Future Workspaces » work life balance

Supervisor work/life training gets results

infocentre — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:27:46 +0000

Teaching managers to be more supportive of their direct reports’ work/life issues can be a simple and effective route to improving employee health and satisfaction, according to a multiyear study of hundreds of frontline workers and dozens of supervisors in middle-America supermarkets. (Full article: Harvard Business Review, november 2008)

Studio living and working in 2028

Geke Ludden — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:41:59 +0000

At the Innovatieproeftuin, 50 students in Innovation Management and Industrial Design Engineering worked all day on a future workspaces case. The day was organized by the Innovation Platform, the NCSI, student association STAR of the RSM Erasmus University and student association i.d of Delft University of Technology. To start the day, Luis Suarez from IBM gave an inspirational talk about working without e-mail. He encouraged the students to stay in control of their own productivity and to think about the best tools to use for their communication.

The 7 teams were then challenged to come up with their vision of working and living in 2028. Session leaders of each team were briefed about the case a week earlier and came up with solid and creative plans to tackle this case and try to win the challenge.

Shortly after the students started their creative sessions, the prime minister of the Netherlands, Jan Peter Balkenende visited them to have a look at some first results and try out some of the creative techniques that were used.

At the end of the day, every team presented its vision in a one-minute pitch. This one-minute proved to be very short but all the teams did a good job at bringing their vision across. You can view the pitches below. Important themes in the students’ visions were individuality, flexibility and working in a virtual world.

A jury of three, Han Brezet (professor of sustainable product development at Delft University of Technology), Melek Usta, (member of the innovation platform and director of Colourful People), and Henk Volberda (professor of strategic management and innovation), judged the outcomes of the teams and selected a winner.

The winning team came up with the concept of ‘I’Merk’ (‘I’ Brand’). The core of this concept was that in 2028, knowledge workers will be hired for their character, characters together will form a company. The members of the winning team will join the prime minister on a working visit.

? – Eerste pitch | download video

Forum – Tweede pitch | download video

Een dag uit het leven van – Derde pitch | download video

I’Merk – Vierde pitch (Winnaars) | download video

Passie & Bellen – Vijfde pitch | download video

Free – Zesde pitch (2e prijs) | download video

Supermarkt – Zevende pitch | download video

Prijsuitreiking | download video

‘E-mailverkeer vlakt af bij jongste generatie’

infocentre — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:44:54 +0000

Voor het eerst werken vier verschillende generaties tegelijkertijd op dezelfde werkvloer: Babyboomers, generatie X, Y en Z. Dat deze generaties ook verschillende dingen verlangen van de werkomgeving en werkplek, blijkt tijdens de Generations@work-workshop van kantoormeubilairfabrikant Steelcase en het Future Workspaces-innovatieprogramma. (Volledig artikel:Computable, 17 november 2008)

Ondernemen in je loopbaan

infocentre — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:45:48 +0000

Het Nieuwe Werken: dat is werken in een kenniseconomie, met alle ICT-hulpmiddelen die er zijn om samen te werken in (virtuele) teams. Het is ook een ondernemende manier van werken, in een andere organisatiestructuur en – cultuur, waarin vertrouwen de plek inneemt van controleren. Dat heeft serieuze gevolgen voor de inrichting van je loopbaan. En het vormt een fikse uitdaging voor leidinggevenden. (full-text article: Automatiseringgids, 31 oktober 2008)

Instruments: “information overload” self assessments

Ruud Janssen — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:51:24 +0000

Information overload is often associated with uncertainty and work pressure resulting from the abundance of information people are confronted with during their daily work. Information overload therefore takes on the symptoms of work-related stress, something that one person is simply more prone to than another. When this form of stress develops, the strengths and weaknesses of your personality and your personal work style play a key role. These three self assessments (interactive MS Excel sheets) are designed to examine these aspects in detail.

