Mobility and the Workplace: the Next Business Revolution?
In a recent blog post, Olaf Swantee, CEO at EE, states, “Mobile technology is radically changing the way people live their lives. Mobility is a cultural revolution, an unstoppable wave of change.” So what’s driving this change? How can businesses embrace it and even get out of ahead of it? One thing is undisputable: the rise of mobile technology has further eroded the barrier between work and life. In a 24/7 world, where response times to emails and texts are expected at much faster rates than to letters and faxes a decade ago, maintaining the work-life balance is more challenging. This is particularly true in law firms and other service-oriented businesses.
We have found providing employees with flexible work times helps ease that load. We also eliminated paid time off (PTO) electing instead to provide employees with more flexible “time off” as long as they can get their jobs done effectively. This allows employees to shift the location of their work and the timing. This requires trust by the employer and high degree of responsibility by the employee.
This sentiment was proposed and almost evangelized by Timothy Ferris in his 2007 landmark book, The 4-Hour Work Week. Ferris provides step-by-step instructions in taking your work mobile and breaking away from the office.
As Swantee recognizes in his blog post, Generation Y is driving some of this change, “One of the cultural shifts impacting mobility is the emergence of Generation Y, brought up in a digital age, into the workplace. Gen Y people use six apps per day and spend over two hours on their smartphone on average and flexible working practices are an important factor in when they consider employers.”
Employers should heed his suggestion. We’ve found that providing flexibility in how assignments are completed in terms of work location and timing can be quite effective, particularly with Gen Y employees. Obviously, you need to balance customer demands and internal service requirements against this flexibility. And the art is in maintaining just the right balance.
The future is unknown, but I believe it is a safe bet that technology and generational changes will continue to drive this cultural shift. The question is are you going to get in front of it or resist it?
The Culture Counts blog is a discussion of law firm culture and legal innovation, including topics such as effective leadership, employee engagement, workplace culture, ideal work environment, company core values, and workplace productivity.
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