Category: Next Generation Workforce and Workplace

My brother started a new job in business development for an international company about six months ago. His boss lives in Toronto. He lives in Memphis, TN. In fact, he didn’t meet his boss until after he was hired. He works from home, or his car, or an airplane, or a hotel room, a Starbucks or really anywhere as long as he has a WIFI connection and a cell phone, it doesn’t matter where he is.

We at Horizon Point just finished a project on wage analysis. Neither I nor our other full-time employee did any of the number crunching for it. The data analysis was done by a contract employee who works comp projects for us from time to time. She lives two hours away and has a full-time job by day. I never saw her once face-to-face throughout this project. I have met her once in person two years ago.

In reading Start Something that Matters by Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes (read further insights from his work here) it was interesting to learn that when he first started, everything was done out of his small apartment in Venice Beach, California. He asked a coffee shop if he could use their prominent address as his business address to receive mail. He emphasized several times how office space is simply a waste of money.

What do all of these illustrations point to? The world of commerce doesn’t care how or where or who gets work done, it just cares that is done, and done with quality, of course.

Our first inclination is to think the reason for this is because the worker wants it. Newer generations are “demanding” more flexibility and we live in a time where technology allows this to work. In fact, the search for the keyword “remote” work has increased 85% over the last two years on indeed.com. While this may be true, the reality of why these shifts are taking place is simple. It makes bottom-line business sense.

In a study highlighted in HR Magazine, of those who telework, “77% reported greater productivity while working offsite, 23% are willing to work longer hours from home than they would onsite, and 42% feel just as connected with colleagues as if they were working on the premises.”

Contract labor will continue to increase as the employer/employee relationship “costs” too much for both the individual and the organization. Because of this, people will be working multiple “jobs” for multiple “employers” at any given time and over their lifespan.

Devoted “office space” in many obsolete in some industries where it is an expense that isn’t needed. Rising shared office space models will continue to grow and become the norm and people will continue to work more from home.

If you’re a part of an organization (more on what this means for the individual stay tuned for our post on June 30^thby guest blogger Stephanie Siebel) consider these steps to adapt to these changes in order to stay competitive in the war on talent and on the war for your bottom line:

1. Assess your “workflex” against peers in your industry. To do this, visit whenworkworks.org/workflex-assessment. Not all industries are created equal when it comes to tapping into these trends. For example, many of our manufacturing clients can’t tell an employee to go make a machine run to produce a “widget” from their couch- one day maybe- but you need to consider how you compare with your industry peers when considering how, where and who gets work done. Are you behind the times?

2. Shift your paradigm of thinking by analyzing what is really necessary to get work done at a high quality. Make a list of all the things that are absolutely necessary to meet customer or client needs. You’ll find that often a permanent physical location, an employee that works only for you all the time and/or specific hours they work, all of which can eat up a substantial amount of capital, isn’t needed. Are you stuck in the way things have always been?

3. Analyze changes to the way work is structured from a cost/benefit perspective.  You’re paying an employee how much in benefits? Do they value those benefits, do they need them? Would they prefer to have the flexibility to work from home helping to better meet their family needs because their spouse has the benefits their family needs? This is an individual cost/benefit example, but the cost/benefits can be weighed on a larger, corporate scale in terms of real financial costs. Do your research and present the facts. The whenworkworks.org website can help with this.

4. Make changes gradually. Try out a contract arrangement with certain duties you think would cater to that type of arrangement. Experiment with your office hours to see if you need to be open from the typically 8 am- 5 pm hours. Implement and assess knowing that all changes don’t have be set in stone and can be implemented gradually.

What is one step you can take today to make your “workplace” more flexible?

Like this post? You may also like:

I may have adult ADD but I wouldn’t trade it for anything: Refusing to choose between work and life

The Best Way to Thank Employees is to Make it Personal

Flexibility to Reduce Workplace Stressors

In my eight years at Red Sage Communications, change has been the norm rather than the exception. When I started with the website and marketing firm, most of our customers came to us for a basic website, a logo, a brochure, or some other similar basic item. Now, it is a website that is search engine optimized and mobile friendly, a strategic online advertising and social media plan, and advice on how to reach their customers since many of the traditional advertising and marketing methods are no longer working as well as they did not so long ago. The hard part is that by next year, that whole list could change again. Here are three major changes in our industry and how we survived them.

