Concepts of traditional and modern office?
Over a period of time, the difference between traditional office
and modern office has been narrowed down to 'paper book office' and
' paperless office'. To simply state it, traditional office depends
on records and files for documentation, manual operations in
respect of banking, customer service and other commercial
activities. The modern office on the other hand is entirely IT
savvy and electronically driven appliances work hand in hand with
office workers. Records are digitally driven and the communication
is precisely and accurately handled with less human energy and
errors as well.
Interestingly, yesterday's modern office too becomes today's
traditional office. We may see the progress of modernising office
management over a period of time, in various dimensions.
1. Work timings: Specific work timings, were modern for some
time as compared to limitless work hours practiced in different
situations. Now, specific work timing is a traditional practice as
compared to modern 'flex' timings, throughout the 24 hours of the
day and seven days of the week. Tomorrow, partly today even, home
offices would be the modern scenario as compared to staff going to
an office space and working today.
2. Records: Many of the records connected with commercial
activities have been converted today to electronic documents. This
space saving and accurate methodology being modern today, it might
become obsolete, if not traditional one day, when unique
identification methodologies are developed and the entire recording
activities are arranged nation wide, if not done globally as a
central recording system. Commercial organisations have already
started following this practice. Every branch unit of an
organisation goes through its information from the centrally
maintained records of the organisation, held somewhere in the
Globe.
3. Human resources: We can see this change in every dimension of
the office human resource management. Stenographers or Private
Secretaries are found in the traditional office organisation.
Today's receptionist of a City Office in India, sits at New York,
USA, to respond to customer queries, or vice verse. 90% of the
interaction with the customer is done by the sweet recorded message
customised for the situation. Most of the Office chores are
mechanised.
4. Money transactions: Cash payments and receipts are typical
activities of a traditional office. Credit cards came in between
with manual transactions for debit and credit of payments at the
merchant's office. Now, there is momentary account adjustments as
the customer swipes his card in the electronically connected
equipment, which encompasses the bank accounts of both the payer
and receiver in every commercial transaction. If today's modern
office believes in on-line transactions, tomorrow still some more
methods would take their place as modern.
5. Office space: Commercial, serviced or home office, today's
modern office has bays and cubicles for work stations, as against
tables, chairs, telephones and dustbins of yesterday's traditional
office. Even these types of today's modern office will become
traditional, when offices are run only with a comprehensive
equipment of a 'bulky' laptop or a smart PDA. Even today, the
modern office is run by these electronic equipments with
teleconferencing is held among office leaders, who have not met at
all in their life.
6. Office equipments: Traditional Offices were earlier equipped
with tables, chairs, typewriters, filing cabinets, steel cup
boards, dust bins, punching machines and a blotting pad for the
staff to comfortably sit and write. Later, comptometers,
calculators, electronic typewriters, telephones and teleprinters,
fax machines, photocopiers, shredding machines, staplers, vacuum
cleaners, etc came in. Starting from Fans over the working staff,
the climate conditioning was improved in terms of room air
conditioners to central air conditioning. The offices today are
realistic only with work stations with computer aided transaction
equipments, whether it be a lap top or card readers and what
not.
Precisely, tradition gains its name, when a new formula over
rules the activity with advancement in civilization and
science.