Vision

Is there a best workplace? Can we create workplace environments in which people are innovative, productive, flexible, and satisfied at the same time? Researchers and practitioners have been searching for the ideal workplace for decades now. In 1995 David I. Levin published his book “Reinventing the Workplace”. In his book Levine presents case studies and evidence to show that employee involvement in the workplace can significantly increase both productivity and employee satisfaction. The findings were not brand new but very interesting to the American business world. Free markets, as we know them in the US, are biased against high employee-involvement because they are thought to increase bargaining costs. Levine shows that it is not easy to change to a high employee involvement policy as the bias is embedded into the broader institutional context of the American society.

Now, 15 years later, there is still a need for reinventing the workplace. However, the reason for this is not only the lack of employee involvement. In his paper Robert P. Gephart (2002) states that we have entered a widely heralded ‘new age’ where work organizations are undergoing profound changes. The workplace has to be reinvented again as work has changed in many respects since 1995. In 1995 the Internet was only in its infancy phase, mobile devices were luxury goods, computer usage was limited in most countries, and the terms knowledge and mobile work were hardly used in the business and academic world.

Many authors have envisioned a future of work or a new world of work. Recent visionary books emphasize the impact of new media on work. Work is no longer bound to time and space. However the more we research modern work, the more we become aware of the importance of the social and physical context of work. In his book “The Brave New World of Work” (2000) Ulrich Beck states that there is no antithesis to work, which means that there is no alternative or opposite to this concept. Work is omnipotent. It relates to the macro-institutions of our society and to our daily micro-behavior. We cannot escape from work.

In May 2005. Microsoft released the White Paper “ Digital Workstyles: The New World of Work”. This paper provides an overview of trends affecting work, workers and work environment and the role of ICT in an economy where knowledge is the most important asset of organizations and institutions. The New World of Work is a vision of how work will evolve and this perspective how work can be seen as a dynamic concept, where no real end-state can be defined.

The New World of Work involves:
• Making a conscious choice between physically coming together and working together virtually
• The support of information workers by making information accessible ‘any time any place’
• The development of an IT architecture and infrastructure which makes it possible to support agility of processes and people
• Within a culture which embraces The New World of Work and integrates it into the HRM policy

In addition to employee satisfaction, productivity, innovation and decisiveness The New World of Work can also contribute towards the solution of social challenges such as for example fewer physical journeys by employees and therefore fewer traffic jams. In order to move from the current situation to a future situation in which The New World of Work has been implemented a thorough analysis must take place of the organization, the culture, the technology and the IT architecture as well as an analysis of the activities of individual employees and which values inspire them.

Organizations find themselves in different stages in the implementation of The New World of Work. Both prior to the implementation hereof and after an implementation which fits in with this vision, it is necessary to determine the status and prepare an inventory of possibilities for further improvement.