The future of the white collar worker

Somehow it still seems strange that in this day and age of information technology, the web and an increasing amount of white collar work that we’re still stuck with the notion of work organized the way it would be organized on the factory floor. I mean punching in at certain times, staying in one place doing our thing and then punching out at the end of the day.

Of course things have softened a little, but we’re still nowhere near, where we potentially could be. Chris Brogan has a great post on this where he’s trying to put some of the trends together and create an overview of opportunity. Of couple of his points stand out for me:

It costs you more money to house a work staff than it does to manage them remotely…Shift measurements from “being there” to “what you’ve done.”…I think that employers are definitely in a spot where they might have to consider how their employees work.

I hope the latter is true. In fact I’m having the discussion right now with a potential client. They want to hire me for a role as a full-time employee - a role for which they say I’m the best in the country (I know they are trying to sweet talk me, but still). For many reasons this is right now not the optimal fit for me, so I have suggested a more soft approach with an interim employment. This is hard for them to come to terms with even though I’m willing to commit to specific goals for my tenure there. But they are still really considering it.

This just goes to show that there is a paradigm shift happening here, but that it’s a gradual proces. The future of the worker - at least the white collar kind - doesn’t change over night. But change it will. I’m sure of it.