Page 64 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

discovering a new workforce paradigm � 43

is at a particular location, but it might not be a 20-story building where
every employee has an office; instead, it might be at a coffee shop down
the street from the person with whom you are collaborating.
So, test the assumption with every one of your employees: do they
have to “come to work”? Or can they “do the work” someplace else?
(This one exercise can save you a lot of money.)
Even better, if your employees don’t have to “come to work,”
doesn’t that mean you can hire the best person for the job, no matter
where in the world she or he is?
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What’s Coming Down the Pike?
Based on the availability of technology, business is morph-
ing into its own freeway of global connections, enabling em-
ployees to work outside the corporate box, connecting into
the secure corporate intranets, extranets, and global Inter-
net from just about any environment, anywhere.
No longer does an employee have to drive an hour to work
through a maze of highways and frustrating traffic jams to
get to a colossal enterprise, walk past a security guard desk
to access a 6-by-8 cubicle with a computer having a secure
connection, or to be on a conference call in the corporate
conference room. That’s the old paradigm, an outmoded as-
sumption about where I have to sit—or drive to—in order to
be productive.

Old Rule (Assumption): Work takes place between 8 a.m. and
5 p.m.
New Rule: Work takes place between when it is assigned and
when it is due.

Why in the world does everyone have to come in to work at the
same time and leave at the same time? It’s crazy! Not only does that