Britain’s gifts to the world are impressive and many: Harry Potter, Shakespeare, the Beatles, and yum, Sticky Toffee Pudding. But did you know that the idea of “an office” (where many millions of employees around the world can be found between 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday) also comes from our rainy island in the North Atlantic?
You see, Britain was the world’s first industrial nation. The “green and pleasant land” became marked by “dark satanic mills” from about 1760 and continued right through the reign of Queen Victoria. Hand production turned to the power of machines; water and steam power replaced elbow grease; and new chemical manufacturing processes began. Output greatly increased, new metropolitan centres of industry were formed, and Britain quickly became the world’s leading commercial nation.
Offices were created to support these new factories. And the rows and rows of desks took their cue from the rows of machines in factories. In fact, they were designed to echo the efficiency and productivity of the factory floor’s design. The first ever office jobs were office clerks, who were tasked with keeping records on factory stock, staff wages, billing and invoicing, and generally ensuring the factories had a strict eye on documentation and the business’s bottom line.
The role of the office clerk in modern business
The rows and rows of desks with dozens of office clerks all crunching the numbers must have been quite a sight 250 years ago. In many ways, it was the world’s first computer.
Today it is a very different picture. The term ‘office clerk’ seems outdated, if not outright old-fashioned. A quick search of ‘office clerk’ jobs in London via the Government’s own job search website produced only 4 results for ‘administrative officer.’
So, has the office clerk as a role died within modern businesses? Filling in forms, saving them, retrieving them, mailing, data processing, scheduling meetings, and essentially supporting the effective and smooth running of daily office operations is something that, today, we all do.
Today’s offices are digitally-driven, and there are so many software and technology options to help make processes even easier. Although paper still has its place, most of the data created in offices today is via computers. And this has changed forever how offices are run. So no, the office clerk isn’t dead. If anything, there are more office clerks than there have ever been. While it is rarely seen as a standalone job, the truth is that we are all office clerks – every single one of us who works in an office has a responsibility towards documentation.
Does technology hold the answer?
Yet with an increasing number of organisations having shifted to a self-service model in which individual employees must arrange things like travel, leave requests, and expenses themselves, is this overburdening already busy employees?
As with almost all aspects of modern working, technology may have the answer.
Automation technology enables workplaces to reduce employee workloads, swap out inefficient processes for effective ones, and accomplish more with fewer resources.
The importance of the employee
But for all the talk about advancements in technology, it is the employee, not technology, that remains the driver of change and innovation. Automation simply allows us to achieve more as we work, keeping our business and the world moving forward. By turning time-consuming daily chores into seamless, automatic actions, we can accelerate our everyday productivity and enjoy extra time to focus on more creative, fulfilling, high-value activities – and it is this sort of activity that makes us feel fulfilled at work and gives our careers meaning.
