New Way Of Work (NWOW), more than teleworking?

With the title

Het nieuwe werken, méér dan telewerken (New Way Of Work, more than teleworking)

an article(*) in Drive a magazine of LeasePlan about mobile technologie in new ways of work is opened.

In the first paragraph, the words at the heart of the goal, but also directly the biggest obstacle of the thinking behind the new work stresses: the total flexibility of the old and rusty 9 to 5-culture.

Culture

Culture often is defined as:

• An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
• The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group

Cultural change

Cultures are subject to change and internally effected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. Cultural change refers to the dynamic process whereby cultures are changing and adapting to external or internal forces (globalization, advances in communication, transport and infrastructure improvements, etc).
Technology can be a driving force of change. In a bigger picture medical technology has contributed to demographic changes. Technology can contribute to changes in globalization and the way information is transported for instance.
Technology however is not the only driving factor of cultural change, as the definitions of culture make clear the human factor (knowledge, attitude, belief and values) is the one most important.

This human factor is influenced by the global surroundings and can by guided by the organisation that embrasses the New Way Of Work. Providing the technology, taking away some seat and reducing the capacity of the parkinglot will not lead to the desired changes.

The roll of employer

The employer has to change his goals, the way these goals are translated to measurable results and the way employees are rewarded. When I read the conclusion of the article(*) that states that espacially the employees object to teleworking I ask myself. Is it the objection to the new way of work,or has the employer some work to do in his implementation of the concept?

In the case of 38% of the employees who are afraid to take the necessary responsibility and feel that being seen on the job (30%). In my opinion this has to be solved by having a very transparant way how this vision of teleworking is implemented.
Missing the interaction and collaboration with collegues (42%) and the contact with colleques (27%) can actually be supported with technology, but well organised and supported minimal fysical contact by the management can help to make this figure much better.

The role of the organisation and it's management is changing with the change of the culture. Implementing teleworking as a part of new way of work, means other management style, technology can only support the succes of these changes.
(*)The article refers to a survey (Dutch) of TeleworkForum and Novay. They conclude from their survey that the biggest obstacle of teleworking are stated by the employee.
Without the details of the survey I can not explain this conclusion. For instance the opinion of the employer is missing.