September 2004

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This is our personal note welcoming you to the September 2004 issue of Future of Work Agenda and setting our theme for the month. This time we're focused on change - in careers, in cities and towns, and even in the federal government.

We're very pleased to announce that Hewlett Packard has joined the Future of Work program. And that the GSA is going to host the 2005 World Congress on the Future of Work on April 26-28, in Philadelphia.

Like a retro 1950's movie, the Baby Boomer generation sits back and foresees forty years with one company, a gold watch, and moving to Florida or Arizona to live out their days in peace and tranquility. Fast forward to 2004. Whoa, that's not going to happen (and most Boomers don't' want it too, either). Now what?

We offer this space to our Future of Work members so they can make personal announcements or ask for assistance, and where we periodically print brief "Leadership Profiles" introducing you to our members. This month we introduce you to our friend and colleague Neal Zimmerman, and we carry several announcements about other members' recent and upcoming activities.

The New Geography is a great mixture of history, current stories, and projections of the future. And anyone who is interested in where talented workers want to live - and why - should read it.

In one form or another, the future of work is already here. This regular section provides you with notes from all over the world - stories about what's happening somewhere today that provides clues to what will be happening everywhere tomorrow.

We end each issue of Future of Work Agenda with a personal perspective - our chance to comment on issues and developments in the world of work that we find important and interesting. This is our "editorial" page, where we are pleased to offer our opinions and predictions about what's happening (or should be happening) in the world of work.

From Jim and Charlie

We're struggling right now with the reality that "summer" as it is traditionally defined, at least in the United States, is just about over. When September comes we all start thinking about back-to-school, fall colors, cooler days and nights, and the end of those "lazy, hazy, crazy days" of Summer, when we were supposed to be taking it easy. Where did those days go?

To us, this was one year that really didn't have a summer slowdown. Yes, some folks were able to take vacations, and we often found it hard to track down people we wanted to talk to, but that was mostly because they were too darn busy to return our calls.

Maybe that's a good thing, though. The evidence we have is that the economy is picking up slightly, even if it's not producing the jobs or the personal income that we'd all like to see. And we've certainly been busy ourselves.

Our Future of Work program is growing, with the addition of Hewlett Packard as a corporate member (see the Announcements, below, for more detail).

We also produced our first "Annual Report on the Future of Work," which we have just shipped off to our Future of Work corporate members. It will shortly be available for purchase on the Future of Work website (www.thefutureofwork.net).

And we're being called more and more often about questions like, "How are companies managing and supporting mobile workers these days?" and "What does the future hold for specialized operations like call centers and tech support for remote facilities?" and "What does a shared services infrastructure organization look like, and what's the business case for it?"

Important and provocative questions, all. We're not about to address them all here by any means, but we're in frequent conversation with lots of different people about these kinds of issues, and we'd welcome your thoughts any time.

This month, with Labor Day upon us, our feature article is about the changing nature of retirement. Our book review is about the changing landscape of cities and towns. And our "rant" is about our desire to change public policy: we're calling for a cabinet-level "Department of Social Capital," of all things.

While we certainly agree that Homeland Security and a better Intelligence capability are of primary national importance, we also believe that longer term the United States would be a much safer, stronger country if we took a more comprehensive and more integrated approach to nurturing our nation's human capabilities and creating a more just society. How's that for thinking big?

So, here's our September contribution to your ever-growing list of "Important Things to Think About" - and to do something about. Enjoy!

- Jim Ware and Charlie Gratham

Announcements

Hewlett Packard Joins the Future of Work Program

We're very pleased to announce that Hewlett-Packard has signed up as a corporate member of Future of Work for the 2004/5 program year.

Renee Leach, head of corporate real estate for HP Americas, will be the executive sponsor. She will joined by Karen Hiramoto Lee, director of Bay Area Workplace Resources for HP, and Claire Crocker, HR Manager for the Americas Real Estate and Workplace Services team. We look forward to having them join our other corporate members at the fall Members Roundtable working session being hosted by Agilent Technologies in Santa Rosa, California, in October.

Please join us in welcoming Renee, Karen, Claire, and all of Hewlett Packard to the Future of Work community!

