Working from home? Good work!!
Isaac Asimov’s fiction The Naked Sun gives a concept of viewing instead of seeing each other. It talks of a world served by robots where people meet only in virtual reality except for some really “intimate” times. Of course, this sci-fi concept is not going to work in real world due to social nature of human.
I recently came across an article suggesting the usage of telecommuting as a solution over rising oil prices. It is really a great idea not just to save cost over fuel but also to reduce the city traffic and increase time efficiency. Over a time if this method is employed by the companies for their staff, what will be the scenario? Even today people are allowed to work from home, but only occasionally or let’s say in extra hours. These people still drive all the way to office for their daily work. For the major portion of working hours, employee is still preferred to be at office. Company policies are required to emphasize upon keeping employees from making daily trips to office and to do maximum work as they stay home. There are some questions raised upon effectiveness of this method, such as it might diminish the performance of the employees as they work from home. The caution being, whether the employees can be trusted to perform from home? I don’t really think that it might become a problem.
For workers working on a target-oriented tasks are bound to perform whether they be in office, in bedroom, in cafe or on vacation in mountains. Instead this method makes them more responsible for their work performance. About the other ones that perform job requiring expertise and creativity I don’t someone who can make it up to that position in company requires a regular monitoring even when he’s without a target. So all these simply seem excuses for not adapting the distant working culture. Probably because of the reluctance to choose it over the traditional mode of locally monitored and controlled culture. Actually in this time where open source concept is taking over, the independent developer is the major resource for creativity. I’m sure that I’m not the only geek in community that will agree with this kind of work culture adaptation and to give best of it’s performance.
We need to understand the kind of uplift we get in environment safety, if there are no cars running everyday to the office. Just imagine how many gallons do we use less of the oil. How much less damage do we do to the environment. As we make our home a better place to work, we turn world into a better place to live.
Some amount of developments and research investments made in 3D imaging may even come up with alternative for personal interaction. Who knows, if In couple of decades we may even come up with something like tele-transportation. Now it’s another issue, that what kind of fuel it takes to tele-port an atom in space. But by then, I imagine that our civilization must have achieved the kind of maturity which will extenuate the necessity of personal presence for getting the job done.
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