In the next six years, more than half of the offices will disappear?

People of the older generation have an idea of work as a place to go in the mornings, and then return home from Monday to Friday every evening, except for calendar holidays. This way of life was formed long ago, it has been justified for centuries, but now it largely has to die. The reason for this is the opportunity now appeared to perform many activities without leaving home. More and more employers and employees (in this case, their interests coincide) prefer remote employment. By 2022, economists and sociologists predict the expansion of the virtual office sector to 60%.

Office as a social phenomenon

What is the office in its classical sense? These are indispensable tables, behind which sit busy people, constantly talking on the phone and, depending on the era, clicking buttons on the keyboard, knuckles on counts or twisting handles of arithmometers. Separately, the chief's office, but in the general room his presence is at least invisible, and sometimes the obvious is always felt. The boss strictly watches that no one is messing around, and everyone is doing something, but this does not always work for him. Delays are strictly punished, and excuses for poor work of transport or bad health are usually ignored.

Inside the collective, their relationships develop, sometimes very friendly, but there is nothing ideal in the world, so there are always intriguers, gossips and sycophants. Perhaps there are exceptions, but for the rule, you can take a situation in which any office employee more than once, and not two cursed his work and dreamed of finding another, where he would not be humiliated and threatened with fines with layoffs. But everywhere is almost the same ...

A look from the other side

The psychology of the office clerk is clear to anyone who has ever visited his place at least once in his life, but to understand the general picture and the position of the leader it is necessary to understand. He usually needs a result, although, of course, there are individuals who enjoy their own power, the familiar setting and the status of "the main cock in the henhouse." But the tyranny becomes less and less, but the economic effect is always needed. And it involves minimizing costs. To keep the office cheap, and the more it is, the more expensive it costs. And the owners in the nineties were the first to think up the idea of distance work, first with respect to accountants, at least, the main one. Reporting, they can cook at home, and travel documents or sick leave sheets are able to decorate "girls" after the courses. The area can be reduced and other costs reduced, too, and this with the same results. And then things went much faster, and it turned out that other specialists could work at home.

Freelance class

Civilian workers have become a kind of locomotive of the whole process. In many cases, outside experts were employed to perform a single task, ready to work on mutually beneficial terms. Demand from the freelancer presence in the office and the observance of the daily routine did not come up even the most authoritarian leaders. It was important for them to get a product, quality and on time, and where and at what time of day it was produced, they were usually not interested. An example is the classical edition. You can, of course, write an article for the press, sitting at a table in the newspaper's office, but if the journalist composes it at home or in a cafe, it will not become less interesting from this. However, the logical development of the concept was the transfer of other categories of workers to a remote regime. It turned out that the effectiveness often does not suffer, but on the contrary, it increases.

Than it is good for employees ...

The advantages of working at home are obvious. You can start in the morning, when an experienced dilemma arises between a crush in public transport during rush hour and standing in traffic jams, if he has his own car. In addition to saving money for travel or gasoline, there is also a time-saving factor, and it is also money, as everyone knows. Not all people like to wake up early in the morning, and this significantly affects their mood, which, in turn, determines the quality of work. Finally, the stress associated with the fear of being late is not good for anyone. The ability to freely plan the daily routine is more important than any salary, after all, Karl Marx considered leisure the main luxury that can not be bought. The need to ask every time, if you need to go on some business or someone from relatives is sick, is very poisonous to life. After all, the goal of man is not money, but happiness, which many for some reason forget.

... and for the employer

As already noted above, the most important benefit of the owner of the company can be considered a significant reduction in office costs or lack of them in need. But this is not the only advantage of the remoteness of workplaces. Firms who implemented this method as an experiment, according to the research center of the Social Market Foundation, noted that a happy person works 12% more productive than an ordinary employee who is in a neutral state of mind (that is, when it is "none" or "neither that nor that ", Which happens most often). But if the clerk is upset or, worse, in depression, then the productivity index is reduced by 10%. In addition, the employer significantly expands the choice. It turned out that many more people want to work at home than even in the most comfortable office "from nine to six".

Disadvantages of the method

With all its advantages, remote employment, like any other large-scale phenomenon, has its own characteristics, often mistaken for faults. If an outspoken, hopeless and untrained lazy person is employed, not capable of self-discipline, he can fail. However, the same thing often happens in the "classical" office, but there this character has to portray a violent activity, which, incidentally, experience shows, does not improve the situation in any way. Well, there are people who are able to work at best only from under the stick. They need to be able to distinguish and, if possible, not to hire at all. Or let them settle down in a normal office, where a strict overseer will stand over them.

Generation Y and its preferences

People born in the early eighties, whose youth fell at the time of the information revolution, sociologists call the Y generation, or Yllo. Digital technologies have become natural and dense in their usage, they do not think their life without computer equipment, and therefore they have a fundamentally new psychology, for which, in particular, geographical distance does not play the role that is customary for older people.

45% of people of this generation, when choosing between a larger salary and the ability to flexibly manage their time, without hesitation, will choose the second. They will have to carry the burden of civilization further. About those who were born later, and there are no questions. There will be no other people on the planet. Employers will have to adapt to what they have. But however, they themselves are almost all the same ...

Forecasts

Already, experts from many Western information resources (Virgin Media Business, Telework Research Network, etc.) predict that the turning point, when the number of "home-based" office workers exceeds the number of ordinary, will be around 2022. To this all goes. In 2015, 30 million Americans worked at least once a week in a remote mode, and by 2020, there will already be 50 million.

Of course, humanity will not turn into a community of managers sitting in front of monitors in their apartments, and streets will not be empty. It's good or bad, but there will always be work that can not be done remotely. Probably, it's still, fortunately.