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Workplace 2020

游客2024-05-12  19
问题                                  Workplace 2020
                                                                            —By Susan Paynter
    It’s a summer morning in the year 2020 and not yet 7: 30 a.m. Jane Han son, flushed from her early morning run along the river, sets down in her work station at home. She is still in her sweats, and this is the first day all week she has slid her knees under a desk.
    For Jane and millions of other so-called knowledge workers, the job is wherever she is. Today, it’s at home. A graphics designer, Jane has a current assignment to develop a new logo for a sports shoe for a client. She’s delight ed to have the project, since it gives her a chance to work with Aki, her in ternational partner inYokohama (横滨), Japan. Today, Aki’s face pops up on her computer screen as she checks "see-mail," a type of communication that replaced E-mail a few years ago. With a click, Jane can call up the video image and voice of each person who left her a message the previous night.
    This morning, Jane calls Aki back and they see and hear each other via video phone. They collaborate on an interactive screen almost as if they are standing side by side at the same drawing board.
    Jane’s husband, George, can often be found working at home as well. "Going to the office" has become an option, not a necessity, with the advent of the wireless computer. George teaches at a nearby university, and often broadcasts his lectures via satellite. But this morning he is at an on-campus seminar. The kids are also out of the house today attending classes at a nearby language and science lab. Jane is grateful to have the house to herself today as she and Aki work on the logo.
The Virtual Office
    Twenty years from now, as many as 25 million Americans—nearly 20 percent of the workforce—will stretch the boundaries between home and work far beyond the lines drawn now. Technology has already so accelerated the pace of change in the workplace that few futurists are willing to predict hard numbers. But nearly all trend-trackers agree that much of the next century’s work will be decentralized, done at home or in satellite offices on a schedule tailored to fit worker’s lives and the needs of their families. Even international boundaries may blur as the economy goes truly global.
    Between 1990 and 1998, telecommuting doubled from about 3 percent to 6 percent of the working population—or about 8.2 million people. The numbers are expected to double again in far less time, with as much as 12 percent of the population telecommuting by the year 2005, says Charlie Grantham, director of the Institute for the Study of Distributed Work in Windsor, California.
    Wireless computers and seamless communications systems are already in the works and fueling the trend. The video phone is not far off, an advance that many futurists believe will make even more companies comfortable with employees working from home. "Now, we communicate at the level of radio," says Gerald Celente, author of Trends 2000 and director of The Trends Research Institute of Rhinebeck, New York. E-mail and the telephone are primitive, he argues, and make people feel cut off from co-workers. But once everyone can see each other on the screen, long-distance relationships will feel more intimate.
     What about the office? "Today’s offices are a direct descendant of the factory," says Gil Gordon, a consultant based in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey, who has spent nearly two decades advising companies on how to institute telecommuting and more flexible work patterns. "They may be better lighted, but they’re much the same."
    Still, Gordon does not think the office building will vanish altogether. Rather, the office of 2020 will be just one place for focused work that re quires true collaboration. It will also be a key site for socializing and cementing the relationships that keep a business going.
    Physically, however, it may look quite different. The typical office to day allocates about 80 percent of the space to offices and cubicles, with the rest given over to formal meeting rooms, Gordon says. That will soon change to 20 percent for individual work stations and 40 percent for "touch-down spaces" to land in but not to move into. We may sit still only long enough to check E-mail and access data.
    Gordon predicts the remaining 40 percent of space will be devoted to sites used by teams and groups, including conference rooms. But they will not look like today’s dull conference rooms. Instead, many will be designed to promote connection and creativity.
    It’s also likely that companies will share space. Instead of more high-rise office towers, there will be more multi-use centers shared by several firms. "You will call ahead and reserve a space and check-in time, and a kind of concierge (服务台职员) will assign you a spot and make sure that, as of seven a.m. that day, your phone rings there."
    With all this mobility, employees may long for a sense of belonging. Transitional workspaces may become more individualized, according to Gordon. "A lighted panel may display pictures of your family, your dog or your sailboat." Futurist Lisa Aldisert, a senior consultant with a New York-based trends analysis firm, suggests that, through sophisticated microchip applications, a roving employee will be able with the flick of a switch to alter wall colors and room temperature to fit her mood.
New Work Relationships
    The benefits of these changes, for both workers and companies, are al ready evident to many. Compelling studies have convinced many companies that telecommuting is a plus for the bottom line. Aetna, for example, finds that the people who process its claims produce about 20 percent more when they work outside of the office.
     What will some other side effects be? No one can guess yet just how the legal relationships between workers and employers will change. Many workers may move from a salary system to an independent contractor system. Or they may sign on with different clients on a project-by-project basis. Companies might continue to provide benefits to many workers to assure their loyalty. In any case, companies will still try to find ways to foster a sense of identity with their products and services. To do their best, workers will still need to feel part of a team, says Leslie Faught, president of Working Solutions, a work/life benefit company based in Portland, Oregon.
    Some futurists also note that technology may change the hierarchy of most workplaces. In fact, work may become much more democratic, as companies share more information to get the job done. Introducing software to streamline communications within a company, for example, can also mean al lowing access to information that was formerly held by one or two people. That can be threatening to some managers at first, but many change their minds, once they see how much better working relationships can be. "Once they get on board, many managers realize their own lives are better too," says Kathy King of the Oregon Office of Energy whose job is to promote telecommunicating from an environmental standpoint.
New Social Life
    A growing number of American workers have already had a taste of the future. Leslie Faught "talks" via E-mail with customers and partners scattered across South America, Canada and Asia. She says being able to see them via video phone and work with them via interactive computer will only strengthen personal connections she has already forged.
    Nonetheless, being part of a virtual community will never entirely replace the need for in-person connections right here at home. That’s why workers of the future will also flock to satellite work centers in their neighborhoods. Many will have amenities (福利生活区)—provided by companies or entrepreneurs—that bring people together, as they used to gather around the water-cooler. It’s already easy to see prototypes in places like Seattle, where Kinko’s and Tully’s Coffee are next door, and people bounce in and out while they do both work and community projects.
    At the heart of all these changes, says Gil Gordon, is the fact that we have finally begun to separate the idea of work from the place where we do it. And that will make blending work and family a lot easier for many people. Like Jane Hanson and her husband, many families will find life less hectic and more integrated. [br] The main advantage of the video phone over E-mail and the telephone is ______.
选项
答案 to strengthen personal connections already forged
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