Following on from my talk on mobility and connectedness at Intranatverk last week, I’ve pulled together this quick blog post for Business Reimagined on how technology is changing the way we work, making predictions about new ways of working a reality for more and more people.

The business of reimagining business is nothing new. Popular narrative from the middle of the last century painted the new millennium as an age of domestic automation, jetpacks and interplanetary travel – and all turned out to be some way off the mark.

More prescient, though, was Brave New World author Aldous Huxley, who in 1950 was asked to predict what work would be like in the year 2000. He wrote:“…offices will be relocated in small country communities, where life is cheaper, pleasanter and  more genuinely human than in those breeding-grounds of mass neurosis, the great metropolitan centers of today.”

Granted, he was wrong about quite a few things (not least that  the 20-hour work week would become standard) and in the year 2000 most of us were firmly chained to our desks.  But in the thirteen years since, the digital workplace – the ecosystem of communication tools, social platforms and business systems within the enterprise – has succeeded in making Huxley’s prediction something closer to a reality for a growing number of workers.

The revolution in technology since the turn of the 21st century has been accompanied by a seismic shift in working cultures that has seen the commute and the 9-5 workplace become a thing of the past.

The arrival of the digital workplace has led businesses to completely rethink the way they work. By moving the tools people need to do their jobs online, businesses have made it possible for their employees to work from anywhere – so that work becomes what you do, not where you go.

Already one in ten office workers in Western Europe are mobile, working all or part of the time from home, and this is growing by 6% a year.

Mobility, supported by a good digital workplace, has a raft of well-documented benefits, including improved productivity and reduced costs, as well as making employees happier and healthier. Businesses are quickly realising that mobility isn’t a nice to have; in a world where competitive advantage is everything, becoming more responsive and productive is essential.

But while technology is a central component of the digital workplace, making a success of it means focussing instead on people – not designing mobile websites, but designing policies, places and online services for people who are mobile.

For example, the digital workplace allows smart companies to change the way their use physical space; instead of banks of desks used from 9-5, they give people well-designed space to think, work alone, or to collaborate. Not simplyless space, but the right space and place for the task at hand – whether that’s at home, on the road, or in the office.

Design matters. If the primary way those who work for you experience the organisation is online, the online experience can’t be a bad one. Successful mobile organisations recognise the importance of brand, design and user experience in the digital workplace.

Enterprise mobility is a decentralising force, but this shift can lead employees to feel disconnected from their colleagues. Successful organisations work to establish community through social intranets so that remote workers can communicate with – and feel connected to – their colleagues, wherever they’re working.

By making it possible to work whenever and wherever we choose, the digital workplace is ending the tyranny of the daily commute. And all while making our businesses more productive, and more profitable.

Today’s technology enables us to do business the way we’ve been reimagining it for decades; enabling people to work more flexibly in ways that benefit employees, and the bottom line.