Blurring Life and Work

The 24-hour nature of always-on access, availability of networks, and demand for productivity, mean we are losing the ability to keep work and personal consumption and behavior compartmentalized.

An image of a group of people within a workplace that has many computers surrounding them

According to recent Nielsen data, over half of online consumers watch video from the workplace worldwide. In countries such as Canada, the US and UK, where home Internet penetration is high, many employers block outside media and social networks at the firewall. For consumers in many countries, however, the workplace provides the main access to broadband and fast PCs. Image: Flickr / Jasha J.

A lifestyle that was once the purview of business road warriors has been made part of many people’s lives through the spread of always-on connectivity, powerful devices, fluid life and work arrangements and applications and services that range across almost all of our screens. Two streams—the encroachment of consumer interactivity and communication into the workplace, and applications from business creeping into our homes, has created a blended, though not always welcomed, continuum of work/life existence online.

Signals:

The rise of the smartphone as a consumer device signaled the spread of powerful e-mail and applications to the pockets of tens of millions of consumers. There will be an estimated 5 million smartphones in Canada by year-end 2010, based on Nielsen data, the largest percentage made up of RIM’s BlackBerry smartphone, which is adapting more toward consumer markets from its traditional base as a business device. Nearly all smartphones now handle not only productivity applications but are able to carry games, video and other consumer-focused features.
Researchers are increasingly tracking the use of technology during what used to be considered sacred personal downtime, such as on holiday with family, or weekends, nights and during time with family. Several studies in the past few years have indicated that around two-thirds of adults take technology with them on vacation with the intent of working or checking into the office.
As applications such as instant messaging, calendaring and contact management have jumped from business to home, more workers are using social networking, watching video and other media-intensive applications from the office and while working on the go. Shifting generational values have created an expectation among many Gen Y workers that these activities bring some productive benefit. Some companies have sought to harness these formats to communication internally, recognizing their social and productive value.

Implications:

More and more media is being carried into the workplace as a result of companies equipping their workers with, or expecting them to have, smartphones or other powerful communication and productivity technology. Device makers have begun “splitting the difference” in design of their products in terms of style and function to accommodate this.
The Web face of some consumer-focused media tools, such as YouTube, and e-mail services, such as Google’s Gmail, have become more business-friendly, offering ways for businesses to customize these applications.

Countertrends:

Some companies have issued outright bans of consumer technology or services in the workplace, citing impacts on productivity and security.
Going “off the grid” has become an increasingly used phrase, describing the desire to disentangle from this blur of work and life technology.

Extrapolations:

Technology itself is enabling a constant, fluid state of work and living. Coupled with the changing landscape of work and economics, the media and productivity device itself is becoming the core of our ability to work, communicate, and relax, with the structure of both work and living being shaped around it.