English:

Dutch:

Gezelligheid leidt niet tot prestaties

infocentre — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:55:10 +0000

Met collega’s een potje flipperen tijdens de lunchpauze, relaxen in de loungehoek of borrelen op vrijdagmiddag. Klinkt gezellig, maar al dit werkplezier leidt niet tot goede prestaties. Dat blijkt uit een onderzoek van advies en onderzoeksbureau Hay Group. Nederlandse werkgevers richten zich door de schaarste op de arbeidsmarkt te veel op een plezierige werkomgeving, maar zouden zich moeten richten op het werkklimaat.
(full text article: Intermediair, 1 oktober 2008)

Challenges for the nomadic worker: Part 2: In Touch

external author — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:49:53 +0000

In the series of posts on the main challenges for the nomadic worker, this part focusses on the challenge to stay in touch with the people that are important to you in your personal and professional network.

What is being “In Touch”?
Being in touch is the affective version of being in sync. It is the sense of “being connected” both with people you know well (your strong relational ties) as well as with people you are acquinted with (your weak ties). Important aspects are reassurance of the well-being of significant others, and the ability to let someone else know you are thinking of him or her.

Why is being “In Touch” important?
Being in touch is relational “glue”; it helps to:

Build and maintain a social network.
To maintain social cohesion in a team.
To have peripheral (not goal oriented) awareness of what others are doing.
To build up trust in social relationships.

Our research hypotheses about “In Touch”

Face-to-face contact and mediated contact fulfill complementary roles for being in touch.
Being in touch prevents “professional loneliness” (sensory isolation due to the impersonal nature of much information technology).

Our research questions about “In Touch”

What are the roles of face-to-face and mediated contact in developing a sense of being in touch?
How can social media help people to get in touch and to stay in touch?
In what ways can “impersonal” IT be improved or enhanced to prevent professional loneliness?

Time defragmenter

Ruud Janssen — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:25:33 +0000

What it is: a more efficient day schedule, by grouping fragments of related work (detached actions) into larger, contiguous chunks.

How it works: a wizard analyzes your to do list (for actionable items) and your and your coworker’s agendas (for schedules and availability) to come up with an optimized schedule that requires fewer context switches.

For instance, it will group all activities that I need to do for the same project or with the same person(s) and plan these in one contiguous time slot.

Slow life

Ruud Janssen — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:00:58 +0000

A mental shift towards slowing down life’s pace.

SlowLife helps you to escape the hectic of modern times, by explicitly creating moments to reflect, to put things into perspective, or just to enjoy. Examples are: going to your work on foot, taking the time for a good and healthy breakfast with your family, taking an afternoon off just to do ‘nothing’.

From www.slowlife.nl (in Dutch):

“Slowlife staat voor zaken als genieten, leven met de seizoenen, spontane ontmoetingen, uitgebreid koken, eerlijk eten, met plezier werken, dromen, tijd nemen voor wat echt belangrijk is: een liefde, een droom, een goed doel, mensen…

Slowlife wil mensen bewegen op tijd gas terug te nemen voordat zij – en hun omgeving – voortijdig opbranden. Zij wil daarvoor ideeën en mogelijkheden aanreiken.

Symbool voor slowlife staat de molen die draait op wat de natuur hem aanbiedt. Bij harde wind staat hij te zwoegen, bij een flinke wind ijverig te wieken, bij geen wind staat hij schaamteloos te niksen. In een ‘donquichotterige’- context staat de molen ook voor dromen en ingaan tegen de heersende (‘druk, druk,druk’) stroom.”

No!

external author — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:03:45 +0000

Email is frequently used to assign work to others; it has become a “poor men’s workflow system”. Senders often expect a (nearly) immediate response, whereas recipients may think very differently – but are often silent – about that. A simple “No!”-button (“No!” for “I cannot do this”) can lower the threshold for the recipient to give a prompt reply and thus avoid unnecessary confusion for the sender (did she get my message?).