Do you work smart?"

The Nomadic Worker

• “Smart working” involves cross functionality so people are exposed to new ideas, new ways of working and are more project focused. Do you work smart?"
  
  
• The 2015 Millennial Majority Workforce Study, published in 2014 by Elance-oDesk, and focusing on Gen Y, found that 58% of millennials expect to stay in their jobs fewer than three years. The study contrasts this with previous generations, with Gen X leaving a company in five years on average and Baby Boomers leaving in seven years on average.
  
  
• The hiring managers in this sample saw radical differences in personalities, skills and expectations, as the chart above graphically illustrates.
  
  
• Management surveys across the globe have identified Gen X and Y characteristics that will impact on the future of work. More technologically attuned, they are far more inclined to multi-task, having grown up used to switching between devices.

The Freelance Nation

• How much of your official work do you do outside of the office?
  
  
• The Freelancers Union, a national organization in the USA, released a survey in September 2014 showing that 34% of the country’s workforce are freelancers – higher among millennials at 38%. The organisation describes this as “the new normal”. New types of worker do new types of work. And they do it in new ways.
  
  
• To be more precise, our proprietary research shows that a third of our sample do 30% or more of their work outside the office. Less than one quarter only work at their main fixed base. Conversely 1 in 5 are doing at least 50% of their work elsewhere. 8 out of 10 of those surveyed are taking their work home to do in the course of the average month. (so it’s hardly surprising that nearly 60% of our sample say “My home life suffers a lot because of the pressure of work.)

Controlling Smart Information

• How often do we glance up from our work and find the person next to us on a train, plane or in a coffee shop rapidly looking away and wonder how much they’ve seen?
  
  
• It is estimated that 10 million devices go missing each year with commercially sensitive data on them. The mobile phone overtook the umbrella as the most lost item on the London Underground some years ago. We generally hear about this when a government employee leaves the tax records of 20 million people in a coffee shop. Companies feel they have a responsibility to protect sensitive data, therefore. Security isn’t just an issue in the digital space. The prevalence of remote working means that, increasingly, people are looking at sensitive materials on their screens in public places

Keeping in touch in the smart world

• In future, the ‘always on’ needs of the smart worker (and the smart customer) will have to be accommodated, wherever they are. Do you also work from everywhere?
  
  
• Many people reading this will remember a time when being away from the office meant you were not contactable – for good and bad. In future, the ‘always on’ needs of the smart worker (and the smart customer) will have to be accommodated, wherever they are.
  
  
• In 2014, there were 48 million Wi-Fi hotspots globally, double the 2013 figure, according to a survey by iPass, who predict that by 2018 there will be nearly 350 million – or approximately one for every 20 people in the world.

Controlling smart information part 2 

• When does the physical work space become smarter, more knowledgable than the person working there?
  
  
• According to the research 67% of office workers feel that formal internal meetings are much less productive than the informal last minute and ‘corridor’ meetings that drive collaboration. A 2014 study in the Harvard Business Review, ‘Workspaces that move people’ showed that offices designed to allow mingling between people from different functions raise levels of innovation. Samsung’s new US headquarters is designed to ‘spark not just collaboration but that innovation you see when people collide’.
  
  
• The Leitz research panel would suggest that many companies have some room for improvement here – only 15% rate their offices as ‘Very good’ in providing flexible space for project teams and 16.5% as ‘Very good’ in offering informal areas for ad hoc meetings.

The Leitz Complete Traveller Bags are an iF Design Award Winner 2015!

The design and craftsmanship of Leitz Complete Traveller Bags is aligned to the expectations of modern business travellers: highest quality materials, comfortable to carry, roomy and intelligent pocket distribution – a bag for efficient organisation.

This was also recognised by the 53 jurors of the iF. The iF Design Award has been recognised all over the world as a mark of design excellence. The iF logo is an internationally established symbol identifying outstanding achievements in design. 

Leitz Complete Traveller Bags - Business class in every detail.

Read the full press release here.