Technology these days means you can source talent from just about anywhere, so why is global tech firm Liaison Technologies looking to rural Illinois rather than overseas, and how has this rural sourcing impacted their business? COO Larry Mieldezis explains in an interview. Read more »
Often we only learn to value something when we feel its absence, so perhaps it makes sense that perpetually roaming travel writer Pico Iyer is a powerful advocate for stillness. In a recent interview he discusses the value of quiet for the perpetually plugged-in. Read more »
A long-time, female freelancer argues that, though the reason may be nurture rather than nature, women are often better equipped with the skills demanded of independent workers, including empathy, creativity and the ability to accept an uncertain, lower-status work style. Read more »
One futurist claims that we’ll trade our offices, universities and stores for coffee shops in the future, but won’t all this time in buzzing spaces disrupt the thinkers among us who chase eureka moments in quiet solitude? Not according to a new study. Read more »
The argument that work is increasingly untethered from the office and will take place more and more in coffee shop–type environments is pretty common, but one futurist is taking “coffeeshopification” a step further, claiming that universities and retail stores will resemble coffee shops as well. Read more »
Fans of enterprise social networking tools tout their ability to break down silos and pierce the executive bubble. But as hot a topic as these tools are, not everyone is a fan. Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst thinks they’re “garbage,” claiming you can’t buy collaboration. Read more »
Gloomy February is generally in need of more celebrations, and it has gotten one: Anywhere Working Week is on now. But this initiative from UK business, government and nonprofits to promote remote work is hardly getting pulses racing. Flexible work deserves a higher profile. Read more »
We know consumerization is eating away at the dominance of PCs, but Forrester Research has released fresh numbers on the phenomenon. The results are bad news for Microsoft, with Forrester finding one-third of work devices are non-Microsoft and a quarter mobile. Read more »
A survey conducted by British online labor platform Freelancer.co.uk confirms earlier findings from competitor site PeoplePerHour that showed UK businesses are hiring more independent workers, indicating that the much discussed rise of the “gig economy” is a transatlantic phenomenon. Read more »
Thanks to $340 million in no or low-cost loans authorized by the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), the Freelancers Union is expanding its health insurance offerings for independent workers, offering a new low-cost option to those in New York, New Jersey and Oregon. Read more »
Forget Mad Men-era images of CEOs spending hours around conference tables. A research project reveals that while executives still spend a ton of time in meetings, modern CEOs increasingly use virtual tools to connect. What might this mean for corporate culture further down the ladder? Read more »
The ability of coworking spaces to keep talent in town and boost local businesses is relatively well known to the movement’s fans, but another possible economic benefit of the spaces is less obvious. They help people share resources more efficiently, argues one space founder. Read more »
Constant connectedness means an increased risk of communication addiction, with knowledge workers checking their devices at all hours and burning themselves out in the process. But whose problem is this? Should companies, individuals or even countries be responsible for setting boundaries? Wharton School experts debate. Read more »
Harvard Business Review’s Tammy Erickson ponders a puzzling question for forward-thinking businesses – while most workers have trouble turning off the likes of Facebook in their personal lives, getting the same folks on board with enterprise social is a challenge. Why is that? Read more »
An expert on flexible work examines the data and concludes that despite much chatter about the rise of flexible working, in reality these policies only benefit a narrow, highly educated subset of the workforce. Can the practice be expanded to help those most in need? Read more »
The latest edition in a series of articles from the BBC on the future of work features thinking from Gartner. The company predicts that a less routine, more spontaneous way of working will emerge, freeing workers from the confines of the office and standardized processes. Read more »
A new survey from TeamViewer confirms earlier reports that Americans would be willing to make sacrifices for the privilege of working remotely, as well as offering a timely but shocking revelation of what some desperate souls would give up to telecommute. Read more »
At Net:Work Gene Zaino of MBO Partners made a bold prediction: Independent workers will be a majority in the U.S. by 2020. Can the same be said in the UK? A new survey offers evidence that at British small businesses freelancing is on the rise. Read more »
Virgin Media announced today that it’s rolling out a suite of Cisco collaboration tools after a successful pilot. How did they ensure a widespread adoption of these tools and a smooth transition to new ways of working? Both companies share lessons from the pilot. Read more »
Some say remote working is still a bit fringe outside of tech firms, edgy startups and freelancers in coffee shops, but a recent experiment by the British telecoms behemoth suggests the practice is slowly seeping into the mainstream of business. Read more »
