Tailorable blog

New Ways of Working & Social Embedding

Currently many organizations are experimenting with more flexible work arrangements for their knowledge workers. Well-known examples are Best Buy’s Results Only Work Environment (ROWE), and, here in The Netherlands, Interpolis. Although there are different visions of the New Way of Working, it usually involves more freedom and responsibility for the knowledge worker, more trust by the employer, while maintaining cohesion in the company (social embedding of knowledge workers). Information and communication technology can help in this process by allowing people to work from anywhere at anytime, while still being able to find each other, communicatie and coordinate their actions. So far so good, and actually most basic solutions for anytime, anywhere working have been around for at least 10 years (laptops, e-mail, cellular phones, file servers).

Veldhoen + Company (in Dutch) state that a change towards the New Way of Working requires a balanced change of the physical environment, a mental change and a change of the virtual environment. Many initiatives just focus on putting new tools in place, some address new management styles (such as the Results Only Work Environment), some try to provide knowledge workers with a stimulating physical work environment (like Interpolis). But how about the stimulating virtual work environment? Just being able to share files and folders does not really stimulate me to socialize with my team members. Meanwhile we know that social embedding (feeling connected to our colleagues) is a factor that requires extra attention when working more and more at different locations and at different times.

What I am curious about is whether wikis, blogs, social networking sites and applications like Twitter can help us feel connected, share our passions, know what others are up to and socialize also in an office environment. And how to make sure this all is nicely embedded in a virtual environment that actually stimulates us to socialize? Any thoughts or examples (good and bad) are very welcome.