Will Jelly! Kill the Office Party?

Once upon a time, or so the story goes, everyone worked in offices from 9-5. If you stayed in the same organization long enough; were punctual, well-dressed, and polite; and you worked hard, you would eventually get promoted to the top tier of management.

Then things became a lot more fluid. Suddenly, people were moving jobs - a lot. Workers were rewarded not for loyalty, but for experience. Suddenly work could be outsourced, or better cheaper talent could be parachuted in. It suddenly became much harder and more competitive to rise to the top and, as a response, organizations formalized the processes of promotion and the management of work performance in the form of human resources. In order to do this a whole range of tiers were introduced and many more middle and sub management positions. While this meant that workers could be easily rewarded by being promoted quicker, it also led to vastly increased scrutiny and much less trust on the coal-face.

Thus, alongside this managerization of the workforce came a widespread trend for workers to leave their jobs, but retain their contacts and clients. Enabled by new technologies and greater connectivity contracting became a viable and respectable alternative to the rat-race. By starting their own businesses and becoming their own bosses, workers could remove accountability, scrutiny, and particularly managers from the equation. Instead contractors dealt with clients. If something goes wrong, the contractor simply finishes the contract and moves on. Job done. Sometimes workers can even be rehired on a contract by the companies they previously worked for!

Contractors are often managed by trust and thus stand at arm's length to organizational processes and governance. They also manage their own resources and usually office times and spaces. Flexibility in the form of contracting and even sub-contracting is now the norm in many organizations. As Janine Wedel describes in her book Shadow Elite (2009) "Flexians" pervade the private and public sectors. Oddly, this has achieved something, rather covertly, that many commentators have repeatedly asserted was a myth: a trend towards the remote, flexible, virtual workplace.

In the ICT sector, where this phenomenon has boomed, casual coworking, or Jelly!, has arisen to provide the large number of contracting self-employed a place to work. Jelly! was founded by Amit Gupta and Luke Crawford in New York in February 2006. Urban Omnibus 3 June 2009 These stripped-down casual coworking groups bear more resemblance to conferences or internet cafes than offices and offer collaboration, resources, colleagues, and coffee, but crucially no managers and no attachments.

Is Jelly! the future of the office? Will this new form of office-culture, pushed by practices as well as new technologies, impact upon the holy grail of transport planning - the commute? Is Jelly! the painless office party?