The Victorian office - time for a change?

Pale_feet_pale_sand_by_anosmia

According to William Higham, one of the UK's leading forecasters, our traditional office environments haven't changed much since Victorian times - it's time for a complete overhaul. In a recent paper for The Economist, he outlines the five trends driving demand for new working practices. These are:

1. Communalisation and online networking
2. Mobility
3. Entrepreneurialism and contract working
4. Work-life balance
5. Millennials

The first two factors are technological, the next two are socio-economic (driven by the recession), the final factor is about the new generation coming into the workplace. All together they highlight the fact that our expectations of "work" are changing dramatically. You can read the full paper here.

Photo: Anosmia

Working remotely now usual for many businesses

Meet_up_by_alykat

Saw an Interesting article on Mashable today showing how working from home (WFH) is becoming more the norm in business.

According to new figures from Skype, 62 per cent of businesses now have remote workers. In addition, a whopping 75 per cent of decision makers believe working remotely is more acceptable while 56 per cent believe remote workers are actually more productive. 

This is great news for ABWWF fans: how long before we're attending board meetings via video link from the Bora Bora Beach Bar? Surely only a matter of time ;)

Photo: Alykat

It may not be a beach, but this guy's got the right idea

Photo

The sun doesn't often shine in London.

When it does, we need to make the most of it.

This man has done the decent thing: taken his laptop to Trafalgar Square so he can hang out with the tourists whilst also getting his spreadsheets done.

Nice.

Blue Bird Beach Bar - Drummers' Beach, Tel Aviv

Blue Bird Cafe

Drummers' Beach

Dancing on Drummers' Beach

I’ve had this dream for a while now, the beach with WiFi. Like most dreams (of the fantasy sort) it plays over and over in my head: the white sand, the palm trees, the sparkling sea, the little hut with a bar and an internet connection. It has become a caricature of itself. Impossibly perfect. Based on not one beach I’ve been to, but an airbrushed amalgam of many, many beaches, through time.

So I should've known better than be disappointed when I hit my first beach with WiFi in Tel Aviv. But I was, just a little. Drummers' Beach in Tel Aviv wasn’t reminiscent of the happy beach beloved by Elvis in Blue Hawaii, or the romantic one immortalised by Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity. It was more evocative of those final scenes in Atonement, where WW2 soldier James McAvoy stumbles deliriously through the Dunkirk landings.

It was brillig – just before sunset on the last Friday (Sabbath) of the Jewish holiday season. Entire families where gyring and gimbling. Holes were being dug. Sand castles were being built; others were being trampled upon. Small children tumbled in and out of the waves. Babies cried while women drank and men played backgammon.

In the midst of the chaos swung the sign of the Blue Bird Beach Bar, a bit like the pub sign in the opening scene to An American Werewolf in London or, possibly, Sean of the Dead. I asked the waitress if they had wireless internet and she said yes. But it was clear there was nobody using it.

Blue Bird Beach Bar is part of the Israel Surf Club (note: the website is in Hebrew but gives phone numbers and an English email address). It currently opens 24 hours a day, seven days a week (though apparently there's some closure in the early hours December - February). They serve a comprehensive bar menu along with cocktails, beer, wine, spirits and soft drinks.The bar is just off the Shlomo Lahat Promenade, on Drummers' - aka Banana - Beach, south Tel Aviv.

I would recommend this beach bar with WiFi but only very early in the morning, and definitely not on the last Friday of Sukkot (note: the first shot above looks serenely calm because it taken on a re-visit).