie to a physical space is not nearly so strong. Don’t get me wrong, organisations work far less well if there is never any close physical proximity of the people. It’s much harder for people to build strong working relationships if they don’t meet in person once in a while, and there are types of working that just are better in the same physical space.

But you don’t have to be in the office to work effectively.

Attitudes towards working from places other than the office, though, are still fairly pejorative. The UK recently suffered a short cold snap in which transport infrastructure was significantly disrupted. The media coverage of “working from home” still implied “not really working”. That people were shirking, putting their feet up. That in the traditions of the Protestant Work Ethic work should be unpleasant and how can being at home fit such a description?

Maybe this is because so many journalists are in the category of having to be in a physical spaceport work (do they wear a uniform? Sometimes, I guess, involving a bullet-proof vest and the word “PRESS” these days).

But despite the sneering, it are these trends of flexibility of location that have led to the idea that work isn’t any longer about specific place. Trends that have been accelerated by the advances in technology in the past couple of decades. Typified by products like Microsoft Office 365, which is currently being adopted by organisations across the globe.

Microsoft's branding always been a little, erm, iffy. Who else would go from NT to 2000 to XP to Vista to 7 to 8 to 10 as they did with Windows? But it has stuck me in the past few days that Office 365 is actually sinister.

Presumably if there was any logic behind, it was about availability of the service. But there, staring you in the face, is the future of work/life balance. The Office. 365 days of the year.Which is why I'm re-evaluating my views on how work is changing. It's not that we are stopping going “to” work. But that for many the location is shifting from the physical to the digital workspace. From the office to the Slack channel or the Hangout or the Skype chat.The move from physical to digital workplace has its advantages. It offers organisations and workers the opportunity for far greater flexibility than in the past. But that flexibility comes with risks. Managing the separation between work and not-work becomes a challenge.

Presenteeism in the digital workplace is Office 365/24/7.The starting point to managing this transition is to acknowledge what's happening and accept the reality...

• That the digital systems we use are moving from mere tools, to become the places in which we work.

• That training work skills needs to embed technology throughout, not be separated out as a technology ghetto.

• That leadership role modeling is both as important as ever, and also harder now that people are becoming less physically present.

• That performance management based on output and methods is broken when you can't see how people are working.

• That work can be anywhere, but shouldn't be always. The Office, physical or virtual, for no more than 40 hours a week, plus vacations.

How are you re-evaluating your views on how work is changing?

What is your experience?

Matt Ballantine is a technologist who has specialised in issues of collaboration and collaborative technologies – spending over two decades helping organisations make sense of where people, communications and technology collide.He has held senior management roles at BBC Worldwide, Reuters and Microsoft UK and his consulting career has seen him work with a wide range of organisations across government, pharmaceuticals, professional services, legal, utilities, telecoms and media.In 2016 his research paper into collaboration, Who Shares Wins, was published by the Leading Edge Forum.Find out about his work here.  Connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.