Healthy Business

The future of work: could people be paid for results achieved instead of hours worked?

It’s incredible to think just how much the workplace has changed over the last couple of decades – and with today’s advanced technology and culture of instant information, it doesn’t look like the pace of change is likely to slow down any time soon.

In ten years’ time employees could be paid for results achieved instead of hours worked, choosing when – and even where – they choose to carry out their duties. This is according to a new book entitled “Future Work: How Businesses Can Adapt And Thrive In The New World Of Work”. The book centres on research conducted by authors and business experts Alison Maitland and Peter Thomson, who draw some interesting conclusions: “employees are more productive if they have greater autonomy over where, when and how they work. Trusting people to manage their own work lives, individually or in teams, pays off”. They believe that a management shift from “controlling to enabling” will be essential as we move away from working models born in the industrial age to those more suited to our digital future.

Will the office disappear and be replaced by ‘work hubs’ – essentially a bank of hot desks for mobile workers? And is the nine to five on its way out, never to return? With flexible working and telecommuting becoming commonplace, neither of these future scenarios seem unrealistic. Time, of course, will tell. How do you see the workplace looking in ten years’ time?