The twenty-first century workplace
The advent of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) has revolutionised the way people work. ICTs have liberated workers from the mundane 9-to-5-desk job, allowing increased freedom of the time of day and the place people choose to work. As ICTs continue to evolve, so too must the workforce and in turn the workplace. As part of the SANE project, the University of Ulm developed a concept to guide workplace development in the twenty-first century. The result, the Unified Framework (UF), is based on a three-pronged approach addressing design, communication and technology constraints. The design component takes into account the possibility of both local and remote work locations as well as fixed, mobile and virtual work environments. Communications requirements are defined according to the needs of the users. Finally, technology, the third component of the UF, is used to facilitate the realisation of the optimal workplace based on the prior specifications. The UF is appropriate for application not only to industry, but also to academia and other domains. In implementing the UF, users must ask themselves the right questions in order to define their fundamental requirements and to understand how they are linked to one another. A guided tour, complete with a business consulting strategy, has been created in order to aid this process. More information about the UF and the SANE project can be found at: http://www.saneproject.com(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)