GSA to host the 2005 World Congress on the Future of Work

We're still working out the details, but we are thrilled to announce that the General Services Administration's Public Building Service, represented by Research Director Kevin Kampschroer, has volunteered to host the 2005 World Congress. We look forward to an historic meeting venue in our nation's first capital, in the shadow of Independence Hall, and including a tour of one of the GSA's innovative new facilities that make the future come alive right now.

Look for more details shortly, but we invite all of you to plan on joining us in Philadelphia the week of April 25, 2005, for another engaging conversation focused on creating the future of work.

Future of Work Program Actively Seeks Individual and Small Business Members

Future of Work now offers several levels of membership that depend on your status and needs: Individual and Small Business, Corporate, and Implementation Partners. We also offer special discounts to nonprofit, educational, and public sector organizations.

These membership programs are described in more detail on the Future of Work website, or feel free to contact us directly for more information about fees and benefits.

All individual members of our community are now listed on the Future of Work website, in the About Us/Members section.

Please visit our website and apply for membership today.

Interested in Collaborative Communities of Practice?

Communities of Practice are a powerful strategic approach for fostering learning and transferring knowledge in global organizations. The Collaborative Communities of Practice 2004 conference is a virtual online conference focused on best practices for designing, leading, assessing, and sustaining Communities of Practices. We encourage you to attend on September 14-17.

You can register for the conference and then participate directly from your computer and on your own schedule. Join experts and practitioners from a variety of corporations and nonprofits, as well as governmental and educational organizations, for this three-day online event. All you need to participate is a web browser (and a telephone if you chose to attend the live portions of the event).

Just go to www.icohere.com/ccop/ to learn more about the conference and register to participate (Future of Work is a sponsoring organization for this conference, but not an active participant or organizer).

Feature Article: Retirement: The Death of Another American Myth

By Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware

Like a retro 1950's movie, the Baby Boomer generation sits back and foresees forty years with one company, a gold watch, and moving to Florida or Arizona to live out their days in peace and tranquility. Fast forward to 2004. Whoa, that's not going to happen (and most Boomers don't' want it too, either). Now what?

There are three trends about to collide in America that will alter the landscape for the "elderly" forever (and most of us don't ever want to be called "elderly"). First, there's a coming job boom, or more accurately a shortage of talent. Second, we've got a very healthy aging population - they aren't their father's old folks. And thirdly, there are major changes coming in employment contracts that offer non-traditional kinds of work and working arrangements that are tailored to exactly what many older folks are looking for.

The result of these trends is that Baby Boomers, and perhaps all future generations, won't "retire" somewhere between 55 and 65 the way most seniors have done for the last century or so. We aren't quite ready to take a jackhammer to the shuffleboard court yet, but maybe we'll put some down mats and turn it into a yoga studio.

Let's take a look at each of these trends separately and then come back and put the pieces together. While we focus here on conditions in the United States and the rest of North America, we're pretty confident our interpretation is valid in most industrialized countries around the world.

Job Boom

A number of economists are predicting an overall labor shortfall in the United States of 6.6% in the year 2010, growing to 13% by 2020 http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu; Business 2.0, September 2003). That would be over 10 million jobs going unfilled in the United States within six years (assuming about 157 million employed in 2010; in 2000 the number was 135 million).

Over half of this gap will be among the skilled workers. We have no doubt this trend is real. Quite simply, under a normal economic expansion of 2.5% per year during this period the working population won't grow fast enough to meet employment demands. Sans a massive in-migration of skilled workers or the movement of even more skilled jobs to other countries, there is going to be a serious labor shortage in the United States. Neither of those two alternatives seems viable in today's political environment.

Does that mean that we will have 10 million empty cubicles? Hardly. What will happen is that the labor pool will shift to fill these higher paying jobs. People will re-skill themselves and, we contend, most organizations will do everything they can to retain as many experienced workers as possible.

We believe the "emptiness" in the labor pool will eventually slide down the food chain (sorry for that horrible mixed metaphor). The hardest hit will be menial labor - service jobs and the like. We may even see some changes in how labor laws apply to younger folks as this disruption occurs.

Frankly, however, we haven't experienced this kind of demographic shift in the United States, so many things remain unknown. Except we do know that some companies like Cigna Insurance and SAS have already implemented retention and re-training programs to head off the crisis.

