The Future of Work
[Applause]
[Music]
[Music]
in 2009 i decided to leave a corporate
career
i started in california’s silicon valley
all the way to the uae’s oil and gas
industry
learned a lot met relative success but i
felt this continuous confinement in a
corporate
structure that left me yearning for more
i wanted to travel to exotic places
and i wanted to gain this freedom of
being to work being able to work from
anywhere
it’s then that i decided to join the
digital nomad movement
after a long sabbatical in the mountains
of lebanon i found myself in brazil
a business consultant speaking
portuguese
and learning how to dance for ho from
there i moved to thailand
writing articles on sustainability
online as i learned muay thai
and then i ended up in the green school
of bali helping promote
environmental sustainability between
days of silent meditation
as i moved from country to country i
started to see that there was more
people like me
lured by this freedom and living and
nestled in these communities and that
movement began to grow
in march of this year i came to tulum a
town that’s been transforming from a
counterculture haven in the 90s
to becoming the next digital hotspot i
came to see
and witness what all this change was
about and then covet happened
all of a sudden the streets were emptied
the beach was off limits
and the locals seem to be happy because
it was a throwback to the 90s on plug
days
but for us all of a sudden we had our
laptops
nowhere to go and we had no idea what
was going to happen next
as the months went by and the
restrictions began to ease
people started flooding in back from the
u.s to escape an extremely polarized
political
atmosphere and wanting to go somewhere
where they can work remotely
mexico with a six-month visa on arrival
much improved technology infrastructure
and healthcare
was the ideal spot for them all of a
sudden
we began to see an emerging community of
tech
entrepreneurs ceos freelancers all
coming together
and we witness an emergence of a new
community
of course the fallout of covet 19 is
still ongoing
many people have lost their lives people
have lost loved ones
personally for me my own sister has been
experiencing the same symptoms
since she contracted the virus in march
we’ve all been affected by this in some
way
socially psychologically and it would
take several ted talks to do the fallout
real justice but there is a silver
lining here
this whole process allowing people to
work remotely
has been sped up and catapulted from a
fringe phenomenon
to the mainstream and a new normal the
reason this shift to remote work
has been much slower pre-pandemic is
trust
business owners managers haven’t trusted
their employees to work remotely
they need to see the employees and
management was by attendance not by
results
being forced to work from home this had
to change
and it was clear that management by
results was the way to go
data is in distractions working from the
office
are at least double what they are at
home and this is taking into
consideration
that working from home during the
pandemic we’re all sheltered in
with our parents our partners with our
children
and still the productivity was higher
under the old paradigm employee
retention is becoming a lot more
difficult
the younger generation gets it they will
not commit to one company for too long
they already understand that there is
another possibility of them working and
living wherever they want
they’ve rebelled against this nine to
five work schedule
and they’re right the opportunity is
here for them to merge
their work and life balance and travel
while doing it
statistics are in global workplace
analytics shows us that 76 million
workers in the u.s that’s over half the
workforce
now wants to work at least part of the
time from home
if that happens and the projection is
that 25 to 30 percent
in 2021 will be working from anywhere
that has a massive impact on real estate
on office space and on office design
some projections say it’ll be over one
billion square feet of reduced office
space
we’ve all seen the clear skies during
the quarantine
as there was less commutes less plane
travel and
all replaced by zoom calls we’ve even
watched
animals returning to places that they’ve
long abandoned
urban centers when everybody cleared out
because of the quarantine
students are also going through a
transformation the pandemic has forced
them also to study remotely
i used to daydream about that option as
a student
but now with blockchain technology
universities can
engage and measure all the facets of
student life
from registration virtual or physical
attendance
credential sharing and even testing at
home
knowing that you are the one taking the
test
this has completely revolutionized
remote education
now students can work off campus engage
collaboratively with other students
and at the same time have comparable if
not better academic results
but the story here is when all of these
digital workers
and students come together we start to
see the rise of new communities
and it’s happening here for example
co-working hubs
as a platform that brings together all
of these different people
but now they don’t have to put on a work
persona they no longer have direct
competition with employees
they don’t have any internal hierarchy
so they come together look
looking for new meaning and the norm
becomes to help each other out
let’s be honest we come to co-working
hubs
not just for the digital technology and
to be able to connect to the internet
we come to be a part of the community
co-working hubs for example
are embedded in the social fabric of any
town or city it’s the perfect platform
to connect to collaborate with others
and to coordinate resources
the question here is whether we’re
physically or virtually together
what are we going to do with these new
emerging communities
especially after covid with this renewed
sense of purpose
in my mind i think an easier one is the
existential crisis of the environment
why not start there by some estimates
we have one decade to get that right
it goes without saying that in 2020
collaborating under the same roof has
its challenges
but with a safe environment there’s
still room for people and ideas to come
together
it’s this sense of togetherness that’s
going to play a significant role
in the actual recovery from this
pandemic
for our collective recovery we’re
creating a new environment
a new consciousness this is a new
culture
where we really want to get things done
we’re incentivized to get things done
and we’re willing to empower other
people to do it
this is the new frontier
[Music]
[Music]