FUTURE WORKPLACE

Ask Ranjani Ranganath, Senior Managing Director, Global Development Centre, Cisco, where her office is and she points to her laptop, a Webcam, a pair of headsets and a Nokia E 61i. At any given day Ranganath finds herself working from any of her four offices -- three in the various Cisco buildings spread through Bangalore and the fourth one at her home. Ranganath does not have any “office-hours” as well. On the day we meet her, in one of her offices, she says she got there at 10.30 am and is going back home with her husband at 4.30 pm to spend some time with her daughters aged 21 and 18. As soon as the sun goes down in Bangalore, Ranganath slips on her headset and switches on the webcam from home to talk her team at San Jose. At 8.30 pm it is time to touch base with the rest of her team at Raleigh, US. For the majority of people reading this article, work still means getting to an office somewhere. Sure technology has managed to blur some of the traditional boundaries -- we can check our emails from home or on our blackberries or mobile phones -- but for most other things related to our working life like attending meetings or making presentations or attending reviews we still need to get to an office.