Networks and workplace freedom

I have just renamed this blog to reflect the issues I've covered in my new book, The Future of Work. Collecting material ahead of two speaking engagements last week it was clear that events with an impact on our working futures are happening constantly so I want this to be a living document featuring developments that I think are relevant to the changing workplace.

Some of these may seem surprising. What, for example, does the news that a former Guantanamo Bay inmate now includes his former jailer as a Facebook Friend have to do with work? I think this shows how people are connecting with each other today at levels that are challenging the controls and expectations placed on populations in the past.

Imagine back in December 1914 if British and German soldiers fraternising in no-man's land been able to exchange their Facebook and email details, organising a "let's go home" group on Facebook, for example.

You think it couldn't happen? I'm sure some EMI marketing executives had similar thoughts when Jon and Tracy Morter, a couple living in Essex, decided they would orchestrate a Facebook campaign to ensure that their favourite song by Rage Against the Machine, became the Christmas number one single (see augmented reality blog below).

People didn't just vote for the song, they dug in their pockets and bought it, such was the bloodymindedness of a section of the British public.

Much of the corporate sector has become increasingly controlling in the way it runs business. Employees are often forbidden to talk to journalists about their work without referring queries to press offices. But attempts to create workplace firewalls simply will not work in a world of Twitter and Facebook.

How will China's standoff with Google pan out? It's too early to say but the struggle for communications democracy is important not just for our personal freedoms but also for our freedoms in work.

The disposable worker

Is this the future of work? I sincerely hope not. This BusinessWeek article examines the growth of what it calls "the disposable worker".

If companies choose to concentrate on elites, as they do in some talent management systems, while treating the mass of employees as commodities that can be exchanged at will, they are contributing to an ugly future even for those who have profited at the expense of the less well regarded.

Sense and nonsense

My Uncommon Sense column in Human Resources Magazine is to become highly uncommon after next month as it's had the chop. This is one very good reason why I would never advise anyone to give up their day job without some deep thinking.

Charles Handy's freelance portfolio lifestyle can be an excellent way of making a living when times are good. But when budgets get squeezed as they are just now it is the outsiders whose bum cheeks are closest to those who wield the boot.

My own bum cheeks haven't stopped smarting for more than a year as a once healthy portfolio has been whittled away to a single monthly column in the FT, and who knows how long that might last? The wolf is not at the door anymore, he's making himself comfortable in my favourite armchair, pouring himself a gin and tonic and watching repeats of three little piggies - apart from the ending; he doesn't watch the last bit.

Meanwhile I have started a new book, not about work this time, but about the shape of things to come, although it will not be forecasting the end of the job, a theme I once explored in this old column. Funnily enough one of my sons is inventing computer games these days. Yes, times are hard in the Donkin household. I hope I'll be able to write a happy ending.

Prisoners of the market

All those hard pressed chief executives and bankers worried about the flack they have been receiving on pay and bonuses can sleep more easily in their beds this week after Stephen Hester, chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland gave them what must be the ultimate in justifications. There was nothing highly paid bankers could do about their pay levels, he told an House of Commons select committee, since their employers are "prisoners of the market".

Never again do wealthy executives have to feel cornered at dinner parties. All they need do from now on is throw up their hands and declare: "I'm a prisoner of the market." Case closed, move on.