Future Work:

We have been busy organising a one-day Future Work Conference, based on the book, scheduled for April 24th in Birmingham. Alison and I will be speaking, along with speakers from Microsoft, Vodafone and Word Association, all covered in the book. There will also be speakers from Sandwell Borough Council and Wolverhampton Homes. More information will appear on this site in the next week.

We've had lots of media interest in Future Work from countries including the US, UK, Germany and Italy. You can see the reviews, interviews and other articles by clicking here or going to the "Media coverage" link at the top of this page.

The UK government-backed Anywhere Working Consortium has launched a web portal "helping organisations to adopt more flexible working practices". The consortium includes Business in the Community, Microsoft, Nokia, Nuffield, Regus and Vodafone  and has the support of the Trades Union Congress. Its aim, like that of our book, is to reinvent the way we work to make businesses more productive and efficient, reduce damage to the environment and increase individual well-being.

Happy New Year! The Economist this week reports on the trend for “co-working” – an alternative to home or traditional office that provides mobile workers with facilities to work and collaborate remotely. It concludes that this does not signal “the end of the conventional office”. While we agree there’s life in the office yet, its role is undoubtedly changing.

A survey released recently by Microsoft in the USA asked questions about the impact of telework on people's jobs. The majority of respondents were from Government with only 20% representing the private sector.

An interesting report has just been issued by the Institute of Leadership and Management in the UK based on a survey of 1300 managers. It concluded that the majority of UK bosses are working longer hours, have higher workloads and are more stressed compared with ten years ago.

A report has just been published showing that almost half of under 24s say they wouldn’t work for a company where social media was banned. It is based on a survey of 1,000 people carried out by recruitment company Hyphen and concludes that employers are out of touch with ‘Generation Facebook’.

To all those who have asked for an electronic version of Future Work, the Kindle Edition is now available on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. So our words on page 2 become reality!

Today I gave a presentation about the book at the CIPD conference in Manchester which received a positive response. I shared the session with David Robinson of Hertfordshire County Council, which is one of the organisations featured in the book.