For you history buffs, this drastic a labor shortage has occurred before. Some 600 years ago almost 50% of the labor force was wiped out by disease. The ensuing shortage resulted in the Peasants Revolt in England in 1381. And the good news was that the survivors emerged as a privileged elite.

The Aging Population

17% of the U.S. population is over 65 already. By 2035 that figure will by 27% according to the Congressional Research service of the Library of Congress.

Looked at another way, we can say that there will be about two and a half times as many "senior citizens" in 2010 as there were in 1950 (in the United States). 1950 is a good comparison year for psychological reasons. It's a period that most Baby Boomers remember fondly; their parents were climbing the economic ladder and their grandparents were living a comfortable life of leisure.

Those are now "the good old days" fixed in our memories and giving rise to our expectations for our own "twilight years." We think (at least most of us) that we will do and be what old granddad was when we were growing up (although those expectations are changing rapidly for a number of cultural and economic reasons - more rapidly than most of us, especially public officials, realize).

Life expectancy is clearly increasing. The Baby Boomer's granddads could expect to live to the ripe old age of about 73. At a similar age today our life expectancy is 80.7 years (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/pdf/nvsr51_03t11.pdf).

That's almost a 10% longer life! Much of the increase is due to modern medicine and healthier lifestyles. We live longer and we are healthier than previous generations. Yes we are getting older and we can expect to live significantly longer. Can our economy, with that massive shortage of talent about to hit us, sustain a continuing and unproductive drain of up to10% of the population simply leaving the workforce? Hmm, pause for thought here.

So, where will all those extra, older, healthier people go? Into the workforce.

The U.S. workforce over age 65 is predicted to grow 30% by 2010. 55-64 year old workers will grow by 52%, while there will be a decline of 10% in the prime age group of 35-44 year olds ("Time to Retire Retirement", K. Dychtwald, T. Erickson and R. Morison, Harvard Business Review, March 2004, pp. 49-57). Get the picture? Our world will be vastly different from the one our parents and grandparents experienced.

For a very current view on the changing workforce and the challenges facing both employers and society at large, see "Coming Soon: the Vanishing Work Force" in the August 29, 2004, New York Times. The world is beginning to wake up to the fact that this is a Big change.

Changes in Employment

Some people have callously suggested that the entire concept of retirement was constructed to pacify workers while minimizing the risk to businesses. In fact, a search through the history of the mythical retirement age of 65 reveals some interesting results. According to the Social Security Administration:

The studies showed that using age 65 produced a manageable system that could easily be made self-sustaining with only modest levels of payroll taxation (http://www.ssa.gov/history/age65.html).

There's also a myth that 65 was chosen as the retirement age by Germany's Finance Minister in the 1890's to make sure the government would never have to pay the pensions it promised to civil servants (the average life expectancy at the time was about 47 years).

Reading between the lines and understanding the actuarial tables of the early1900's, it's apparent that little or no payouts were expected to be made. That's one myth that just may be true (if we allow ourselves to be just a little cynical about politicians, and why not?).

Over time we have seen legislation, and private pension practice, move these dates around, and today there is serious ongoing policy discussion about moving the "official" age of retirement up to 70 or 72. That would go a long way to reducing the burden on pension plans (even though it is so politically charged that it is highly unlikely to ever happen). Regardless of what happens in the halls of Congress, the upshot is that our productive career time will undoubtedly be extended to match the dramatically changed demographic realities.

There's another change in employment practices that we believe will come sooner, rather than later. That is a re-definition of the legal status of employees and their relationship to employing organizations. Even the nomenclature of "employee" seems a bit dated. Right now as we write, nascent efforts are being developed to give "self employed persons" equal status with "employees" in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration (www.nase.org).

Putting the Puzzle Together

Let's return now to our original message that these major forces are coming together to explode the myth of retirement. Basically, there simply won't be the kind of retirement most of us expected when we began our careers. Those days are gone for good.

But it won't be a smooth or easy transition. Perhaps the biggest bump in the road for many very nearly- or just-retired folks is the specter of un-funded private pension plans.

