Cyber work: Alternative way during the riots in the city

By Hanny Agustine

JAKARTA (JP): The economic wheel suddenly stopped 10 days ago when riots broke out in the city. No business activities were conducted as all stores, markets and offices closed.

The next few days after the unrest, for security reason, most businesses decided to let all employees stay at home. They made the announcement through radio stations, or did a "call tree" to inform employees about the decision. Employees were divided into groups based on the location of their residency. One person was appointed as head of each group and was in charge of spreading information to each group's members.

Even though offices were closed, for some people, this did not necessarily mean that there was no work at all. You might get restless if you had to finish the papers for a presentation and the files were not with you. If you have a computer at home and someone was still in the office, you might be able to get the necessary files. That's if you were successful in getting connected to the office' server.

You could also exchange files with your colleagues through e- mails, thanks to the Internet.

In fact, two years ago, a similar thing happened. All stores and offices were closed following violent attacks on the Indonesian Democratic Party's headquarters on Jl. Diponegoro, Central Jakarta.

So, when Jakarta was in upheaval during the past 10 days, some offices utilized more cyber work.

In the past, we'd probably never thought about the benefits of cyber work. As a university student, I used to play with Apple IIe. This machine had a macho bulk body, big external disk drive and 5.25" diskette and rigid keyboard. It looked like the smartest machine in the 1980s.

To understand how this machine worked, we were entrenched with ASCII code and assembler language, such as STA for store and LDA for load. It was as complicated as Morse code. For us, this stand-alone PC was very powerful. Now we can find Pentium II 330 MHz from Intel, which makes multimedia and file transfer so amazing and wonderful with the fastest modem.

Working with e-mail and also through the Internet changes everything. It changes the way we work and the working culture itself. In electronic communications, we sometimes never physically meet the people we are dealing with and we never know what he or she looks like. We don't care whether he or she works in the kitchen, in bed or in the garden.

The way we communicate in this electronic communication is also different. There is a degree of informality. What flows between people is not paper or documents anymore but knowledge. Knowledge development requires a free flow of information, feelings and thoughts. People must be able to express their inner feelings and have them respected. Lip service can be ignored. In an electronic environment, the important thing is the information itself, not the way we speak to others.

The other thing is the emphasis of knowledge-authority rather than position-authority. In an electronic environment, recognition of people for their contribution is important, not their position in the company. Sometimes, in fact, executives do not divulge their seniority when participating online, nor do they stifle debate. They get a better picture of what people in the organization feel rather than through formal hierarchical channels.

Cyber working also needs openness of communication and willingness to share information. The person who comes into a teleconference to gain information but then disappears without any trace, will be quickly ostracized. In the work of knowledge networking, people who have knowledge to contribute are expected to contribute it freely. It's a case of give and take. You give your expertise to someone and someone completely different can reciprocate with information useful to you.

Experts say coordinating people is the most difficult aspect. Cooperation is not competition. Yet, it is not easy to coordinating different people since there is probably an element of competitiveness in each of us.

Finally, a strong sense of responsibility to coworkers is a must. This is where normal team development activities have a role to play.

Last but not least, humans are human. It is often discovered that interspersing networking activities with face-to-face meetings can greatly improve the degree of mutual understanding and strengthen team cohesiveness.

In my case, even though I had my presentation approved by my boss, I still called her at home to make sure that she liked it. I needed to hear her voice. This is better than getting an e-mail saying: "Good, I loved it."