Morning from a wet, windy and grey London, we’ve had freezing arctic weather a couple of days ago and now we have tropical rainstorms, albeit a bit cold.
Anyway my rant for today will hopefully get a lot of people thinking about the future of employment both for employers and employees alike.
The current malaise in the world economy is causing employers to axe jobs by the thousands. The banking sector alone is set to shed 250,000+ workers this year. The retailers Woolworths in the UK will go bankrupt with potential job losses of 30,000 or more.
What we must not forget is that this is just the beginning of the tightening of corporate belts over the coming years. Even though the shoots of recovery may begin as early as 2010, the world economy is not out of the woods yet.
Even though commodity prices are in the doldrums the costs of living and running a business are still sky high. Due to the expansion of growing crops for bio-fuel the cost of basic foodstuffs will continue to rise. An example of how basic food crops will continue to rise is demonstrated by the recent discussions by the Saudi Arabian government about acquiring arable farmland in countries in Africa and Asia to grow crops solely for the purpose of supplying the needs of its people. Crop production is greatly affected by oil as a lot of the raw material costs are derived from oil.
As the cost of oil has dropped this has not been reflected at the pumps for automobile users or in the fuels bills to run a home. What this has led to is a massive increase in the use of public transport, but the infrastructure for such transport systems is overburdened and ill-equipped for the surge in demand. A recent evening rush hour on a Friday in London, a tram system that operates in the southern side of the city had to be suspended due to overcrowding.
All of these problems and other constraints on resources and space will and is causing employers to radically think how they do business.
The key area where I believe change will come is where to base or locate employees?
There is already a huge drive towards home-based workers especially in the ICT services industry. This is where the next industrial revolution will come as more and more people are based at home and perform their services to their employer from home. With massive improvements being made in broadband and Wi-Fi technology and there is more to come from these fields, employers will increasingly make it mandatory for workers to be based at home.
Recently a friend of mine who works as a database manager for a large insurer in the City of London has been asked to become home-based from 2009 with a once a week visit to the office. A client I have been working with recently within the ICT industry has most of its senior employees based at home with a central and satellite offices where they can hot-desk when required.
I would go so far as to say why do we need call centres? Let every employee be based at home and with the appropriate management control systems, targets, and KPIs management can run a network or home-based employees.
You also have to look at the Internet, it is nowhere near its true potential and as more and more users around the world log on, and especially in China and India, the growth potential there is astronomical.
This will lead many people globally to run businesses, clubs, forums, workshops, schools etc online and breaking away from the shackles of employment.
The future I believe is more and more people working from home and more of these people will be entrepreneurs in their own right.
The benefits are numerous and here are just a few:
1. Reduction in the use of resources to fuel transportation
2. Reduced lost time due to lateness and transportation issues
3. Reduced productivity due to sickness
4. More flexibility in the service hours that a company can provide
a. i.e. by having home-workers around the world a business can support its customers anywhere
5. Reduced office costs for employers
6. More free time for the employees
7. Less stressed employees
8. Happier employees
Of course there are certain industries and employees who need to be based in an office, but it’s high time that all organisations reviewed the working practices in this field of where to locate employees.
Such a change will have greater benefits than costs.
Shah Alam
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