It’s official, working in an office is bad for you. Shocking, interesting and relevant for those of us spending an outrageous amount of time chatting with colleagues, tweeting, Facebooking and Weiboeing friends, relatives, acquaintances or just about anyone available between the hours of 9am and 6pm.
Having stumbled upon this Telegraph article a couple of weeks ago, it got me thinking about the occasional missed deadline and regular stretches of overtime all of us have been subjected to at some point in working lives. While an impossible amount of work and not enough people/time to do it is one of the main reasons for overtime, our ADD-inducing, 24-hour, on-the-go lifestyles are also not entirely blameless. Offices, as the article contends, only exacerbate this situation with ringing phones, visitors, water cooler gossip, espresso machines and whatnot diverting our already short attention spans.
While the study mentioned in the Telegraph more or less focused on the UK/Europe, it got me wondering whether a similar verdict could be applied over different geographies and cultures. For instance, are people in Japan better at working in offices than those in France? Are cubicle dwellers more efficient in Brazil than Bangladesh? While the answers to those questions eludes me, in China at least, the office does not seem to be the place for heightened productivity. Though this may not be true for everyone, according to the 9,000 or so individuals participating in the Cisco WebEx Science of Company Productivity survey, being able to work remotely could make you a faster, better and more satisfied employee.
Supported by Bite Shanghai, the Science of Company Productivity campaign was launched earlier this summer to determine the attitudes of the global workforce towards office life and the traditional work day. In China, the campaign was kicked off with an online poll which quizzed employees about their current work routines and what can be done to make them more efficient and satisfied. The results very much indicated that the mobile employee who is able to work whenever, wherever is happier and more productive than the one perpetually chained at his or her desk. This is interesting when you consider that working remotely is not as readily accepted here as it is in other parts of the world.
In addition to giving some unusual insights into the minds of the Chinese workforce, the Cisco campaign reminded me of a couple of key things when it comes executing successful PR campaigns. Creating relevance was one of the main takeaways of our work with Cisco especially when it came to generating interest around a corporate message. Focusing on a topic of everyday relevance (work, commuting, hobbies, happiness and so forth) and turning this into enthusiasm about the initiative (9,000 poll participants) was one of the major indicators of success in our campaign execution.
Having passed the “who cares” test with flying colors, the initiative allowed Cisco WebEx to join mainstream conversations with an interesting viewpoint without seeming irrelevant or too self-serving. Though it didn’t provide final answers, the Science of Company Productivity gave Cisco and the Chinese workforce a voice in the “working remotely or remotely working” debate. Last but not least, it also gave staunch opponents of cubicle-life (such as myself) even more grounds and enthusiasm for making work something that you do and not a place you go to.