Not at all, argues one professor. Daniel Jelski looks at the trends governing what work will look like in decades to come and arrives at an unpopular conclusion: The best bet is to forgo engineering skills and develop empathy by studying psychology and literature instead. Read more »
The rise of remote work may mean teams can spread out far and wide from corporate headquarters, but ironically, the increasing prevalence of telecommuting could actually lead to denser communities rather than atomized workers as work and life are integrated in one space. Read more »
Nearly everyone hates meetings, but a bold blogger suggests the solution may not be fewer of them, but more. Wayne Turmel argues that virtual teams stick too closely to the old model of long get togethers and advocates for more, shorter remote meetings. Read more »
Enterprise social networking may be a hot buzzword but it’s still in its infancy when it comes to adoption, which adds up to a frenzy of rushed roll outs by the inexperienced. What usually goes wrong? David Lavenda of harmon.ie has a few ideas. Read more »
Nowadays nearly every team aims for collaboration, but far from all succeed, often for emotional reasons as well as rational ones. Now a new study is aiming to figure out what sets teams that gel apart from those that fall apart, and you can participate. Read more »
The five partners in charge of Flip Flop Shops run their expanding franchise out of home offices spread across North America. How does this entirely remote team keep the business on track while maintaining a flip-flop friendly lifestyle? President Brian Curin fills us in. Read more »
Coworking and independent work may seem utopian as workers escape being chained to dreary cubicles, but exploitation of contractors is still a danger. Are coworking spaces inadvertently making it easier to establish asymmetric power relationships and, if so, what’s to be done about it? Read more »
After years of economic hardship and unsettling changes to how we work, how are Americans coping? Two new surveys suggest that while Americans may be far less optimistic than they were in cheerier historical periods, they are starting to come to terms with the changes. Read more »
Training at a distance is more hassle than it’s worth, several CEOs have warned. But a senior analyst at consultancy Bersin & Associates disagrees, explaining that the trouble with virtual learning often isn’t distance but materials that don’t take into account how adults learn. Read more »
Two design pros who will speak at an upcoming coworking conference on a panel about creating spaces that foster collaboration explain that, as technology allows teams to be far more nomadic, providers of corporate office spaces have a lot to learn from coworking. Read more »
Is the rise in independent work contributing to the rise in inequality? We asked this question last week. One expert who responded feels he has an answer, based on his firm’s research on the question and a reminder that correlation does not equal causation. Read more »
Experts have declared coworking a movement on the edge of exploding, with new business-savvy players set to take advantage of the trend. But survey results show existing owners hope to capitalize on the idea’s rise as well, often even if their existing space isn’t profitable. Read more »
Globally, nearly one-in-five wired workers telecommute on a frequent basis, but the number working from outside the office varies enormously between regions, with those in the developing world reporting far more mobility than Europeans and North Americans. Read more »
For skilled professionals, the increasing prevalence of independent work can be a blessing, but the trend toward replacing steady jobs with gig-based careers is bad news for the economy as a whole and inequality in particular, argues a Canadian magazine. Do you agree? Read more »
“Solitude is out of fashion,” declared author Susan Cain in the New York Times Sunday Review, arguing that our fetishization of collaboration is bad for introverts and innovation. Is coworking a symptom of this groupthink or a solution to it? Space owners weigh in. Read more »
A new report on social networking traffic patterns in organizations across the globe reveals that while use of social networks at work is way up, it still accounts for only a miniscule percentage of bandwidth. Threats to data security may be the bigger issue. Read more »
As work becomes more wired and independent, managers and HR are rethinking their roles. But do facilities managers also need to wake up to the changing nature of work, spending less time thinking about cleanliness and costs and more about the future? Read more »
Onboarding any employee can be tricky, and getting new virtual employees up to speed is even trickier. In fact, the process has so many potential pitfalls that some CEOs recommend you skip it entirely, training remote workers face-to-face instead. Read more »
The CEO of MBO Partners, a services company for independent workers, argues against the harshest critics of corporate HR, asserting that he’s seen a dramatic rise in big companies’ awareness of and ability to take advantage of new ways of working. Read more »
From the rise of sites like Elance and oDesk to the opinions of researchers and anecdotal evidence from knowledge workers, evidence is mounting that the future will feature a lot more contract workers. Now another survey is supporting the rise of the gig economy. Read more »
