"Short-Term Growth, Long-Term Hiccups"
Staffing Industry Review
January 2012
by Leslie Stevens-Huffman
This article about employers' growing reliance on contingent, or contract workers, included the following quote from Jim Ware:
“The migration of applications to the cloud and the growth of information-based jobs make it easy for contractors to telecommute,” says Jim Ware, executive director of The Future of Work Unlimited, based in Berkeley, Calif. “The advent of new software even allows companies to measure the performance of remote call center agents and customer service reps, so staffing firms need to start gearing their services toward the needs of distributed workforces.”
The full article is available online at this link:
http://www.staffingindustry.com/Research-Publications/Publications/Staffing-Industry-Review/January-2012/Long-Term-Growth
Jessica Stillman of GigaOm has picked up my recent article in Workspace Design Magazine ("Taking Charge of Tomorrow") and highlighted my call for a radical rethinking of the role of workplace and facilities managers.
"Facilities Managers: Don't Get Caught Out by the Future of Work"
Jessica cited my belief that workplace professionals should view the job as "supporting work wherever and whenever it takes place." She goes on to say:
This shift in focus “puts workplace professionals squarely into flexible work programs,” Ware concludes. In order to be effective at providing work spaces that fit with more flexible conceptions of work, Ware says architects, designers and facilities managers shouldn’t shy away from playing futurist: “creating pictures (visions) of alternate possible futures, and then being sure your organization is prepared for any or all of them."
What do you think? I hope you'll weigh in with your own views about the future of the facilities/workplace professional, either here, or at the original article in Workplace Design Magazine, or over at GigaOm.
Workspace Design Magazine has just published my article on "Taking Charge of Tomorrow."
It's a call for more aggressive action on the part of workplace professionals to lead the kind of organizational planning and change that is needed to enhance workforce productivity, engagement, and attraction/retention.
To quote:
It has been said that “the best way to predict the future is to create it.” However, as much as we’d all like to create our own future, most of us have limited choices about where we can take our organizations.
And even though we hear frequently about all the profound changes that are about to hit the workplace, the pressures are far greater in most organizations to maintain the status quo—to do what people already know—than they are to innovate or experiment.
Yet workplace professionals must do both: they must provide a stable, predictable workplace that employees can just take for granted, and at the same time lead the way to the future. And, of course, the lead times for producing meaningful change are totally out of sync with the realities of today’s dynamic economy.
My recommendation: develop scenarios of alternative possible futures - both for the organization as a whole, and for the workplace itself. Scenario planning is a tried and true approach for dealing with uncertainty, although it's not used anywhere nearly as widely as it should be.
I hope you'll take a few moments to read the entire article.
GigaOm just cited Jim Ware's recent posts on the Worksnug blog about the value of moving from one place to another as the work you are doing changes:
"Here on WebWorkerDaily we recently posted on the musings of [former] Harvard Business School professor and partner in FutureWork Forum Jim Ware, who used a recent blog post to urge knowledge workers to shake up their routines and work in a greater variety of spaces. But what sort of spaces might improve your creativity? Ware throws out various possibilities from outdoor places to libraries and even sailboats. But a recent British study offers another suggestion: pubs and restaurants.
The GigaOm post is at this link, while the original Worksnug post is here.
And if you are a glutton for punishment, you can read the original article (published in The Future of Work Agenda in 2011) at this link.
Bob Fox, publisher of Workplace Design Magazine, has just published the December 2011 issue, which has several important stories on office lighting. But I'm mentioning it here for one self-interested reason: it also includes a nice, brief bio and photo of none other than me. Bob and I have many common interests. We spoke briefly at the WorkTech11 West Coast conference in October, and his request to publish my bio came from that conversation. Thanks Bob!
Facilities Management Journal
September/October 2011
by Diane Coles, MCR, and James Ware, PhD
SCAN Health Plan® is the fourth largest not-for-profi t Medicare Advantage health plan in the United States. The company serves the needs of more than 128,000 members in California and Arizona. Headquartered in Long Beach, California, USA, SCAN was founded in 1977.
SCAN’s corporate mission is to find innovative ways to enhance senior citizens’ ability to manage their health and to control where and how they live as long as possible. Why shouldn’t SCAN employees have the same control over where and how they work? That’s exactly what the workplace solutions team did by creating an “Alternate Workspaces Engaging Staff & Office Management Efficiencies” or AWESOME project.
Please note that the FM Journal is accessible online only with an IFMA member login. Contact us directly to obtain a single copy of this article
The Futurist Magazine
January-February 2011, pp37-38
World Future Society
by James Ware
This brief article appeared as part of a special section of the January 2011 issue of The Futurist, "70 Jobs for 2030." Each of the contributors was asked to speculate about what jobs would be common in the year 2030, even though they do not exist today.
Jim's focus was on roles that would become prominent in organizations characterized by fluid employment, large number of temporary contractors, and global presence. He suggested five specific yet-to-be-invented roles:
- Personal Brand Manager
- Talent Aggregator
- Office Concierge
- Global Sourcing Manager
- Organizational Quartermaster
Click this link for a complimentary downloadable pdf version of "70 Jobs for 2030"
