This article is by Andrew Laing, the global practice leader for Strategy Plus, part of AECOM, a provider of technical and management support services.
Sidney, Australia, covers its pavement with survey markings in preparation for installing broadband... [+]
Yahoo’s new policy of working at work, as communicated by its chief executive, Marissa Mayer, has created a firestorm of reaction. Why?
The main complaint is that Mayer is fighting an inexorable shift to telecommuting and remote working that is giving millions better work-life balance, increased productivity and concentration, and less commute time and stress. All good.
What most commentators are failing to note is that it is not an either-or situation. It’s a both-and one. For many, the best solutions are those that enable workers to blend their work lives and their home lives and to take advantage of both the home and office (or other places) as settings for different kinds of work at different times of the day and the week.
For many knowledge workers, working virtually is already a fact, whether they happen to be working from home, in the office, or elsewhere. We are all dealing with networks of information technology and data streams that connect us both within office buildings and across time zones. We all have been shifting to lighter, more mobile devices and platforms that allow us to connect in multiple ways from many kinds of settings. These capabilities certainly call into question the logic of being there in an office full-time. They even call into question the very logic of office space and furniture. What is a desk for when you can find everything you need on a tablet?
Yet real places keep coming back to haunt us, almost as if to remind us that they are still where it really happens. Places where people can work together face-to-face are still fundamental to the most critical aspects of work performance and creativity. And that is why Marissa Mayer wants people back in the office. Technology and networks have not at all replaced the value of getting together in physical locations for the sparks of creativity that doing so creates.
Technology has not replaced place. Rather it is augmenting the places where the most important things happen. That is why cities, as the ultimate networks of networks, have reasserted themselves as the central drivers of creativity in our economy. It is why the technology industry in New York may now be giving Silicon Valley a run for its money, as technology firms, both big and startup, rush to get closer to other industries, to their users, and to the talent and experience of the city, as they create new ideas for products and services.
But technology is doing more than merely enriching and augmenting the value of physical places. It is helping us imagine a future of urban living and working as a blended experience. The early twentieth century segregated activities and functions into zones, neighborhoods, and buildings of different singular activities. You lived in one area, worked in another, and commuted between. This built-in segregation and isolation has been a major contributor to our failure to achieve environmental sustainability.
Single-use zoning and planning for different functions was thought to be efficient, but we now know that most office buildings are grossly underoccupied, with only 30% to 40% of their workspace used in a typical work day, never mind the gross inefficiencies of time and energy spent on large scale mass commuting.
Technology is enabling us to re-evaluate and reimagine how we work and live across all kinds of spaces. In a sense it is enabling us to reimagine the very categories of home and work, in ways that are stressful yet also liberating (when do you switch off?). It is enabling us to repurpose the underoccupied single-use office building as a hub of social connectivity and interaction. It is enabling us to repurpose our home spaces as work spaces for part of the day or the week, as suits our work processes and our personal lives.
In fact, technology is suggesting that we can redesign our very building types and urban places. Technology workers themselves have already done this to some extent, by creating shared places for work, learning, and communal activities. Businesses like Liquidspace and Airbnb are already challenging how space is procured and provided by the real estate market, developers, and landlords. Architects are designing hybrid mixed-use towers and networked urban areas that combine living, working, retail, learning, and entertainment spaces.
Let’s celebrate our existing workplaces where we work closely together, innovate, and share ideas. But let’s also acknowledge that technology is enabling us to reimagine our living and working lives in a much broader, more sustainable, and more valuable sense. The way we live and work is already a creative, blended, hybrid 24-hour mash-up. Now our buildings and cities should be redesigned to follow suit.