1. The Rise of Social Media

The decline of newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio (some more than others), and the birth of social media have changed how we reach and communicate with our audiences. What was once a one-way line of communication has suddenly become a two-way conversation with customers being able to provide instant feedback. Some companies have embraced this new way of communicating and have succeeded, gaining loyal fans of their brands who will advocate on their behalf. Other companies have not been able to give up their old school marketing styles and have either been ignored on social media or, worse, have created negative perceptions.

2. The Introduction of Smart Phones

Just five years ago, smartphones made up only about 20-25% of all mobile sales. This year, smartphones account for almost 75% of all mobile sales with expectations of that number increasing to 80-85% by the end of the year.This year, Google’s Mobilegeddon announcement put even more urgency on the move to mobile-friendly websites. In a scramble to keep up with the new way people were accessing websites, developers created mobile apps, mobile-only versions of website, and more recently, responsive websites. For a web developer, knowing what will be just a trend and what is a lasting solution for mobile has been hard to determine.

3. The Boom of Online Advertising

As more and more people have turned to the internet for their source of just about everything, marketers have followed. This means the days of placing easy print or TV ads where the rules were always the same have ended and the days of constant rule and medium changing have begun. We now spend our days keeping up with rules changes from Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others, worrying about whether our ads that were fine yesterday now violate a new content/graphic rule or if we’re going to be able to afford to stay competitive as all of our other competitors start bidding on the same two spots at the top of Google’s AdWords placement in the search results. If that was not enough trouble, we also have to predict when our audience is going to leave an online medium and where they will flock to next. We may have a “desk” job, but we’re exhausted by the end of the day just from the sheer effort of keeping up with the changes.

How We Survive:

Staying relevant within disruptive industry change is not an easy process. It takes a conscious effort to recognize, prepare, and manage change as quickly as possible. Here are three ways that Red Sage has survived change as a company, and how I have survived change as a practitioner.

1. Change is Going to Happen. Accept it.

Red Sage: “But, that’s the way we’ve always done it,” is a death sentence in the world of marketing (and really any business). If you accept the fact that things are always going to change, you will start preparing for change rather than reacting to it.

Me: It feels as if my job changes every day. What I do and how I do it is constantly changing. Knowing that change is inevitable, I expect it rather than hate it.

2. Keep Learning.

Red Sage: One of the trends that I’ve seen in the marketing world is to hire a young marketing person simply because they use social media. There is a real danger for older marketing professionals who refuse to keep learning, because they could push themselves right out of a job. It is true also for agencies who refuse to keep up with change. Making the time to continuously learn new skills and watch for change is as important as taking caring of today’s client work.

Me: I struggle with finding time to keep learning. It takes a determined effort to make sure that learning doesn’t get lost in the shuffle of busy.

3. Do Not Forget The Past.

Red Sage: Just because the industry may have changed, it typically does not mean that you should forget everything that you have done in the past. While advertising has moved from print to online, it is still advertising and many of the same ideas that made print ads successful can be applied to online versions. The same goes with even social media. It may be a two-way conversation now, but reaching your audience with the right message, at the right time still applies. Embrace change, but keep your foundation of knowledge and experience too.

Me: Knowing that change doesn’t always mean completely new keeps it from feeling so overwhelming.

The world, and especially the world of work, is changing at a rapid pace. In fact, from a technological perspective,Moore’s Law postulates that the rate of change is exponential, doubling on itself approximately every 18 months. Many of the things that are driving the changes in work are due to technology, but some are not.

This month we will be exploring on the blog some of the key changes we are seeing in the world of work and what those changes mean for us, more specifically what they mean for us in terms of possibility and opportunity for the individual and the organization. We’ll provide some advice on what you can do to capitalize on each opportunity.

Here are the key things we will hit:

1. Trend 1: Conscious Capitalism. Want to make a difference? Don’t start a charity, start a business.
2. Trend 2: What happened to the newspaper? How technology is changing the way we market and communicate from guest blogger and marketing guru, Heather Thompson.
3. Trend 3: It doesn’t matter how and where work gets done. The death of office space, office hours and the employee-employer relationship.
4. Trend 4: The death of the policy, at least we hope.
5. Trend 5: The changing world of work changes education slowly but surely.
6. Trend 6: Really not a trend, but the changing world of work and how it effects the job seeker by guest blogger Stephanie Siebel.

The world is changing, are you changing with it?