Economics
Blurring the Line between Home and Work
Homes are starting to look like offices--and vice versa.
By John A. Challenger
Among the macro forces shaping business worldwide are workers'
desire to balance work and family life. But increasingly those two aspects of life are not
being balanced--they're being blended.
There is a fusion going on between home and work. We cannot get away
from work when we are at home and we cannot get away from home when we are at work. I
recently visited the Toronto headquarters of Northern Telecom--an indoor city complete
with main street, cyber cafe, dry cleaners, video rental, exercise studio, museum,
pharmacy, bank, kitchens, recreation rooms, beds, and sleeping quarters.
Offices are becoming homes, just as homes are becoming offices. Child
care and eldercare centers in many offices today mean that workers' families can always be
close by. The only home-oriented things missing from the twenty-first-century workplace
are churches and synagogues, though they may be the next additions to the office landscape
as some businesses accept and even nurture spirituality in the workplace.
Increasingly, we cannot get away from work even when we are not there.
Since the film 2001: A Space Odyssey debuted three decades ago, we have been
wondering when computers would become human or superhuman. What sneaked up behind us was
the opposite: Humans are becoming electronic. We're turning into robots. We carry our cell
phones, e-mail, PDAs, and laptops--our office--with us at all times.
Our cell phones are ringing off the hook. Commuting to an office is no
longer downtime--there are customers and clients to be called. On the morning or evening
train there used to be a subtle taboo about talking on the cell phone, but that's
disappeared. We can look to Hong Kong for the future: When you go into some restaurants
there, you aren't asked to choose between the smoking and nonsmoking sections, but between
the cell-phone and non-cell-phone sections.
When you leave for vacation, the office follows you. One woman executive
recently told me that she sat for hours on the beach in the Dominican Republic talking on
her cell phone. Satellite technology and global positioning mean there is no place to
hide. The one place and time when you cannot be reached is on an airplane during takeoff
and landing due to airline regulations.
The global marketplace further erodes our personal time. Three major
business zones are forming: the Americas zone, the European/African zone, and the Asian
zone. If you are in Chicago and have customers who need servicing in Asia, it's essential
that you work from 5:00 p.m. to 11 p.m.; for customers in Europe, you should be up at 3:00
a.m.
The line between work and home, public and private, is blurry. One
solution is to set up different e-mail addresses and phone numbers for personal and
work-related communications. But then there are new problems, such as more junk e-mail. I
worry about what happens if too many junk mailers get my personal e-mail. Will I have to
keep changing identities? I don't have the time now to wade through all of the e-mails I
get every day. Now I have to check two different names each day, several times a day. This
change has happened so suddenly, and we were not prepared.
Overburdened workers could reclaim some of those boundaries by telling
their employers they do not want to be called on the weekend or on vacation (except in an
emergency). They could also stop taking their cell phone with them in the car--thus
avoiding an accident while soothing an irate customer.
But employers need to address the work/life issue, too. Workers who are
telecommuting or constantly on the road can become isolated from the company and their
fellow workers. In the free-agent economy, people are changing jobs so often that it's
hard to really get to know your co-workers over the long term. This creates more potential
for isolation.
Corporations thus need to create community. Spaces should be designed
with common areas that force people together, such as war rooms that encourage strategic
collaboration and teamwork. Workers also need to be able to express their personal
identity in their shared space and maintain a connection to home in the office, with
places for family photos and other items. People want to feel they have their own identity
within an organization. They do not want to be nameless. And they do not want to be
detached from their life outside work.
Companies are also bringing elements of the home into the workspace. The
home-workplace fusion means sleeping quarters for a global workforce, living rooms,
couches, music, kitchen tables, fishbowls, TVs, game rooms, fireplaces, coffeehouses,
washing rooms, concierges, and cubbyholes. Many workers live in other areas of the country
and may come to a city constantly or actually move to the city on a project basis for
several months. Many companies are providing the living and work space for these people.
Some companies may devote certain floors or areas to living space; the future
home-workplace may then greatly resemble the Starship Enterprise.
About the Author
John A. Challenger is CEO of the international outplacement consulting
firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., 150 South Wacker Drive, Suite 2700, Chicago,
Illinois 60606. Web site www.challengergray.com. His article "Strategies for
Job Seekers" was published in July-August 2002 issue of THE FUTURIST.
