Running the Store From Home
By Bernice Hurst, Managing Director, Fine Food Networks
The stores of the future may be run from home. A report on what The Guardian described as “the nature of employment in 2018” pointed towards a shift from talk about “work-life balance” to more about “work-life integration.”
The report from the UK Chartered Management Institute (CMI) forecast that by 2018, technology will have freed millions of workers to work either all or at least some of the time from home. But this more flexible environment – rather than creating a leisured workforce capable of balancing work and family life more effectively, as once hoped – will instead be the domain of a stressed, 24/7 workforce desperately struggling to meet the conflicting demands of children, elderly dependents, instant communications and global markets.
Besides
technological advancements, part of the reason more people will be working
from home in the future is because of a combination of environmental concerns
and the pressures of needing to be available to care for ageing relatives.
The CMI’s report, entitled Management Futures, identified 17 possible scenarios
that UK organizations could be facing within the next decade, and also surveyed
more than 1,000 senior executives.
In the survey, 74 percent of the execs expected “virtual
teams of employees,” working at a distance from each other, to become the norm
by 2018. About 64 percent thought talented people would become “multi-employed,” 59
percent said job hopping would be commonplace, and 56 percent said most routine
tasks would be automated. Two-thirds of the executives expected global corporations
to exert more influence than governments. About two-thirds also forecast an
increase in customer participation in business decisions and the creation of
products with longer lifecycles to meet environmental concerns.
The Institute
also looked at the best ways of tackling these workplace changes. To achieve
stability and productivity, for example, and make the most of employees’ experience, “companies
would come to regard wisdom as a valuable resource. Some would try to nurture
an organizational memory by arranging rituals and storytelling, and listening
to the accounts of long-term employees.”
Mary Chapman, the Institute’s chief executive, added that “a greater degree of emotional intelligence will be required by managers and leaders so they can understand how people work and their likely reaction to change.”
While acknowledging that the surprise scenarios outlined might not turn out to be accurate, the report did paraphrase the old Scout motto, advising that businesses should be prepared for all sorts of possibilities.
Discussion questions: How do you think issues such as technology, the aging population and eco-concerns will reshape the workplace environment by 2018? How should retailers be preparing to capitalize on these changes? How should managers prepare to handle this new breed of employee?
- Wave goodbye to the nine to five, and say hello to virtual enterprise – The Guardian
- Britain in business: the world of work in 2018 – Chartered Management Institute
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10 Comments on "Running the Store From Home"
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Present value: When a homemaking consumer and a dedicated store employee give a smile to each other there’s a future in it.
Future value: While many homes have replaced the office, and that will continue, it will much harder to run “your store” and enjoy a good relationship from your home without a smile or eye contact–technology notwithstanding.
Amen Max, I had exactly the same read. For many of us it’s not only 2018 already, it’s been 2018 (at least as they imagine it) for years.
As a person who works virtually, I can certainly say that it is a game changer, not only for professional life but for personal life as well.
Here are other areas of impact: shifts in fashion/apparel needs, use of gyms & spas, the need for socializing, changes in shopping behaviors, shifts in standards of beauty, and the influence & morphing of communications styles. It can be quite isolating to work from home, but freeing as well. The advantage to scenario planning is examining the 360 impact of change.
Wow! So they say we can manage stores from home! Sign me up!
Not to discount this report but I don’t see how that is possible in the retail world. Managers need to lead their teams and that would be difficult if the manage wasn’t there. That said, training and staff involvement are the elements that motivate people to do their jobs well. I don’t think you can accomplish any of that via email or netmeeting.
Retailing is “people-to-people.” If all we are interested in is transactions, so be it. But repeat sales, loyalty, retention and forgiveness are built up over time by relationships. Do we want a Facebook relationship with our clients who provide our income and wealth? I doubt it.
What struck me first about the research is that most of the predictions for 2018 have already become reality. Virtual teams of employees already work from home on projects; as companies have show little loyalty to employees, job hopping is commonplace; most routine tasks are automated; consumers already demand a decision in product creation; and eco-friendly products are being rushed to market.
What struck me second is how out of touch the executives in the research seem to be. To not realize that their future predictions are already reality lead me to wonder about the financial health of their companies in 2018.
In the Workplace Of The Future, press releases advertising “findings” that everyone already knows will be automatically returned to the point of origin with a $500 fine. Self-serving ads “disguised” as press releases will be automatically returned to their authors, who’ll be fined $5,000. Multiple offenders will be sentenced to hard labor, working the graveyard shift for 2 years for a software company famous for depending on the public for pointing out bugs in its poorly tested software.