Month: October 2016

Survey shows shift away from traditional employment “larger than previously recognized.”

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Overall, we estimate that the independent workforce is larger than previously recognized: some 20 to 30 percent of the working-age population in the United States and the EU-15 countries are engaged in some form of independent earning today. More than half of them use independent work to supplement their income rather than earning their primary living from it. The majority of independent workers, both supplemental and primary earners, pursue this path out of preference rather than necessity—and they report being highly satisfied with their work lives.

This from the executive summary of a just issued survey by McKinsey Global Research illustrates the erosion of the traditional concept of employment, anchored by what author Dave Rolston described in his 2013 eBook Four Dead Kings at Work as the crumbling pillars of the traditional notion of working for a living: holding one job, located at one place, being there at the same time every day and reporting to a single manager.

As I wrote in my own eBook Last Rush Hour: The Decentralization of Knowledge Work in the Twenty-First Century, a driving factor is the decentralization of knowledge work due to the proliferation and maturation of information and communications technology. Before, knowledge workers had to work in a single location – a commute-in office – because that’s where the tools they needed to do their work – typewriters, telephones, photocopiers, in-house central computer systems – were. Even though obsoleted, this outdated model remains in place and continues to define employment. If you don’t commute to an office to work 8-5, Monday through Friday, you’re not in the traditional employment arrangement. Or “trapped in a cubicle” as the McKinsey Global Research report put it in the introduction.

We’re currently in a transition between this Industrial Age model of knowledge work that pays for time worked to one based on work projects and milestones completed. Time worked is fundamental to the legal definition of employment in the United States that keeps the Industrial Age model largely in place. It’s one of Rolston’s dying kings: one timeframe (8 hours a day, 40 hours a week) along with working in set office location for a single manager. But it won’t go away quickly as the tension between the old and the emerging models plays out.

Ongoing paradox of SF Bay Area that underutilizes ICT, chokes on traffic congestion

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If it seems as if you’re spending more time behind the wheel than ever, it’s not an illusion. Since 2010, the amount of time Bay Area drivers endure crawling along in freeway congestion has soared 70 percent.That’s the highest level of “congested delay” — time spent in traffic moving at speeds of 35 mph or less — since traffic experts began keeping track in 1981.

Source: Drive across Bay Bridge tops list of Bay Area’s worst commutes – SFGate

The San Francisco Bay Area continues to underutilize its signature product — information and communications technologies (ICT) — that could make a big dent in its world class traffic congestion by reducing commute trips.

Instead of commuting along freeways to offices located elsewhere in the Bay Area, ICT enables knowledge workers to remain at home or in the communities rather than playing road warrior each work day. But the Industrial Age commute to the office habit is proving to be very enduring even as traffic congestion and associated delays and adverse quality of life impacts continue to increase.