How Is New Work Changing The World Of Work?

New Work has already become an integral part of everyday working life. But what does it mean and what does it take?

What is New Work?

• The term was coined by the American social philosopher Frithjof Bergmann.
• New Work is the future of the working world.
• The trend means to leave old structures behind and to establish new working methods. It denotes a new understanding of freedom and independence and the structural change of the working world.
• These workplaces offer more freedom for creative work.
• The reasons for the structural change are digitalization and globalization. As a result, there are many new opportunities and possibilities in the world of work.
• Processes can be automated and new professions that did not exist a few years ago are being created.

What are the Characteristics of New Work?

1. Self-Determination
   • Flat hierarchies with personal responsibility and freedom – these are aspects of New Work that affect everyone on the team.
   • The focus is on personal and professional development.
   • The good thing about this is that spatial and temporal dependencies do not play a role, since the Internet everyone can operate from every place at any time.
2. Innovation
   • Team members should not see working as a burden, but as fun.
   • This stimulates creativity to create new products or innovative services.
   • Employees should be satisfied and thus be able to perform better.
3. Organization of Work
   • The goal is to organize the working as efficiently as possible so that everyone can contribute their strengths to the project.
   • Through diverse teams it is possible to find more efficient solutions, because everyone brings his competences.

An Example of New Work

1. Agility
   • Agile working means reacting quickly to changes.
   • Flat hierarchies, small teams, agile methods like Scrum, and feedback culture are part of everyday life.
   • You can find more about agile working in our category Agility/Scrum.

New work in Everyday Work

• Many companies have already integrated this concept into everyday life.
• With the concept, that working centrally in the same office is no longer necessary to be productive, it is now normal for team members to operate together on projects remotely from all over the world.
• Here are a few tips on how to make remote work possible.
• This also means that the company does not as much office space because you can replace the fixed offices with flexible co-working spaces.
• Another change is independent working. It is becoming more and more important.
• The freedom gained means that the work-life balance can be expanded, as working should not be seen as a burden, but as a part of life.

Final Thoughts

In order to move up to the New Work trend, it is worthwhile to develop a structure beforehand. The reason for this is that the company need to manage the flexibility and the independence of each team member. However, it offers many new opportunities to make working more pleasant and efficient.