Читать книгу Managing Off-Site Staff for Small Business - Lin Grensing-Pophal - Страница 9

Technology has had a dramatic influence on the workplace and on the ways in which tasks are accomplished. Email, voice mail, and Internet technology mean that employees can literally be in touch with their employer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The 24/7 culture is changing the way that employees and employers interact — it is, in fact, changing the very nature of work. Under the old system, employees were tied to the workplace. Tools did not exist to allow contact from remote locations. Today, technology is providing both employers and employees with freedom and flexibility that they would never have imagined even ten short years ago.

Technology is allowing employees to question the status quo and challenge the old ways of doing business. “Why do I need to come to the office to work on a report when I can do it at home on my computer?” “Why can’t I access voice mail and email from home?” “Why do I have to be physically located in a phone center to answer customer calls? Why can’t I be set up from home to do this?”

And because employers are faced with a shrinking labor market and a growing gap between job seekers’ skills and employer needs, more and more are responding to these questions with “Why not?”

What does all this mean? It means that businesses must become more flexible and creative in both the recruitment and retention of employees. It means that the traditional brick-and-mortar workplace will soon give way — in fact, has given way, in many places — to a virtual workplace. It means that neither employees nor employers will be hampered by geographic constraints: An employee can live in Florida and work for a company in Georgia, Wisconsin, California, Ontario, or Saskatchewan.

It means that whether they are telecommuting, or simply working in another location as part of a global organization, branch office or “virtual company,” the ability to effectively manage off-site staff is no longer a luxury; it has become a necessity for companies that want to compete effectively in this new millennium.