THE FUTURIST: The collapse of legacy thinking about the workplace – Sarasota Herald-Tribune

David Houle| Sarasota Herald-Tribune

In my last column, I explained why one of the forecasts from A Look Into 2022 A Split Screen Year the ascendant strength of labor and employees this decade was, in fact, happening. I mentioned what has been called the Great Resignation would be looked back upon as the clear demarcation of the beginning of this trend.

The numerical reality of the changing workplace and the changing employment marketplace is truly unprecedented. From April 2021through the fourth quarter of 2021 there had regularly been 400,000 to 500,000 resignations in the U.S. on a monthly basis. When this happened last April, it was a huge historical milestone. That milestone has been surpassed many times since then.

The pandemic has clearly affected us in many ways. One of the most noticeable ways is how much people have changed how they think about work. After one has spent months working from home, being more productive, having more time with loved ones, having more personal time, it becomes difficult to go back to the pre-COVID workplace.

The last full year pre-COVID was 2019. That was a record year in U.S. history for time spent commuting.The average commute distance for Americans that year was 27.6 minutes one way, or almost an hour a day.Five hours a week. In addition, the cost of gas, auto maintenance andparking to do this average commute can be more than $100 a week.

The world has changed. The view of work has been transformed. The old, 20th century model of commuting to an office five days a week is not coming back as the norm.

There is not one person I have interacted with since the first lockdown who has not had some significant change in how they view work, their life, how they work, where they can work remotely from, and how work and personal and family have been rebalanced. When death has been at the door, the pleasures of ones home become ever more important

A fundamental change has occurred, and the sooner employers and companies understand this, the better off they will be.

Iforecast that this decade will see a complete reinvention of work. The workers will gain more power, altering the dynamic with employers. This power will only partially be gained in the old ways of union strikes and stop-work actions. It will be gained as ever more people work from home, choose to become independent contractors and indeed become digital nomads. Talent will have increasing leverage in the area of employment negotiations.

For the last decade, I have consistently spoken and written about how, in the Shift Age, the Physical Reality will give way to the Screen Reality. Since March 2020, it has. We like to be working on our screens, living in a nice place, with family nearby.

Companies going forward will have fewer employees, more technology and more training. In addition, the corporate world will start to more fully embrace the dynamic of the creative class and will increase the number of contract workers.

It is estimated that by 2030 there may well be one billion people working as digital nomads globally. This entire movement of have laptop and phone, work from nice places really went into high gear during the time of the pandemic.

This, in fact, is significant for Sarasota County in particular. Since the beginning of COVID two years ago, the county has been one of the top counties in Florida, and therefore in the entire country, for digital nomads. There is more than anecdotal evidence that people have left congested cities where they had to live to be close to work, to move to nicer places to live such as Sarasota and Manatee counties where they now work remotely.

This is an entirely new economic development strategy for our area. Clearly, the booming residential real estate market locally is evidence that this is happening. The economic development model from the last century is to lure companies to move here and bring all their employees with them. This usually meant that some special tax incentives had to be offered to lure a company to relocate. Now we can avoid giving out any tax incentives and still reap the benefit of the influx ofwealth and population.

The workplace of 2025 will be vastly different than that of2019.

The key point to make about this is that it is time for both Sarasota and Manatee counties to rethink our vision for the workplace of the future. The old workplace is rapidly receding in the past and the new one is rushing toward us. We can hugely benefit from current dynamics but we must open up our thinking to do so.

Sarasota resident David Houle is a globally recognized futurist. He has given speeches on six continents, written seven books and is futurist in residence at the Ringling College of Art andDesign. His website isdavidhoule.com. Email him atdavid@davidhoule.com.

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THE FUTURIST: The collapse of legacy thinking about the workplace - Sarasota Herald-Tribune