The Mobile Work Force Reality

While I’d like to say I’m writing this post on an iPad from a beach in Aruba, I’m actually in a cubicle in an office building in Minneapolis. But that’s the promise of the mobile technology dream, isn’t it? A work force with access to up-to-the-minute data from a dashboard, remotely meeting with team members and making business-critical decisions—all from some exotic location.

The reality, however, is most of us just want the freedom to work in our hardly exotic homes in a pair of sweat pants with a dog sleeping at our feet. (Based on the frequent barking overheard on conference calls, though, those dogs rarely stay asleep.) Or, we want to be able to stay connected with our coworkers and projects while waiting for a connecting flight or at a conference center.

A new Cisco survey reinforces the notion that the days of the cubicle jockey are numbered. Nearly 70 percent of workers polled said working in an office is unnecessary, up 9 percent from 2010. And 3/5ths of college students described working remotely and flexible scheduling as a right.

While bad news for commercial real estate agents, the remote work force trend poses challenges for IT as well. It means providing secure, dependable access to data from a variety of devices with varying interfaces and capabilities. That’s no mean feat.

Fortunately, IT professionals can learn from their colleagues who are leading the charge. P&V Assurances in Belgium is one organization that sought to enable insurance agents to use non-controlled computers to access its mainframe. For RPG developers seeking to accommodate multiple devices, Aaron Bartell asks “To Mobile or Not to Mobile?”

So while the centralized workplace might go the way of the Newton PDA and the mobile pager, technology and IT know-how will keep us working together, wherever we might be.