For new working your staff need new contracts

Did you know that the design of the Space Shuttle was constrained by the width of two horses?  This sounds completely irrelevant however it is significant in the way that we currently work in the office of today.  The reason for the constraint was that the booster for the ship is transported by rail, and thus its dimensions are influenced by the width of the track.  The width of the tracks heads down a long line that ultimately started with the width of a Roman road being created to allow the passage of two horses.

Legacy decisions have a big influence in IT as a whole and many of us juggle these day to day.  Sometimes these legacies are barriers to new ways of working and yet they are totally outside the influence of the IT department.  One of the key barriers to Mobility, Social networking and ultimately the cloud sits with man management and the HR department.  As with the two horses this barrier is deeply ingrained and difficult to work around, as it is rooted in people and their perception of the world.

I am talking about the view that an individual attending a place of work is working.  All I have to do is attend a place of work for 7.5 hours a day and I am working, even if I sit doing nothing all day.  To counter me doing so I have a manager that drives me to fill my time noting if I am sitting cross legged reading magazines and chasing me up.  Herein lies the first barrier to new ways of working, I have to be under the managers nose so that he can see that I am not working..

Suppose though he can see me sitting on the compute typing away seemingly engrossed.  10 years ago he was happy that I was working, but now he suspects I am on Facebook or Twitter wasting my time so has to come and look closer.  Herein lies another barrier how do you tell "good" Facebook use from bad...better to do without.

So the attendance method of judging working drives us to a place where we must reduce mobility and ban social media. It also slows the adoption of the cloud through non PC devices as productive use cannot be determined from other uses.  It is clear then if we are to reach the mobile and social future in the cloud that we envisage HR has to start thinking of other ways to write employment contracts.

When I first wrote of this four or five years ago it was to highlight a method called ROWE.  Results Only Work Environment envisaged a way of working where you were paid for the results the employer wished for rather than for attendance.  In a clear indication that the import of this need has not yet been understood ROWE has withered away, but it's underlying ethos still applies.  Definition of work through the required result would let us stop worrying about what people are doing and just view the result.  If they choose to stay in bed till 11 in the morning and read Facebook during all the rest of the daylight hours it does not matter if the expected report is competently delivered for the laid down deadline.  This of course includes getting all of the necessary input from others, so to a degree the way of working can also define itself.

Once free of attendance management organisations can begin to fly.  The barrier to getting there though is huge and I for one feel my own concerns about working in that way on a personal level.  It is pretty scary because it forces responsibility for your own output onto you, rather than leaving it with your manager.  This strips away your shield and makes you feel on the spot, yet this is exactly why it could revolutionise our businesses and our lives in a positive mobile and social manner.