the future of remote
With all of humanity united together post-pandemic, an unwavering dedication to healing and peace is steadily shaping our new world where remote work is improving quality of life for everyone - while allowing space for creativity and innovation that directly benefit the companies and causes being served with increased productivity.
In a mid-pandemic survey conducted by PwC of 120 executives (the majority from companies with annual revenues greater than 1 billion USD), 83% of the employers stated that their shift to remote work had been successful for their companies - an outlook that continues to grow globally as we learn how to remote work effectively, utilizing the digital and technological advances at the fingertips of the most fulfilled workforce the world has ever seen.
Every person has different communication/workflow styles and preferences (i.e. Slack, Google Docs, an effective conversation over a walk in the park with your children running nearby, Loom, Airtable, email, group work sesh at everyone’s favorite coffeeshop) regardless of employment status. You may even be one of the many utilizing Airbnb as a traveling office with your laptop and a portable $15/mo internet hotspot from PCs for People - an organization helping to provide access to talent whose background or geographical location would have previously presented as a barrier while encouraging, enabling, empowering and enhancing a global talent pool and remote workforce. As Melinda French Gates says, we now need to “bring people, resources and ideas together in innovative ways” - and a globally connected talent pool and workforce does just that.
As remote workers learn to perfectly configure their workflows, workers are digitally enabled to achieve their objectives with increased productivity, allowing them to get on with other, completely unrelated tasks - cultivating an atmosphere for innovation. On this week’s episode of Leadership Next with Tiger Tyagarajan discussing opportunities, Joe Ucuzoglu shared, “Because what we’re finding is that many of the cutting-edge applications are not coming out of the corporate headquarters. They’re coming out of putting the technology in the hands of our people on the front lines, they find new and innovative uses. We then funnel them back up and leverage them across the entire client base.”
Despite reactionary fears of some existing far outside the top industries expected to thrive with a predominantly remote and connected workforce, the entire world will not want to work remotely, nor will it make sense unilaterally for every industry. While most industries support flexibility, fields like finance, marketing, and information technology have been advancing with digital innovation for years and the collaborative advances we’re seeing with the metaverse and digital twin technology stand to enhance the remote capabilities and global impact of fields like engineering, for the good of humanity well into our future.
The top five industries that we expect remote work to continue according to the 2021 State of Remote Work Employer Survey Report by Payscale are marketing and advertising, information technology, art and design, media and publishing, and accounting and finance.
