Anytime, anywhere access to networks and applications may be convenient, but it raises some thorny people management and privacy issues.
If constant phone calls from colleagues and customers are already putting your work/life balance out of kilter, how will you feel when you are equipped with a wireless device that can link to the corporate network, send and receive e-mail, hook you up to video conferences and provide access to applications regardless of the time or your location?
And if you are a manager, how will you cope when all your staff disappear with this mobile device and hardly ever set foot in the office? How will you make it clear what this tribe of nomads is expected to do, and how will you monitor their performance?
The laptop computer and mobile phone may have given us an appetite for work on the move, but they have so far provided just a taste of how our working lives and relationships will be changed by the advent of mobile business. Currently, we see organisations where the workforce has the ability to do the work they normally do at the desk from locations outside the office.
But we are yet to see true wireless organisations where processes, technology and people are fully aligned to mobile working. This shift in working practice will affect all aspects of business, from how the job is done, to how you relate to colleagues and clients, and the corporate culture.
Giga Information Group's latest survey of the number of mobile workers (mobile is defined as working away from the desk for at least 50 per cent of the time) showed that at present only 15 per cent of employees are mobile. This is forecast to rise to 25 per cent by 2004.
Bernt Ostergaard, an analyst at Giga, says: "Over the next two years we will see a much steeper increase in people working away from their desks. Everyone won't be walking out of the door tomorrow, but businesses do need to plan for it."
However, companies are currently sleepwalking into mobility, says Mr Ostergaard. "Forty per cent of companies said they have a mobile strategy, but they are talking about a strategy for more of the same kind of mobility. They are not planning to change business processes, and they certainly aren't thinking about the implications for working relationships."
Paul Lee, director of Deloitte Research, agrees: "In the majority of cases, mobile has been loosely tacked on to an existing technology infrastructure. In our view, the real benefit of mobile will come when technology and process are built around a plan that comprehends mobile, not one in which mobile is an afterthought."
At the heart of this plan is the way in which the mobile workforce will be managed and what the rules will be for when and where they can be contacted. Tim Devine, Member of PA's Management Group in the IT infrastructure practice at PA Consulting, says: "Companies will face some quite thorny people management issues." For example, while the ability to locate an individual and direct him or her from one place to another could be very valuable in business terms, there are privacy issues that need to be addressed.
"At the moment, there is a tendency for firms to see the advantage of location-based mobile in control terms," says Mr Devine. While this could also be positive for employees, enabling them to be where they are most needed and thus do a better job with greater satisfaction, there is a question mark over the extent to which this limits personal freedom. Just how comfortable would most employees be, for example, with the knowledge that their employer could find out exactly where they were at any given time?
"I don't think users of mobile phones or PDAs have grasped that one day it may be possible to monitor exactly what they do. There is a debate around privacy that needs to be had. Employers are not alert to this issue yet," says Mr Devine.
Similarly, organisations need to think about how and where staff are trained, and by whom. If workers are mobile, it hardly seems appropriate to bring them into an office for training purposes, especially for learning how to use a wireless device. As mobile technology advances, there will be new recruits who have never worked in the office environment. How will they be imbued with the corporate culture, who will their role models be, and what sort of working relationships will they be expected to form with their managers and peers?
However you choose to handle these questions, you have got to invest in getting staff to use the technology, says Mr Devine. "This goes beyond traditional training in how to use the application, to being organised to make the most of the attributes of being mobile."
Wireless corporations must also put the issue of work/life balance firmly on the human relations agenda, says David Tansley, principal, UK communications practice, Deloitte Consulting. "Being able to access office applications from wherever you are no doubt improves productivity and efficiency, and gives workers greater flexibility in how they use their time. It also potentially enables them to complete their work in less time.
However, the ability to be contacted any time, any place, anywhere has removed the out-of-office excuse for many workers, making it difficult, if not impossible, to avoid being contacted and becoming obliged to act upon information they have received."
While he believes that most people feel enabled by mobility and become more productive as a result, Bob Simmons, worldwide head of enterprise mobility solutions at Hewlett-Packard, acknowledges that it does require personal discipline to stay in control, as he learned recently when he acquired a BlackBerry wireless e-mail device. "Individuals need to manage their work/life balance," he says. "I got addicted to my BlackBerry and used to keep it by the bedside until my wife told me to shut the damn thing off."
Jonathan Hogg, Member of PA's Management Group in the people, organisation and change practice at PA Consulting, says the reality for many is that work/life boundaries do get blurred, and levels of stress can rise if people think they are not in control. "Organisations have to help people find and respect boundaries, and this can cut both ways. For example, they should let people use e-mail services for home shopping and make sure that they don't contact them at inappropriate hours."
Whatever impact wireless data has on our working relationships, one thing is certain - the nine to five working day will be a thing of the past. "By the time your PDA and phone shrink to being an earring, you won't be switching it off at 5pm," says Mr Ostergaard.
