The case for redefining how we work
As Gen Z is leaning towards remote work, flexibility is an increasingly important factor in choosing what to pursue.
Hi, I’m Erifili Gounari, and this is issue #8 of The Digital Native. This newsletter is aimed at driven, curious and inspired Gen Zers, interested in mindset, entrepreneurship, business, marketing, and more! Note: The Digital Native is currently published once or twice per month.
One thing that the past year has pushed a lot of people to explore and consider, has been remote work and its impact on the way we live. Opinions on the topic have varied greatly across the world and it’s been interesting to observe the different arguments that all hold value, regarding work/life balance, time management, socialising at work, etc., that make it hard to clarify our feelings on this new way of living.
In a survey that was just published by GitLab, where 3,900 professionals shared their experiences, 52% of remote workers stated that they would consider leaving their co-located job for a remote role. That is a significant statistic that appears to be even more prominent among younger generations, as remote work is a good fit with the values that Gen Z and the new workforce seems to pursue in the roles they look for. In a poll I ran on Twitter, where most of my audience of 9,300 people are Gen Z, over 60% stated that the ability to work remotely is an important factor they consider when looking for a new role (at the time of writing this).
Some of the elements that come up repeatedly as the most important factors that our generation considers when looking for a job, are flexibility, freedom, and a workplace that is progressive, modern, able to adapt to sudden change. From that, it appears that companies that have been willing to adapt to a more flexible structure, not necessarily fully remote, but hybrid, would have much higher chances of attracting young talent.
A hybrid structure is one where employees are at least given the opportunity to choose whether they want to be working from an office or remotely, in the industries that can afford to function in this way. Because of Covid, not only are we now more aware of how possible it is for us to work remotely, but we’ve also progressed to a point where we’re looking for ways to make async work increasingly possible.
Why async? 🤔
Asynchronous work is a way of working where you basically work independently as much as possible. The point is to get a better hold of your time, and to be more productive by avoiding unnecessary meetings. When a company shifts to making async work more possible, by integrating some of the hundreds of tools that are currently available to facilitate that, then employee performance is not judged by their input (how many hours they’re working, how long they’re spending on a certain task), but on their output. Having recently started working at a company which is based in San Fransisco but allows employees to be fully remote, it has become clearer than ever to me that creating a culture that focuses on the output of the job you’re doing instead of the input, is a really great way to go.
Maintaining a company culture that forces everyone to physically be present at the office and work the same hours, while it’s of course known that someone might perform best at noon while someone else might be more productive at midnight, places everyone within the same box which can easily hinder productivity. It doesn’t really allow employees to take necessary breaks, care for their mind and body in the appropriate ways, or have any say on how to distribute their workload for maximum efficiency and productivity based on how their own brain works best. For a generation such as Gen Z, therefore, where productivity, efficiency, mental health, and work/life balance are often important topics, it seems inevitable that they will now be the ones pushing for workplaces to be more adaptable and flexible instead of refusing to compromise if they can afford to.
Using adverse circumstances for positive change 📱
Remote work was introduced to most people by force, with no other choice being available due to the pandemic. But positive change is now coming out of it in the way we work, in general. These circumstances have pushed us (employees and workplaces alike) to consider new ways to manage our time much more efficiently than ever before and to actually maximise our productivity and output by streamlining the processes that no one has considered changing for so many years, just because nothing sparked a change.
Startups have started creating valuable innovations in this space to change the way we work and hopefully create a future that is more conscious of why we do things in a certain way. Spot, for example, is a startup that’s soon releasing a tool to allow teams to have meetings while taking walks, with an in-built voice command to take notes of the meeting so you can still stay on top of everything with your colleagues. Other tools, like Acapela, are similarly working on ways to help remote teams avoid meetings that aren’t essential and to take better control of their work/life balance.
A lot of companies are intimidated by the shift to a remote or hybrid business model and that’s completely normal, but thankfully there are tons of tools and resources to help out anyone who’s newly navigating this space! Remote Starter Kit is an amazing website full of the best tools and resources that can help a team collaborate and work better asynchronously and remotely.
Adaptability is your new best friend 💃
The point is, being adaptable and open-minded when it comes to integrating new processes in the way we work is incredibly important today. Companies that refuse to adapt to this new mindset -because it is, in large part, a way of thinking about work- will definitely miss out on young talent that is ready to pour energy into exciting projects but expects this flexibility and understanding of the world we live in in return.
This is the latest link I bookmarked this week because I found it genuinely useful and I know I will come back to it some day in the near future when I’m looking for something like this. It’s a list of 10 of the highest rated online courses that you can follow for free -some of them are on YouTube-, and they cover super interesting topics by Harvard, MIT, and others. Enjoy! 💻💭
Thanks for reading this issue of The Digital Native! I hope you enjoyed it and learned something new. Feel free to comment any thoughts below or email me! ☺️
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Drop me a note on erifiligounari@gmail.com. 💌