By editorial@silicon.com, 14 September 2000 16:59
COMMENT Nothing new there. Every time the UK is immobilised - whether it be by weather or industrial action - the vendors of this sort of technology seize the day. The problem is that they've been doing this for years, and still the uptake of conferencing and remote working products remains sluggish. One man thinks that's set to change though. Graeme Leach, chief economist of the Institute of Directors, issued a report this week in which he predicts that one in ten FTSE 100 companies won't have an office by 2020, as they increasingly depend on mobile or home workers to run their businesses. Face to face meetings will become a thing of the past, he claims, as videoconferencing improves. This may well happen - but not if we simply do the same jobs we do now from our homes. The reasons people go to work are complex. It's not just about doing the job. It's to do with managing people effectively. It's about that irreplaceable 'human touch'. It's to do with social interaction. The latter is key. We need to talk, to have face to face meetings, to gossip. That can't happen if we all work from home. We do need to change the way we work - commuting (as is being demonstrated right now) is far from ideal. So the solution might be telecottages - small, high-tech offices based outside city centres, from which people work for a variety of companies. That way, they still get the human interaction, they still get to gossip over the water cooler. They may all be employed by different companies, but a large part of the social function of the office environment is retained. These places do exist now - but it's a certainty that there will be many more springing up in the next few years... especially if fuel prices remain as they are now.
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