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THE INSIDE IS BECOMING THE OUTSIDE
There used to be a clear distinction between being at work and not. The edges of organizations used to be clear and fixed. Nowadays you can be at work anywhere and your staff might be talking about their work all over the web. How do you make this an opportunity rather than a threat?
In the old days you had to travel from home to your place of work and your work environment had a distinct edge through which you had to pass. You wore different clothes at work than you did at home and very probably used different language. There was a security guard at the door who checked on your right to enter and once through, you were expected to know how to behave appropriately.
The Internet changes this. We can now be “at work” anywhere and at any time. The distinctions between work and non-work have become very blurred. In fact even within the environment of your computer what is work and what is not has become blurred. It used to be that your Microsoft Office suite of tools was your workplace, but increasingly our browsers are our workplaces. If we are accessing forums and blogs and wikis for work purposes we do so through the browser just as we do if we are accessing them for non-work purposes. Web tools are invading the workplace and we use networking sites for work and social purposes interchangeably.
Even in technological terms the line between work and non-work is getting softer. The firewall that separates us from the outside world means nothing ...