Consider this from Congressional Reports:

Un-funded pension liabilities for private companies have skyrocketed from $26 billion last year to a staggering $111 billion this year, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) revealed. In a letter sent Thursday to Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill and Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao. Miller said "it is my understanding that this 425% jump in un-funded liabilities is unprecedented, and the figure represents the highest amount of un-funded pension liabilities ever reported to the PBGC on the Corporation's 4010 forms. The implications of such massive shortfalls in pension funds are staggering, for pensioners, taxpayers, and for the private companies themselves. [Emphasis in original].

Looks like a rough ride. So what are the options?

Right now we see three viable alternatives to a standard, fully-funded retirement beginning at age 65. First would be a phased retirement in which workers would remain with an employer but on a reduced basis. However, legislative change would be necessary to let "partial retirees" obtain access to some of their defined-benefit plan investments.

A second alternative would be what we call the "in and out" worker. This practice would involve people who are represented by an agency, or third party, that contracts them to employers on an "as desired" basis. These individuals would essentially work part-time for several organizations, but be "managed" by a central human resource function acting as a sort of talent agency. We believe this would be an extremely attractive choice for both workers and employers because it would remove all administrative and marketing functions from the individual and offer some degree of legal compliance assurance. And it would offer employers much greater flexibility as their needs grow and shrink with the dynamic economy.

A more radical third option would be much more extensive job sharing for those older workers. You could get two seniors for the price on one younger worker. Again, this alternative also presents significant management challenges for companies, but we have seen some experiments already where this approach appears to be a viable option. Job sharing might be very attractive in teamwork settings where individuals could substitute for one another on a regular schedule.

And we can't resist one last prediction: the growth of "seniors" in the work force is one more factor contributing to the explosion of "alternate working arrangements" and distributed work. These folks are absolutely going to reject the 9-5, five days a week, commute to the office - in spades. They're looking for ways to work part-time, from home or in comfortable third places. They want to just get the job done without getting caught up in office politics or having to spend hours a week moving their bodies back and forth between home and some corporate facility. They know that's not necessary for most jobs, and they just plain won't do it.

We are certain there are many other options, and surely people will become very creative as this lump in the demographic snake moves through the system. But there is no question we are in for some very dramatic changes in the ways we work and the ways we "retire."

As always we invite your commentary and opinions. What creative approaches have you run across? What's happening in your own organization? We'd love to tell your stories in the coming months.

The Future of Work Community Corner

We offer this space to our Future of Work members where they can make personal announcements or ask for assistance, and where we will periodically print brief "Leadership Profiles" introducing you to our members. This month we profile Neal Zimmerman, a charter member of our Future of Work program, and announce several initiatives by other Future of Work members.

Leadership Profile: Neal Zimmerman

Architect and workplace designer Neal Zimmerman's authoritative books and writings on home office design confirm his unique voice in our community. He literally wrote the book on At Work At Home.

Neal has recently introduced Partner Home Office^TM - a line of home office furniture and furnishings - that establishes a new level of collaboration with the home office audience. See it at http://www.atworkathome.com. The first thing you'll see on the web site is a stunning and highly practical home office desk that combines beauty with practicality. It's typical of Neal's skill and values.

Neal is a resource for anyone setting up or renovating a home office, but he also works with larger organizations providing support to mobile workers who are transitioning into home office work environments. We're proud to consider him a friend and colleague, and recommend him and his firm without hesitation.

We asked Neal to respond to several "complete the sentence" statements, and here's what he said:

In the next five years I think the most important challenge facing corporations is.... to develop our intellectual capital at home, while remaining competitive in the global marketplace.

When I look into the future I see.... a world we can prepare for, but cannot predict.

The future of work will be different from the present because.... the pressure to innovate is continually accelerating.

The thing I am most proud of in my work is.... that so many people in the home office industry have chosen me as a partner in the development of their vision of the future.

My real passion is.... to establish benchmark standards for the home workplace environment, contributing to the evolution of the home worker as a major force in the American economy.

You can connect directly with Neal at: nz@atworkathome.com.

Gate 3 WorkClub's Grand Opening Celebration is October 7 & 8. All are invited!

