The Top Five Trends To Watch In The Future Of Work

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers like to get an idea of who you are and where you came from. Can you tell us a bit about your background? Where do you come from? What are the life experiences that most shaped your current self?

I’ve always been a bit of an outlier. It started with my education as I studied engineering at a time when about 5% of the class were women. My first entrepreneurial experience was launching a telehealth company back in the mid-1990s, when delivering healthcare services using technology was an emerging concept. But we embraced the possibilities of the internet and designed a business model that was an application service provider.

Many of my experiences were really on the edge, but they were all consistent with my personal value of adventure. If it’s not cutting on the edge of learning and exploring what’s possible in terms of human potential, then I don’t think it’s worth doing.

What do you expect to be the major disruptions for employers in the next 10–15 years? How should employers pivot to adapt to these disruptions?

We are in the midst of the largest workplace transformation since the Industrial Revolution. This disruption is the dismantling of the hierarchical command and control structure in the workplace that was held in place with the primary motivator of power and fear. Now, the power dynamic is shifting from employer to employee. The employee is now the one that gets to choose where they go to work, rather than the employer choosing who they hire.

This shift in the power dynamic is significant in terms of what has to happen for an organization’s culture. Old-school, rigid, inflexible companies that do not have a human-centric design will have difficulty attracting and retaining top talent. This will become a growing burden and could limit growth in these companies. To prepare for this, employers need to pivot and figure out how to become more flexible.

Read the full interview here