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New Work
Challenge: the different skills we need ‘I have a sales role, an investment role, a toned-down coding role… hell, I even change the toilet roll’ Ross, Rozmic. Service design idea: share the right person – a skilled person is shared by two or more businesses
What's this got to do with movement?
Remember all those books and reports about ‘the future of work’? Well, the future seems to have arrived. A report from Orange called The way to work states that 55% of the UK workforce does not have a job in the traditional sense of the word. And a lot of our working lives is spent moving around.
Dott 07’s New Work project is about practical design steps to improve the day-to-day experience of people who are self-employed or have a micro-business. Many people who work from home complain that they often feel isolated, and would like to exchange skills and services with each other on a local basis. They also need help accessing the 300 or more government assistance schemes. Helping working people meet each other on a local basis has emerged as another key feature.
Many designers are already involved in the creation of hardware for work: desks, lights, chairs and so on. But with numbers of self-employed people set to rocket nationwide, our next challenge is to redesign the how, where and when of work. With this in mind, New Work asked the question ‘How do you design your life?’ and looked at the specific problems facing this rapidly increasing section of the workforce.
Project management company Enabling Concepts chose six diverse small business owners at different stages of growth to take part in a casestudy programme. With the help of service designers live|work, they met regularly and identified what they each needed to facilitate being the boss of a successful micro-business.
The workshops revealed six top issues of concern for those running a micro-business:
- Both finding the right staff and keeping them
- Selling products and services
- Delegating responsibility to others
- Keeping up standards when expanding
- Accessing finance and investment
- Managing time effectively
Ideas from their discussions were developed into services to respond to each of the problems identified. Enabling Concepts then guided the businesses in how they might deliver those services collaboratively.
The case-study group went on to create an online forum open to the public to pilot the new services with each other and their growing network. This ever-expanding group of micro-businesses continues to meet online and in person, and an increasing number of services continue to be delivered to them as well as to any other interested micro-businesses.
Project Team
Senior Producer: Nathan Pellow
Partner: Fabriam Network
What next?
New Work explored issues that challenge people in a wide variety of work situations: time issues; access to tools and skills; feelings of loneliness and social isolation; the need for places to meet and socialise and share.
Below is a list of useful websites related to this project:
Fabrium Networks - Online forum helping small businesses to exchange services
Enabling Concepts - Project management
Street North East - Financial and business advice for the smallest of businesses
National Market - Selling small amounts of time
For more information, contact Nathan Pellow.
Fact source:
1. Sector Skills Agreement, North East England (January 2007)
2. 2007 City and Guilds Happiness Index