Future of Work member Neil Goldberg is pleased to announce the grand opening of Gate 3 WorkClub - a premier example of a "third place." Gate 3 WorkClub is located in the San Francisco Bay Area at 1285 66th St. (at Hollis), Emeryville, California.

PARTY: Thursday, October 7, 6-9PM. Complimentary wine, hors d'oeuvres, live jazz and WorkClub tours.

TALK: Friday, October 8, 8:30-10AM. Complimentary continental breakfast and WorkClub tours. Michela O'Connor Abrams, President & Publisher of Dwell Magazine, will speak on "New Spaces to Work Better, Live Better."

Gate 3 WorkClub is a flexible, "out of the office" workspace, designed to meet your needs - whether you work for a corporation or for yourself. In a beautiful 14,000 square-foot environment full of natural light and the latest furnishings from Herman Miller, Gate 3 WorkClub members discover an alternative to noisy cafes and the isolation of home offices.

Gate 3 offers all the services of a corporate office: T-1, WiFi, workstations, conference rooms, expert IT and administrative support, copiers, printers, phone, mail service and more. Members can work solo , mingle with a diverse group of colleagues, or take a Gate 3 Learning Community class to enhance their businesses or their personal lives.

For more information about membership and the grand opening, go directly to the Gate 3 website, www.gate-3.com.

Gloria Young to Speak at Knowledge Management Conference

Future of Work Corporate Member Gloria Young, Clerk of the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco, will be speaking at the KMWorld Conference in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday, October 26. The conference is called "Driving Performance: Applying Strategies and Tools for Performance Improvement. Gloria and her knowledge management "partner" Amanda Kahn will be featured in a workshop titled "Turning Knowledge to Intelligence with Shadow Teams." For details and to register for the conference, go to www.kmworld.com.

Book Review: "The New Geography"

by Joel Kotkin (Random House, 2000, 2001)
Reviewed by Jim Ware

The subtitle for this book is "How the Digital Revolution is Reshaping the American Landscape." But, frankly, it's not really about the digital revolution. Rather, it is a fascinating, sweeping discussion of how American cities, towns, and communities are evolving in the so-called "New Economy" that is changing so many aspects of our lives.

Kotkin is an expert on cities and neighborhoods who is keenly aware of changing patterns of working and living. He's a futurist whose ideas and insights are grounded solidly in history. He's a good writer, a thoughtful observer of current reality, and an insightful thinker about where it's all going.

The New Geography is a great mixture of history, current stories, and projections of the future. And anyone who is interested in where talented workers want to live - and why - should read it.

For example I learned to think of this New Economy we're all trying to figure out as one based on "knowledge-value" rather than raw materials or good weather and rich soil. "Knowledge value" is actually a term coined by the Japanese economist Taichi Sakaiya in 1992, and while today it seems almost a commonplace idea, Kotkin recognized its powerful impact on where people choose to live, and what kinds of communities they want to live in.

By the way, Sakaiya's ideas are documented in his landmark book, The Knowledge-Value Revolution: Or a History of the Future (Kodansha International, 1992). He defines knowledge value as "the price of, and the value created by, wisdom; and the worth, or price, a society gives to that wisdom."

And while I'm at it, if you want to read some great material about this so-called "New Economy" we keep referring to, we're happy to recommend the Progressive Policy Institute as an important source. Their best piece on the New Economy is at:

http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=107&subsecID=294&contentID=250567

In essence, however, the digital revolution is context for Kotkin, not his primary interest. His focus is actually on the changing nature of cities, suburbs, and what he calls "midopolises" - those mid-sized communities that are neither major cities nor true suburbs.

In Kotkin's words, "The essentially collaborative, often ad hoc nature of much high-tech work simply creates a different environment from that of traditional white collar business" (p. 42). And of course, the result of the Internet and FedEx/UPS (a component of the Information Age almost as important as the computer) is that most of the work that matters can be done just about anywhere.

But as Kotkin points out so well, this doesn't make place - where we choose to do work and to live - irrelevant. In fact, it actually makes place more important than ever - especially because where we choose to live is as much about who we want as neighbors and what kind of social environment we like as it is about our choice of physical environment.

Today talented people (especially those in high demand in the new economy) are now making their choices of where to live very differently from the way those choices have traditionally been made - and differently from each other as well. Some of us pick climate, or terrain (mountains, or seacoast), or recreational opportunities, while others choose on the basis of culture - music, theater, art, and so on.

