New Survey Previews The 'Future of Work'

Will social networking and instant messages replace the standard business phone call, the client lunch and the handshake? A new survey by Directions Research, commissioned by Adobe Systems points toward an evolution in office workplace culture, including the changing ways white-collar workers are interacting and co-ordinating their tasks, and how business will be conducted in the social media-rich environment of the 21st century.

The survey identifies respondents in four key categories:

• Leaders – Young professionals, who use a variety of emerging technologies, both at work and in their personal lives
• Actives – Largely over-35 year old professionals, who have adapted to emerging technologies, to meet the changing demands of the workplace
• Followers – The less technically-inclined, who rely on e-mail at the exclusion of other technologies
• Resistors – Generally older workers, who are reluctant to adjust to shifts in the workplace and office technologies

New Trends

The leap in new technology options and the shifting demographics of the workforce mean that the old, traditional way of doing business is rapidly being enhanced by new ways of working. More business will be conducted using emerging communications technologies and social networking platforms.

Technologies that people prefer to use in their private lives will become the technologies people want to use at work. The younger generation prefers to use multiple channels of communication, often choosing social networks, text messaging or instant messaging instead of e-mail and in-person meetings. This shift could lead to increased support for work technologies that offer these capabilities.

The survey was conducted by Directions Research via Internet in late February 2009. Roughly 90 percent of the respondents were white-collar-workers. College students accounted for 10 percent of the survey. Survey responses were divided equally between men and women.

Key Findings

While e-mail is still the leading technology tool of choice, usage of text messaging, instant messaging, social networking and online productivity tools are on the rise with white-collar workers under 35, with nearly one in three reporting they use these technologies at work daily. 50 percent of technology ’leaders’ would choose text messaging or instant messaging if they could have only one technology for a month for personal use.

In the next five years, white-collar workers plan to increase their time working remotely by 50 percent, resulting in average white-collar workers spending 30 percent of their time working out of the office.

Erik Larson, director of marketing and product management, Adobe’s Business Productivity Business Unit, said, “e-Mail was a major disruptor to the way people worked a generation ago, moving the way people communicated and collaborated with each other into the digital realm. With new technologies providing an even more fluid and immediate means for communicating and expressing ideas, we are poised to enter into the new era of work, where the latest communications technologies and social networking platforms will be essential to the success of business.”

Randy Brooks, president and founder, Directions Research, said, “The survey data shows that the younger generations in today’s workforce – and the next generation coming into the workforce – have a clear preference in the new technologies they are using to communicate with each other on a personal level. These serve as predictors of technologies that people will want to use in the workplace to help them more effectively collaborate together, and businesses that support these new technologies and workflows will likely gain competitive advantage as they enable a new level of productivity among their workers.”