Today, an increasing number of companies boast about the fact that they have successfully embraced the cutting edge of modernity by no longer assigning a fixed desk to their employees, who now have to make do with a temporary workstation. Company headquarters are turning into short-stay hotels, where employees who are encouraged to work from home, or from their clients’ place of business, never go unless they have no choice in the matter. They then leave their luggage at the entrance and sit at one of the tables of an open office space for an hour or a day, where they all can access the Internet using their laptops. Businesses are increasingly requiring their employees to come only two or three days a week to their normal places of work, days of their choice or selected by their hierarchy. Only corporate executives, fewer and fewer in number, are maintaining a desk. Moreover, it has become fashionable for head of companies to pride themselves on not having a desk.
It seems to correspond to a real need: Business managers no longer need to be glued to their chairs and they have to spend more and more time in meetings or with their clients. New technologies mean it is now possible to work from anywhere without one’s location being known. In addition, many companies must be able to provide with desks employees from the provinces or from subsidiaries in other countries, or visiting clients or suppliers. The cost for the company in such an arrangement of things is much lower, of course: Reducing the total number of square meters required by one half, since hallways, restrooms, places to rest and canteens all disappear with the desks. Furthermore, it is easier to lay off someone who has no desk than someone who can hold onto a few square meters that he considers his own.
For the employee, it is another matter: When he learns he has no fixed desk, that he must take home pictures, toothbrush and coffee mug, he is no longer – in some way – within the company. He has no sense of belonging or ownership. He is just a passing mercenary, an intermittent worker, with temporary loyalty, and there is nothing stopping him from working elsewhere. All in all, losing one’s desk, in a way, is like getting ready to be fired.
It is not, however, certain that companies will benefit from this, in the long term: It is almost impossible for needed employees to come together for a discussion; and the endless meetings are increasingly replaced by inaudible conference calls, equally endless, during which participants may, by turning the speaker on, engage in other activities. The group falls apart; the company loses its identity, while believing it has gained in flexibility. As its shareholders’ loyalty is of a shorter duration, its employees, and customers are also becoming increasingly temporary, mobile, uncertain, changing, unstable. Fragility is taking a hold on the strongest companies; increasingly, they are realizing that they are ephemeral companies.
This relates to a profound change in our societies, where sedentism gives way to nomadism, in all dimensions. Where loyalty to the group gives way to an individual’s solitude. Where insecurity becomes the rule, in private life as well as in working life, and in political life.
If we do not instill and reinforce once more a sense of belonging and ownership of the company, if we do not give them back their desk, or at least a symbolic equivalent with its rights and duties, if we do not do the same for citizens, if we do not reinstate the long term view, the spirit of conviviality, projects, quality time spent together, our businesses, our societies, will collapse, like so many others before them, that were just as proud and convinced of their immortality.
j@attali.com
Today, an increasing number of companies boast about the fact that they have successfully embraced the cutting edge of modernity by no longer assigning a fixed desk to their employees, who now have to make do with a temporary workstation. Company headquarters are turning into short-stay hotels, where employees who are encouraged to work from home, or from their clients’ place of business, never go unless they have no choice in the matter. They then leave their luggage at the entrance and sit at one of the tables of an open office space for an hour or a day, where they all can access the Internet using their laptops. Businesses are increasingly requiring their employees to come only two or three days a week to their normal places of work, days of their choice or selected by their hierarchy. Only corporate executives, fewer and fewer in number, are maintaining a desk. Moreover, it has become fashionable for head of companies to pride themselves on not having a desk.
It seems to correspond to a real need: Business managers no longer need to be glued to their chairs and they have to spend more and more time in meetings or with their clients. New technologies mean it is now possible to work from anywhere without one’s location being known. In addition, many companies must be able to provide with desks employees from the provinces or from subsidiaries in other countries, or visiting clients or suppliers. The cost for the company in such an arrangement of things is much lower, of course: Reducing the total number of square meters required by one half, since hallways, restrooms, places to rest and canteens all disappear with the desks. Furthermore, it is easier to lay off someone who has no desk than someone who can hold onto a few square meters that he considers his own.
For the employee, it is another matter: When he learns he has no fixed desk, that he must take home pictures, toothbrush and coffee mug, he is no longer – in some way – within the company. He has no sense of belonging or ownership. He is just a passing mercenary, an intermittent worker, with temporary loyalty, and there is nothing stopping him from working elsewhere. All in all, losing one’s desk, in a way, is like getting ready to be fired.
It is not, however, certain that companies will benefit from this, in the long term: It is almost impossible for needed employees to come together for a discussion; and the endless meetings are increasingly replaced by inaudible conference calls, equally endless, during which participants may, by turning the speaker on, engage in other activities. The group falls apart; the company loses its identity, while believing it has gained in flexibility. As its shareholders’ loyalty is of a shorter duration, its employees, and customers are also becoming increasingly temporary, mobile, uncertain, changing, unstable. Fragility is taking a hold on the strongest companies; increasingly, they are realizing that they are ephemeral companies.
This relates to a profound change in our societies, where sedentism gives way to nomadism, in all dimensions. Where loyalty to the group gives way to an individual’s solitude. Where insecurity becomes the rule, in private life as well as in working life, and in political life.
If we do not instill and reinforce once more a sense of belonging and ownership of the company, if we do not give them back their desk, or at least a symbolic equivalent with its rights and duties, if we do not do the same for citizens, if we do not reinstate the long term view, the spirit of conviviality, projects, quality time spent together, our businesses, our societies, will collapse, like so many others before them, that were just as proud and convinced of their immortality.
j@attali.com