But professional identity and economic opportunity also play an important role that has produced highly homogeneous micro-economies like Wall Street, Hollywood, Multimedia Gulch in Manhattan, South of Market in San Francisco, and of course Silicon Valley. Being around similar folks, with all the stimulation, professional growth, and sense of belonging that provides, continues to be a critical factor in just about everyone's locational choices, even when they can simultaneously be part of a global professional community.

The net result of all these individual choices is a whole range of different types of communities that Kotkin describes richly - center cities, suburbs, "Nerdistans (self-sufficient outer suburbs or peripheral communities like Irvine, California, and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, that are populated by high-tech divas and self-described "gearheads"), "Valhallas" (rural, rugged, upscale communities like Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Park City, Utah, and Aspen, Colorado, where so many of the dot.com millionaires are choosing to live or at least build second homes), and more.

Each type of community has its own character, its own appeal, and its own identity. The beauty of the new geography is that it offers so many meaningful choices to individuals, and to employers as well.

But there are also plenty of losers in the new geography - old, dying industrial towns with high unemployment - and we haven't yet done a very good job of helping these new "ghost towns" adapt and adjust to the new economy.

However, Kotkin does tell some wonderful and heartening stories of communities that have come back from the dead - places like "Toytown" just west of downtown Los Angeles that has become the absolute center of the global toy industry (Mattel is there, but so are hundreds of small, specialized manufacturers, importers, and distributors, all focused on that single industry).

Toytown is an amazingly vibrant neighborhood of small businesses owned and managed mostly by the new immigrants - Vietnamese, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, and Mexicans and other Latinos as well. Seeing opportunity in the form of abandoned warehouses and cheap real estate, entrepreneurs have flocked to areas like Toytown and used them as the foundations of new micro-economies.

The New Geography won't give you easy, "Here's what to do" answers to your questions about where the next "cool communities" are going to be, but it will help you figure out how to create your own answers to your own questions about the future.

And here's one more important resource if you haven't already found it: Check out www.hotjobs-coolcommunities, the website launched and maintained by our friend and Future of Work member Rebecca Ryan, whose research is identifying not only today's great places to live and work but tomorrow's as well.

And be sure to follow our own growing focus on this whole question of what makes some communities "talent magnets." We're planning to concentrate most of the October issue of this newsletter on issues of prime importance to regional economic developers and to corporate real estate folks making locational decisions.

Ultimately, it's important to remember a powerful insight from Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset that Kotkin cites to end The New Geography:

People do not live together merely to be together. They live together to do something together [p. 188; emphasis added].

The Internet and all those related digital technologies have certainly changed the ways we do things together, so it's only natural that they're also changing the ways we live together.

The New Geography is available online from Amazon.com and we encourage you also to become familiar with Joel Kotkin's personal website, at www.joelkotkin.com.

The Future of Work Is Already Here

In one form or another, the future of work is being written about, discussed and debated, and experienced all over the world. Below are just a few references to recent reports and commentary we've come across (each of these reports has already been posted on our Future of Work weblog; the best way to stay really current is to check the blog regularly).

The Future of Blogging

One of the hidden stories of the recent Democratic Convention in Boston was the predominance of bloggers who reported "almost live" from the Convention throughout the week (and we have to believe we'll see something very similar at this week's Republican Convention in New York City).

The New York Times carried an intriguing story on August 1 reporting that over 200 bloggers received journalist passes to the Convention. They spent the entire four days of the Convention writing online journals that described the Convention from their personal - admittedly biased but nevertheless very real - perspectives.

What will blogging do to the world of more conventional work?

Some companies already have - and sanction - bloggers writing public journals about life inside the company. Some see it as a way to make the organization more attractive to potential recruits. Others believe it "humanizes" the company. Still others use blogging as a way to promote products, connect with customers, provide tips on how to use products or get help, and "tell it like it is."

Will blogging become something that companies - and project teams - do someday as a matter of course to make themselves and their goals more public, more transparent, more understandable? Or is blogging a short-term phenomenon?

