The Future of Work is Here --

First blog-post; scary....

The Time article, "The Future of Work", reminded me of a new book that is getting a lot of buzz, Womenomics. Anybody heard of it? While I haven't read it yet, I've seen several interviews of one of the co-authors Katty Kay. The books subtitle is Write your own rules for success. The thesis of the book seems to be that women have tremendous potential to be successful business leaders, but that we work differently than men. Women should not try to fit into the male business paradigm, but should negotiate for work environments that will allow them to flourish. The key is work/life balance that is encouraged, not just tolerated, by business. I kept expecting the book to be referenced in the "Women will Rule Business" section of the Time article and was rather surprised that it wasn't.

The Future of Work article touches upon many issues, but I think that the challenge of work/life balance resonated with me the most. The concept of career lattices is very compelling to me (as a woman who has spent the last 30 years in the work-force). There will be times when one's career is at the fore-front of their lives and other times when it may not be priority #1. I think that if company's recognize their employees as "assets", both parties will benefit from more flexibility in the work-place. I don't believe that people should have to sacrifice their personal lives to have productive and satisfying careers.

I have been tremendously fortunate to work with an organization where many of these future trends have existed for years. Flex time has always been possible and I have taken advantage of this for 20+ years. I have worked a 4-day week consistently; I took a 6-months maternity leave with both of my children; I have routinely rearranged my schedule to ensure that I made every parent-teacher conference and fulfilled at least some volunteer role outside of work each year. And, I continued to receive top raises and bonuses for my work performance!! Do I make a ton of money? No. But I've lived very comfortably, had a very interesting career, and have participated in my children growing up as much as any full-time working parent can.

This level of flexibility was reinforced with the advent of e-mail and remote access to our IT infrastructure. Of course there is the downside of constant access that can blur the work/life balance, and the weird addiction to checking one's e-mail 5 times/day on the weekends, but that's another story (and I'm working on it!). This touches on another topic in the "Future of Work"article -- that technology allows us to be productive outside of the physical office or office hours. In my job, for example, I work with college students who have a very different life-style than I do. Technology allows them to contact me at 3am via e-mail when I'm asleep and allows me to respond when I come into work at 9am before they wake up. Neither one of us has had to adjust our normal patterns of behavior, we have disturbed each other, and we've had timely communication. I can't tell you how much that improved things. It probably sounds funny, but it's true.

As I think it through, the level of flexibility granted to employees has resulted in tremendous loyalty to the organization. We feel appreciated as human beings. In turn, we don't think twice about putting in the hours necessary to get the results expected of us.

So, at least for me, the Future of Work already exists in many ways.