The office of the future - is it a place for work or play?

Since technology is allowing workforces to be more flexible where they work, companies are making offices better places to be, so that staff do actually turn up.  The two weathermen erected some goalposts and kicked a football around the office.

Weatherman 1 : I read that Google have installed a slide in their canteen so that staff can play games in their tea breaks.

Weatherman 2 : I understand that employers want to keep their staff engaged with them – it’s harder to be engaged when you are not physically present.

WM1 : Lego has no assigned seating. You can sit anywhere and work – and they have yellow staircases.

WM2 : And if someone is sitting in a chair where you want to sit – just grab some bricks and get assembling a new one.

WM1 :  Some companies are allowing workers to bring their pets in. Maybe not the people in call- centres though. “So you want to renew your insurance for 50 years did you say? What? Rover – shut up, I can’t hear this client.”

 WM2 : What do they do when Rover needs the toilet?

WM1 : If it’s Lego, you can build him a chamber pot in red and blue.

WM2 : There are music rooms, play rooms, better air to breathe, brighter colours, flexible work zones, sofas.  If this continues, staff won’t go home. Why endure a noisy polluted commute to a cold damp apartment just to rest before the next day?

WM1 : You might as well invite the lads in for a beer at 6, watch a bitter of telly, play table football and zonk out on the sofa until the morning.

WM2 : I haven’t seen much sign of it here at the Met. Office. We are still in front of computers and green screens, analysing data and spotting weather patterns.

WM1 : With the power of computers and internet connections and home video technology, I’m not sure why we come to work at all. We could do it from home. “Hello and it’s freezing today. There will be leaves on the line and infrastructure will collapse – so I am in my bedroom in my pyjamas presenting this forecast. Have you met my wife?”

WM2 : It does raise a legitimate question of where does work stop and play start. If you make work too much fun to be at, how will I know when to work and when to play?

WM1 : That’s been an on-going problem for ages. Companies have fought to stop employees using their work machines and time for their own ends. It’s serious for them when you don’t speak to the next utility customer, but instead do your on-line shopping.

WM2 : It may be good that enlightened companies are experimenting with new ways of working together. It may keep employees committed to a team ethos and motivate staff to get out of bed.

WM1 : What will it do for the office romance? It used to be a grope on top of the photocopy paper in the cupboard.

WM2 :  But if you are installing sofas, and quiet corners – well as I take my pet poodle for a walk at lunchtime around the office, goodness knows who I will see up to who knows what. And as for that Google slide....have they thought it through properly? People with good imaginations imagine sex in more interesting places.

WM1 : It’s all embryonic – ideas evolving. I guess it’s a “suck it and see” approach from management.

WM2 : Don’t tell the secretaries that....the bosses are looking for work/life harmony so that people feel happier. But the workers might just feel confused.

When this conversation happens between CEO and employee:  “what are you doing on that sofa?”

“Thinking about how to reach next month’s sales target, Sir”

“You were snoring.”

WM1 : It’s enlightenment gone too far. If no-one goes back to their family, marriages will suffer; there will be a deepening housing crisis because more separated couples need separate homes.

WM2 : Perhaps instead of them making us feel more at home at work, they should make us feel more at work at home. If the CEO walks into his P.A.’s kitchen at 8.00 am, she knows breakfast is over.

WM1 : He may already be doing that, expecting crumpets.