Businesses will have to rise up to the challenge of increased flexibility in working practices, a new report claims.
Created by the Orange Future Enterprise Coalition (OFEC) the report entitled The Way to Work: Space, Place and Technology in 2016, identifies four extreme scenarios of working life in 2016 as a means of addressing the multiple challenges that businesses will face, as advances in technology give workers more freedom to dictate their working conditions.
The four worlds are based on two sets of polarities: theirs - yours, which charts the position of data and intellectual property in an organisation and somewhere – anywhere, which charts the location of the workforce, whether it is centralised or dispersed.
Advances in technology and networking have enabled employees to work from home and have greater control over their working hours.
However, increased flexibility in the way we work will bring challenges for business owners in terms of the way they lead their staff, their company cultures and new regulatory hurdles.
Also, the shift towards greater flexibility and the lessening need for a centralised office space could necessitate intellectual property becoming less guarded and more shared. This could lead to the emergence of more freelance workers, the report suggests.
Louise Potter, policy adviser at the British Chambers of Commerce and member of the OFEC said: “The internet is helping the spread and flow of information and intellectual property is not so strictly controlled these days. It could even be viewed as a disincentive to innovation; what can and should be protected by patent law will need to be revised.
“Changes to the way in which intellectual property is developed, deployed and owned will be needed.”
© Crimson Business Ltd. 2006