Future of Work member Elizabeth Albrycht had this observation in response to that question:

I think corporate blogs offer an important channel of communications to key audiences. Done well, a blog can indeed "humanize" the company. You can find a wide variety of information about corporate blogging and public relations at Global PR Blog Week: http://www.globalprblogweek.com.

Can Telework Save the Family?

We encourage you to become regular subscriber to Toni Kistner's "Telework Beat" column in Network World Fusion. It's online, it's free, and anyone who is interested in distributed and mobile work should be reading her weekly articles. Toni, by the way, is a valued individual member of our Future of Work community.

Her August 2 piece, called "Doing Good Works," describes some fascinating efforts underway by Michael Harren, the co-founder of StaffCentrix and an unabashed advocate of teleworking as a way to strengthen families.

One of Haaren's programs involves training stay-at-home military spouses to become "mompreneurs" (a term coined by Business Week in a recent article) - self-employed entrepreneurs who work out of their homes while their kids are in school or day care.

In Haaren's eyes, teleworking can be a family savior - reducing commuting, reducing time away from home for one or both parents, and offering a way out of the high-stress world of corporate slavery (that's our term, not his).

Kistner points out in her article, for example, that over 430,000 entrepreneurs of all types and genders earn their living on eBay. And a Georgetown University study predicts that the job of "virtual assistant" will become so common that it will be a $130 billion-plus industry within five years.

Check out Toni's full story at:

http://www.nwfusion.com/net.worker/columnists/2004/0802kistner.html

and sign up to receive her newsletter yourself. Like this one, it's free.

Videoconferencing Brings Iraq Closer to Home

The San Francisco Chronicle carried a story on July 24 about how web-based videoconferencing is connecting soldiers in Iraq with their families in the United States.

As author Erin Hallissy put it, "Soldiers in Iraq have more ways to quickly communicate with home than ever before - email, satellite phones, and now videoconferencing."

What Hallissy doesn't really point out is how simple and inexpensive web-based videoconferencing has become. We've heard a few stories about business "road warriors" using laptop-based video systems to talk to talk to spouses and kids from hotel rooms, but it certainly hasn't caught on with the masses yet.

However, we believe that web-based video is very close to becoming a common phenomenon. Right now free video conferencing is already embedded within AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo IM. Of course, those are free, public systems that most business organizations believer are far too insecure to rely on.

But there are a number of corporate-focused systems like Sightspeed and Collabworx, among others, that offer fully encrypted video systems that work through firewalls. The military system described in the Chronicle article makes at least partial use of the Collabworx platform.

We've been experimenting personally with Sightspeed, which we highly recommend (you can download the software and use it for free up to 15 minutes a month; a full-time, unlimited-use account is available for only $5.95 a month, believe it or not).

In Our Humble Opinion: We Need a Department of Social Capital

Commentary by Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware

OK, so it's Labor Day again. And we have an election coming up in the United States. We wouldn't want to be left out of the debate, and since we haven't been invited to any of the political conventions we thought we'd offer up our humble opinion on some important policy issues.

Let's face it; our economy continues to slide into a cesspool of stagnation and poopy job prospects. We've yakked about this before, and we continue to be absolutely dismayed at the lackadaisical attitude of both sides of the aisle. One side keeps telling us how good things are while all but ignoring the numbers that say they aren't, while the other is overly obsessed with the very small percentage of jobs that being outsourced overseas, virtually ignoring the technology revolution that is making higher skill levels almost a mandatory requirement for practically every job that matters.

The "debate" seems to be "yatta, yatta, yatta" and zip, diddly-squat of substance. It feels like having four contractors all pointing at each other and saying the roof might be leaking but if it is, it's the other guy's fault.

Come on people, get serious.

More and more people are out of work, and traditional job creation has slowed back down to a trickle. And most of those folks who've lost good jobs but managed to get another one are making a bunch fewer buckos.

So, aren't they are OK? They're making a living, right? Give us a break. Maybe that's one reason personal bankruptcies are at an all time high? And what about all the folks who are so discouraged they've stopped looking for work at all and therefore don't even show up in the unemployment statistics?

Houston, we have a problem. First of all, we think those "public servants" who sit in state and federal buildings all over the United States are speaking the wrong language. The department of this, the select committee for that. If Moses had been a committee instead of an inspired individual leader the Israelites would still be lost in the desert.

