The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything, and that includes the workplace and the future of work in general. Millions of employees in the past year and a half transitioned to remote working arrangements, embraced the endless stream of video calls, and got settled into a new kind of work/life balance.
And while many may have returned to the office full-time, employees all over the world have learned things about themselves and their jobs that they’ll carry with them for the rest of their careers. They’ve developed new preferences and new visions of what work could or should look like going forward.
According to a survey by Owl Labs:
- 77% of workers say that they would be happier working remotely even after the pandemic
- Half of respondents said they won’t return to jobs that don’t offer remote work after COVID-19
- 44% don’t find it necessary to get dressed up for a video meeting
The prevailing model of the typical worker who commutes every morning to their designated cubicle may not have been shattered, but it’s undeniable that a new conversation about what the workplace should look like has been opened up, and the possibilities are endless. We’ve gathered a few of the brightest minds who are leading this conversation.
Meet some of the leading voices on the future of work who are sharing messages on things like employee wellness, change management, innovation, and team building.
Kaleem Clarkson
“This year we have seen more resignations from jobs than ever before, so much that many are naming 2021 as The Great Resignation. Now that the competition for the best talent has instantly become global, companies are going to be forced to start offering fully-distributed/all-remote positions, and hybrid-remote is just the beginning.”
Kaleem is a husband, father, remote work advocate, people operations professional, and speaker. He is the Chief Operating Officer of Blend Me, Inc. a remote employee experience consultancy that helps startups and small businesses onboard, engage, and retain their remote teams, an essential skillset for the future of work. With nearly 20 years of strategic operations and event planning experience, he helps leadership implement people operations solutions that increase productivity and engagement for both internal and external stakeholders. He is passionate about work-life integration and maximizing The Remote Employee Experience (TREE).
Adrian Gostick
“One of the things that separate a great company from the pack is the way its leaders at all levels respond to change. This process begins by understanding that no matter how healthy culture is, a good portion of employees will naturally resist any change, or indifferently ignore leaders’ pleas to do things in a new way.”
Number one bestselling author Adrian Gostick provides advice to some of the world’s largest organizations on managing change, driving innovation, and leading high-performance teams. Gostick is a global thought leader in the fields of corporate culture, leadership, and engagement. He is the founder of the workplace assessment company FindMojo.com and author of the #1 New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestsellers “All In,” “The Carrot Principle,” “Leading with Gratitude,” and “Anxiety at Work.” His award-winning books have been translated into 30 languages and have sold more than 1.5 million copies around the world.
Karen Mangia
“When you’re working from home, [work is] always there. Always available. It’s unhealthy if you’re always peering into your work pantry. When work is always on and always available, it’s vital that you create some healthy segmentation.”
Karen Mangia is the VP of Customer and Market Insights at Salesforce, engaging with key customer accounts and collaborating to develop innovative strategies to address their key business challenges. She helps translate feedback into actions to increase customer retention, growth, and satisfaction. Mangia’s passion for customer success began as an account manager at AT&T, where focusing on customers’ goals led to exceptional success. Mangia consistently outperformed production and revenue targets by double and triple digits (up to 522%), growing revenue up to 51% year-over-year. Mangia is also an author, with books including “Success With Less: Releasing Obligations and Discovering Joy” and “Working From Home: Making the New Normal Work For You.”
Jaime Casap
“This [new normal] has given us the opportunity to highlight what are the big issues that we face around equity in education.”
Jaime Casap served as the Chief Education Evangelist at Google for more than 14 years and was the second member of the Google for Education team. In that time, Jaime launched Google’s GSuite tools into higher education and K12. He also launched Chromebooks into education and was the creator of the Google for Education Transformation Framework, a holistic approach to education transformation. Now Jaime is partnering and collaborating with higher education institutions, school systems, and businesses around the world, helping them build transformational policies and practices to elevate education and bring equity, diversity, and inclusion into their policies and practices.
Darren Murph
“There’s been a lot of preconceived notions that have been broken down about what jobs can and can’t be done remotely. Turns out many more than we thought actually can be. And this is even during this suboptimal time. I do think that companies if they can stick it out and build some remote muscle through this, they’ll be really, really in a great position going forward.”
As GitLab’s Head of Remote, Darren Murph leads at the intersection of people, culture, operations, inclusivity, marketing, employer branding, and communication. Murph has spent his career shaping remote teams and charting remote transformations. He advises and invests in global startups and serves as a remote work transformation consultant. Murph serves multifaceted teams across people, operations, and marketing functions. Murph is also a published author, with books including “Living The Remote Dream,” “iPad Secrets,” and “iPhone Secrets.”
Jenn Lim
“Purpose and profit can go hand in hand. In a world of consumers that are increasingly choosing the values of a company over the value of what they’re buying, it means purposeful and profitable companies are more likely to be sustainable in a rapidly changing time.”
Jenn Lim is the CEO of Delivering Happiness (DH), a company she and Tony Hsieh (the late CEO of Zappos.com) co-founded to create happier company cultures for a more profitable and sustainable approach to business. In her new book “Beyond Happiness: How Authentic Leaders Prioritize Purpose and People for Growth and Impact,” Lim draws on her decades of experience in culture and strategy to translate it into a practical “how-to” framework for more sustainable workplaces and modern organization design. She guides all of us – no matter our title or role – on how to live more meaningful lives through the work we do every day.
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