What does “New Work” mean?

What is the concept of New Work?

The concept of New Work is the flexibilization of work in terms of time, space and working methods in order to promote innovation, efficiency and employee satisfaction. The point is that hierarchical organizational structures, designed for efficient processes, often reach the limits of what they can achieve because they are too slow for innovation processes.

What are the principles of New Work?

The principles of New Work can be summarized into the four categories “Bricks, Behavior, Bytes and Brave”.

• Behavior: creating conditions for concentrated work, structured communication, joint learning, informal conversation, and recreation
• Bricks: enabling choice and flexibility in rooms and equipment, e.g. rooms for team meetings and quiet zones
• Bytes: providing technical equipment and infrastructure to support teamwork and customer communication
• Brave: showing courage for change and giving those affected time to experience the improvements

What elements does New Work include?

New Work includes flexible working hours and locations, modern technologies, changing leadership styles, as well as a stronger employee and customer orientation.

The promotion of teamwork and agile working methods as well as the use of technology to support collaboration encourage this.

Working from home can be part of New Work, but it is not the sole definition. Successful teamwork from home requires a high rate of team routines and a clear division of tasks.

In the office of the future, New Work will lead to a more flexible and more needs-oriented workplace design that meets the requirements of employees and tasks in equal measure. Here are some examples of this:

• Creative workspaces in companies such as SAP, LinkedIn, Cisco and Airbnb
• Flexible use of rooms and desks (hoteling, hot desking, free address)
• Activity-based workplace design

What leadership style does New Work require?

An ethical, supportive leadership style is important, involving employees in decisions, providing clear goals and perspectives, giving clear instructions on roles and tasks, and encouraging the decentralization of decisions.

Figure 1: New Work is a work design based on professional activities