1996 - European Telework Week

Telework 96
In general, this beneficial effect of advanced communications services seems to be both
greater and more positive than that resulting from investments only in stand-alone
equipment and infrastructure. The more a given infrastructure and inventory of
equipment is used by application services over the network, and the more these services
are combined with social and economic innovations, the greater the potential beneficial
employment effects seem to be.
Key message 2:
In general, the potential beneficial effect of advanced communications services
seems to be both greater and more positive that that resulting from investments
only in stand-alone equipment and infrastructure.
Much of the responsibility for introducing advanced communications into organisations
and using it to create new business areas and jobs, as well as in ways which increase
rather than decrease the quality of work for employees, rests with the management. The
generally conservative and poor response by management to the use of advanced
communications within and between organisations seems to constitute the biggest barrier
to its full exploitation.
Key message 3:
Opportunities for growth in employment using advanced communications depend
on management.
The creation of jobs by advanced communications requires new organisational forms and
interrelationships. In short, organisational transformations which lock in human capital
as part of the competitive process are necessary.
Another important barrier is a failure to appreciate that it is the market for networked
information services which will create jobs in the wider economy, rather than markets for
information technology and advanced communications equipment and infrastructure on
their own. Although the latter are necessary, their own wider job creation effect is
limited.
But it is not just at the organisational and service market levels that urgent changes are
necessary if we are to maximise the job creation potential of advanced communications.
At the national and international level decisive action is required to liberalise and reregulate
the telecommunications sector, provide leadership, stimulate new forms of
collaboration, particularly for investment purposes and especially between the private
and the public sectors, and reduce traffic tariffs drastically. Advanced communications
needs to be available and affordable for all. These issues together constitute another
barrier to the development of the information society and the new jobs that go with this.
Key message 4:
Policy and investment support needs to be given to the information service market
and to reduce the barriers to market formation.
In terms of the labour, continuing turbulence and the need for worker flexibility, partly
caused by the introduction of information technology and advanced communications,
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