Look, what we really need (hey, have you heard that before?) is a coordinated effort aimed at the root problem: we need programs that lead to job creation matched to the realities of today's global economy. Not burger flippers, hospital janitors, or gardeners. And not semi-skilled ("like, maybe I could read some day if I wanted to") industrial workers. By the way, that includes policies and programs aimed at encouraging at-home work and independent contractors, not just traditional full-time employment on someone else's payroll.

If we can get our act together to combat home-on-the-range security (although that's a bit debatable too), why can't we confront basic economic issues and the changing nature of work?

What this country needs is a jobinator! "Hasta la vista, underemployment. I'll be back with opportunities, baby!"

Huh? What the heck are we talking about? We've got federal Departments of Labor, of Education, of Welfare, and heavens know what else at the state level. Ever wondered why they call those offices that take care of jobless folks the "Department of Employment Security?" Good lord, George Orwell must be spinning in his grave. "We had to take away your job so you could go to work" (shades of destroying those villages in Vietnam in order to save them).

What we really need is a "Department of Social Capital," an agency that would bring all of this stuff together. We all know there is an actual link between what we teach kids in school and the type of jobs they can get and handle when they graduate. There's also a link between what goes on in the world and what kinds of businesses can prosper and be sustainable in the United States (and other countries too, of course). And there's a link between the quality of life in a community and the kind of folks who want to live there.

So why don't we pull all that together and make it work for everyone? Well, In Our Humble Opinion, we know the answer.

It's not happening in most communities because we're stuck with a bunch of old-mindset bureaucrats who run these perpetual misery machines. We'd like to see at least 50% of them fired. And while we're at it we could probably get rid of a passel of, excuse us, elected officials as well (but, then who would the lobbyists have to take to dinner and send on cushy trips to see how badly it's done in other countries?).

Sorry for the cynicism, it's just hard to keep quiet about the way the system is working for everyone except us poor folks out here called voters.

Let's dream a little. What if there were a place where business folks could sit down and say to educators, "Here's the kind of people we will need in five years, in ten years." A place where local communities could say "We need better environmental protection so people can breath the air in our town." A place where people could ask, "What should I be preparing myself to be able to do if I want to be successful" - and actually get an answer.

And what if we learned to look at the long-term social effects of what we choose to do - like spending a little more money now on early childhood health and education (and parent health and education), and then not having to spend billions of dollars on prisons and police and other social services later on.

Is it too much to ask that all the professionals who worry about the different parts of our social environment - educators, business people, parents, health care specialists, economists, psychiatrists, property developers, local officials - have one place where they can talk with each other, make joint decisions, collaborate, and hold each other accountable?

Wouldn't that be a good thing? Well, that's the kind of place - or agency - we think our country needs. But it isn't going to happen if we continue to reward governments and officials for duplicating their efforts, protecting their turf, and always pointing the finger at the other guy. We desperately need to look at the whole social environment just as comprehensively as we're beginning to look at our physical environment - to track all the causes and consequences in a truly ecological way.

It took a horrendous event like 9/11 to get across the message that we need to protect ourselves against some very horrible enemies (although look how long it's taking us to understand what protecting ourselves really means, and what it requires from our leaders, our public institutions, and each and every one of us).

What's it going to take to get across a similar message about building our society's capability, about creating a social system and a civil society that will actually sustain our way of life? Hey, you know the Roman Empire missed that one, and so did the British Empire. Wake up folks!

Wouldn't it be refreshing to hear our political leaders (and candidates) actually have a serious, thoughtful conversation about what it will take to create a sustainable quality of life not just for the rich and famous but for all of our citizens - and to extend that conversation to include the entire planet?

All comments should be directed to comments@thefutureofwork.net. We'd love to publish your reactions.

This issue of Future of Work Agenda was produced by Jim Ware and Charlie Grantham of the Work Design Collaborative. We encourage your comments, suggestions, and submission of materials for possible future publication. Please contact us at:

Charlie Grantham, charlie@thefutureofwork.net, +1 928 771 9138
Jim Ware, jim@thefutureofwork.net, +1 510 558 1434

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