Meet the Digital Free-agent: The 40-Hour Workweek Era Is Ending (Gartner)

The traditional work-week is often a hindrance, or at least a nuisance when it comes to the contemporary workplace. During the technology boom of the late 1990, enterprising and in-demand IT professionals often demanded to work at least one day from home. The employers of that time liked the idea, or were at least obligated to go along with it because the employees that made this request were often key innovators within the company, or were required to do their work at non-traditional times (to be likened to doctors on call), that the traditional 9 to 5, 40 hours a week schedule could not accommodate.

For employers, the non-traditional time schedule and 'work from anywhere' situation has proven to have benefits that they could probably not have foreseen in the 1990s when this trend came into inception. As long as one hires dedicated employees who can be trusted, and that have a good work-ethic, allowing employees to work from anywhere and when it suits them has the following benefits to the employer:

1) Although the employee is paid for 40 hours a week, he/she often works more because he/she feels indebted to the employer for the flexibility
2) By eliminating the 9 to 5 work boundaries, employees will often work late into the night with the only limiting factor being the deadline for a given project
3) In relation to (2) when there are looming deadlines, the employer does not have to make any special requests to have the employee work endlessly until the project is done
4) The divide of work/personal time is often non-existent. Much as this may alarm employers who are keeping tab of how the employee spends the time he/she is paid for, in reality, an employee with a good work ethic and dedication to the job will often continue working in the evening and on weekends until work is done.
5) As a result of (4), the vacation schedules on paper are often just on paper, and I know many people who have accumulated too many vacation days, and have begun loosing them because the 'freedom' of working wherever, and whenever they have the inspiration frees them from the need to be away from work.
6) Personally, a work problem does not leave my mind just because I am out with the family. If I get an idea during my leisure time, I quickly get online from my PDA (yes, this is the office-desk), and test or document the idea for others to see and work on.

The above are just a few of the benefits that come with providing flexibility for employees to work when and where they feel the motivation and have the right mind-set to get problems solved. It goes without saying that this situation is ideal for intellectual workers and IT professionals in particular.

Gartner's predictions
As Gartner predicts, much like the demand for valuable and innovative IT professionals in the 1990s resulted in people being able to work from home, in the coming days and years, the idea that an employee belongs to a company or other employer during the totality of the working/thinking hours will come to pass. Employers who appreciate the value that a skilled and innovative employee can bring to a company will be flexible to accommodate the needs and work culture of that employee. For instance, individuals that are dedicated to their profession will invest more time than is required to solve a given workplace problem. They often do this for intellectual growth, competitiveness, and the need to know. Such employees will therefor want to maintain the flexibility of thinking, and doing work beyond the immediate needs of the employer. In the short term, this may appear to be a waste of resources, but employers stand to gain from the private work and thinking of such employees.

Visible proof of this trend
In future, employers will 'lease' time from these said innovative workers who do not interest themselves with the day to day grind of the workplace, but prefer great challenges. This will be fueled by the greater adoption of opensource software applications that require 'cult-like' dedication to create and maintain.

Some examples to ponder
Just to mention some examples, The new version of Skype has a beta feature that enabled anyone with a skype account to avail him/herself to do work for anyone else that has a task to be performed and get paid for it.

Sourceforge is also working on a similar feature that will match opensource users and service providers to enable per task, or leased use of intellectual ability.

A number of pioneering and innovative companies, many of which are spearheading the Web 2.0 revolution are distributed companies whose employees are often shareholder, and permanently work from home. These companies are lean and do not have the overhead of rented office-space, networks and even accounting or HR departments because they either outsource these services to online applications or other companies.

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<a href="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2140512,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K000... The 40-Hour Workweek Era Is Ending</a> - <em>A new research report finds that by 2015, there will be more workers who interact with technology, but they'll be working much fewer hours, and the working stiff as we know it will be better known as a Digital Free Agent.</em>