Why do we have workplaces? Why plenty of people spend a lot of time, money and energy to commute every day to work? Why spend companies a huge amount of money building and running offices? With good reasons but these are losing importance;
Reason #1 Tools
If you work in a factory on in your choices of place of work are limited. On the other hand most of us work in offices. The primary tools we use are computers and software and they are portable. We also may need other office equipment like printers or copiers but these are also more affordable than ever and their importance is lower with growing digitalization.
Reason #2 Communication
To work effectively you have to communicate with your colleagues and no doubt face to face communication is the most effective. However this is only a small part of the communication we have. We read and write a lot of e-mail, have phone conversations which take away a substantial part of our work time. In fact many of us have a lot of communication with clients, partners and peoples from other locations. The workplace gives no better communication than any other place. And there are meetings, but I'm not sure meetings are a really effective way of communication. We need meetings but less of them and they should have better performance. However the ad-hoc creative talks e.g. around the cafe machine are the most valuable source of innovation.
Reason#3 Control
In a traditional environment managers like to have they people around to see that they really contribute. That's they want to keep control.
Reason #3+1 People
I often wonder how people see their workplace as a big family. They make friends and foes; discuss politics, family or anything while working. This socializing effect and loose network is very useful and a real need for people.
I think it doesn't need much explanation that the existence of big offices is less and less justified. As things turn digital and computer mobile we have all the tools of work available wherever we are. Communication is anyway mostly done via e-mail, phone and chat and for the few really(!) important face to face meetings we can afford to travel to a meeting place once or twice a week. Computers also allow stricter control; things are getting more and more measurable. As a consequence organization get flatter and performance gains importance while degrees, position and organizational "embeddedness" (i.e. how long somebody has been around and how many people he knows) lose significance. What about the social effect? I think people still will find a way to be together, most probably with coworking where a bunch of people rent a shared office not far from their home. People of different professions and companies working together will most probably generate plenty of useful ideas.
This is already happening although at slow pace. Why? The merits are obvious. Lower costs for the companies, more free time for the employees, less pollution, traffic jams, global warming... and more innovation. So why so slow? I think it's because we and the companies we work for have a different assumption about work and it's hard to change. It's also difficult for a company giving up their structure and well known methods of doing things. Not to mention managers losing part of their power, and the threat of losing company secret during the frequent interactions. However I think this is question of time. The way we do work, communicate measure and control will change anyway. One day we will discover that it doesn't matter if we check in every morning at the office or go with our laptop into the local cafe.
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