By Gemma Simpson, 30 May 2007 11:57
NEWS
CIOs need to prepare for the 20-hour working week as social models and technologies change to promote a work-light future, analyst house Gartner predicts.
By 2015, more people will spend less time in work as companies surrender to individual demands to retain more experienced and skilled workers.
Brian Prentice, research director of emerging trends and technologies at Gartner said as IT becomes woven into the fabric of people's lives, traditional work/home boundaries will become obsolete and a "digital free-agency" will emerge.
WFH - all the coverage
♦ The great working from home experiment
♦ Leader: What can we learn from working at home?
♦ Top 10 tips for working from home
♦ Upwardly Mobile: There's no workplace like home
♦ Lawyers warn of working from home pitfalls
The "digital free-agency" is a term coined by Gartner to describe how professional and personal computing requirements are being blended to enable different working models - such as working from home and part time roles.
Prentice said: "CIOs need to prepare for the arrival of this new work phenomenon, which is being driven by political, social and technology changes."
These changes include the move away from a single bread-winner family model and the shift away from the conventional view of retirement as the end of working life, said the analyst house.
Prentice added: "The additional pressures of an ageing population and skills shortages will lead to the adoption of digital free-agency and flexible work structures as social, political and business necessities."
Traditional nine-to-five work structures are inhibiting people's ability to juggle personal and professional responsibilities and the 20-hour working week is designed to retain skilled workers who are not able or willing to work 40-hour weeks, according to Gartner.
Gartner said the potential power of this combined demographic will be a "force to be reckoned with" by governments and businesses around the world.
Prentice added CIOs need to accept the fact there will be an increase in jobs with shorter working weeks and develop specific governance strategies to take a more proactive approach towards this predicted business change.
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. Philip Thomas
What a load of absolute tosh! Obviously the writer is new to the world with wet still behind his ears. We were promised this ideal world some 25 years ago when projections showed computing power increasing by 200% annually. And it has. And what do we have? More facts than we know how to use and much longer working hours than we ever had before and it will not change. Why? because you CANNOT replace face-to-face working / meetings etc to process the information and this generates more work which generated more fact-to-face meetings and so the spiral continues. Also does ANYONE beleive that companies will pay as much to a 20 hour per week worker as they do to a 40 hour per week worker? How will we live on 50% salaries. Get real....
2. Simon Allen
Twaddle!!
It might be "Get ready for the 20-hour week" in Western Europe BUT ONLY IF they are getting ready for the 40/50-hour week in other countries!
Not to mention that, in Western Europe, there will be more than enough folks willing to work longer (and get more money) than the folks who want to work for 20 hours.
The short working week has been predicted many times in my short life and I do not expect to see it happen. Why? Human nature!
3. anonymous
This prediction sounds like the one 30 years ago about robots doing our housework while we are enjoying ourselves.
Would be nice, but I cannot see it happening. In the bank where I work, the general philosophy is: if it can be done from home, it can be done from India.