I’ve been on parental leave for the last two months. During this time, I’ve been able to step back and reflect on how much things have changed in my industry recently.
The last ten years have seen a lot of shifts in the way we work in North America. And as access to the Internet has increased around the globe, workers from around the world now work seemingly hand in hand. We’ve seen an influx of tools that help us collaborate with others, track our tasks and communicate in various forms. Here are three changes that I’ve experienced with the introduction of some of these new technologies.
Team Building is More of a Focus
The structure of organizations has changed a lot over the years. Most companies are no longer made up of employees located in one geographical location. With widespread adoption of the Internet, most organizations have become a heterogeneous environment. That is, they are now comprised of a mixture of regional staff, consultants, employees working from home and often enough even include entire departments contracted out to other companies in other countries.
With such a varied mix of workers, many of whom may never meet face to face, team building has seen an increase in attention. Why? Because teammates work best when they trust one another. And trusting someone means you have a somewhat intimate knowledge and confidence in that person. Building this kind of trust in in virtual teams has proven to be a new challenge to many companies, large and small. Many new web 2.0 tools are aimed at these types of teams - but if the underlying foundations of a good team are not there, can the tools help make the team better?
Increased Methods of Communication
Email has been a big part of corporate America for quite some time now. As well, instant messaging has become a tool many companies have adopted and in a smaller part, corporate intranets. But the last five years have seen an expansive growth in communication based tools - wikis, blogs, social bookmarking etc. Advancements in video conferencing has enabled ‘face-to-face’ meetings that could never have happened twenty years ago, not to mention initiated the rise of technologies like telemedicine. Even team-centric task management tools are really about communicating to a team what work is completed and what still needs to be done.
All of these technologies have enabled organizations to be more diverse in their structure and hiring practices, and have facilitated near instantaneous communication between coworkers. But with all these tools at our disposal, are we more effective communicators?
There is Less of a Separation of Work and Personal Lives
Gone are the days when managers were the only ones bringing work home, carrying manilla file folders and reports under their arms. With the advent of webmail and corporate VPN’s, workers of all types are armed with laptops, PDA’s and smart phones. It’s now easier then ever to blur the lines between your work life and personal life.
This is even more true for the web workers and freelancers. With more and more people seeking employment that allows them to create their own structure - work hours, work location, teammates - the very tools that allow us to connect with clients are the ones that make it a struggle to disconnect and turn off. Has the ability to work from anywhere or at anytime made us a more productive workforce?
This is just a small list of some of the changes the web has affected the way we work. It seems like we are in the infancy of what we can accomplish with the web, but like children learning to walk, we’re still taking baby steps and need more coordination. At any rate, we live in exciting times. I’m looking forward to seeing what the next ten years will bring.
