Business offices, like the poor, will be with us always--even though they are slated for a major face lift, and even though what we do inside of them is probably headed for big change too.
More people are telecommuting today than ever before, and the number of workers in so-called virtual offices is only going to rise as technology allows more labor to be done in far-flung places like homes and cars.
The greatest challenge both today and in 10 years is management of the out-of-sight worker. The greatest mystery facing corporate America is what our workplaces will look like in the future.
"I do not believe that we'll see offices disappear from the landscape," says Gil Gordon, president of Gil Gordon Associates in Monmouth Junction, N.J., a telecommuting and virtual office consulting firm.
"I think the office as we know it will become just one place to work and not the place to work," he says. "The office might look like a strange mixture of an airport airline club and an espresso shop and a public library."
As more workers spend most of their time away from the main office, it will metamorphose into a place for meetings and resupplying. There will be less personal space and more communal work areas, known as war rooms, where projects are worked on by teams of employees likely brought together for a finite period and for just that job.
The result will be cost savings for corporate America as businesses divest themselves of expensive real estate holdings. But the potential exists for a huge management headache for workers and supervisors alike.
The IDC/Link Home Office Overview--an annual look at telecommuting--shows continuing growth in the virtual work force. The number of American households with home offices grew 10% between 1995 and 1996, from 27.3 million to 30 million.
Although that number will probably only increase, IDC/Link warns that ongoing corporate downsizing will force workers in telecommuting programs to prove an increase in productivity. The days of telecommuting experiments are over, the latest study proclaimed; it's time for the virtual office to prove its worth.
"Whether you are running a business from home, bringing work home from the office in the evenings or working as a true telecommuter, you need to demonstrate meaningful performance gains," says Raymond Boggs, director of the firm's Home Office Program.
