For those of you who work in a city as crowded as Jakarta certainly need no further explanation as to why the city can’t be considered comfortable as a place to work, but what I would like to highlight here is how technology makes the revolution of time and work space possible for the whole industry.
Internet will be the backbone of the industrial world even though at present there are companies that have not been using it optimally, yet. And the issue of “working in Jakarta” could be resolved one step at a time with the Internet. How exactly the internet is the solution? I will try to describe it below.
There are two main problems working in Jakarta, first is optimizing working hours. This will not be achieved if we spend 2-3 hours commuting to work (not to mention the meetings outside of the office); this is reinforced by the fact that the workers/professionals have been moving to the suburbs. Second is the fatigue (tiredness) that emerged as the impact of the first problem. This fatigue element is causing discomfort when working which eventually negatively affects work performance.
Transportation conditions and regulations seem to be unreliable, so the Internet, that was (and still to this day is) considered as a ‘playground’ (going by the popular term “playing on the internet”), could be a solution.
It can be said that at this point, almost every company is already using email instead of conventional letters and this is an example of internet penetration.
Surely, there are several working habits that need to be reinforced if we want to make internet as the solution, namely:
- Stop thinking of the Internet as a ‘playground’ because it has already turned into a work platform by a lot of serious applications used for work.
- Lower the perception that working has to be visible. Such perception causes workers to come to office only for the sake of fulfilling their attendance cards.
- Start an online meeting culture to reduce excessive usage of time and cost + energy. Do not imagine the super high end technology, simple voice conference is enough as a start then you can decide whether to upgrade to the next step of the technology.
Starting with the 3 steps mentioned above and getting used to it, you will begin to detach yourself from having to work face to face without losing the sense of working together in an office. And imagine if your clients were already used to this habit, certainly it will be easier to invite them for an ‘online meeting’ or give them an ‘online presentation’. 😉
What do you think?
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Abang Edwin is a practitioner of online community management since 1998 long before the term of social media / social networks appear in the internet world. He began his journey by experimentation with several online communities which eventually successful at that, to this day he still gives consultations about knowing character and foster online communities for brands / agencies and individuals.
He was at Yahoo! for over 4 years as a community manager. Currently he is Country Manager – Indonesia for Thoughtbuzz.net, a social media monitoring company.
