There's something afoot, and it deals with several pieces of economic pie shifting at the same time. In fact, it's a little strange that Richard Florida's latest book, Who's Your City? How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life, is so timely. For a little more trend connection, throw in a little bit of Seth Godin[33] from May (this has stuck with me since then).
If you are an employer, think about the following.
It costs you more money to house a work staff than it does to manage them remotely. Consider items such as cost per cubicle, cost per in-house service, cost per enterprise service license, your network bandwidth costs, your power and cooling costs, all the things you have to do to keep people comfortable in an office space.
Afraid of how they'll work?
Shift measurements from "being there" to "what you've done." Look for deliverables that are based on pieces of information, goals met, business moved forward.
I'm on Verizon EVDO and writing this by the lake where I took my daughter swimming. I can work anywhere there's a signal. So can a lot of us. In fact, I do my job much better at a remote location (plus, it saves four hours of driving, two each way, at $66 a tank of gas twice or more a week).
The age of half-owned brands is upon us. Years ago, it was only Robert Scoble. We watched in awe as he put a whole new face on Microsoft. He then shifted over to PodTech, and it didn't feel so strange. Was it strange at FastCompany? At Rackspace? Kind of. Look at the latest print issue of FastCompany and see how many times it mentions one employee, and not the boss.
Charlene Li leaving Forrester is actual news to a lot of us in this space. Why? Because probably five years ago, everyone would clamor to get in to Forrester. By the way, I think it's a great company, with good people, and all that. That's not my point.
Jeremiah Owyang left a little while later, to rejoin Charlene at Altimeter. Forrester's rock stars have mostly fled the coop, but it's not about Forrester. It's the trend. It's everywhere.
What about Chris Brogan as a brand? I went from employee with Jeff Pulver to employee with Stephen and Nick Saber to president of a company started with Stephen and Nick. In all of these moves, I maintained a mix of my own personal brand as well as support for the company that paid me. I think this will be a trend. As businesspeople, keep "deep benches" in mind.
Seth Godin's post about conferences and workplaces[34] strikes home doubly for me. I'm in the conference business (at least, part of my money comes from events). It's my duty to convince thousands of people that I've got great speakers, engaging exhibitors, and passionate attendees for them to meet.
Shel Israel's post[35] says that more businesses will use social media tools for economical reasons, for one:
Businesses will increasingly use social media to get closer with customers. This, of course, is already happening and happening at a pretty fast rate. But I think the trend is about to accelerate. Because it is getting too expensive and inconvenient to meet face-to-face in the real world, there will be more efforts to bring the conversation to the next best place, in the form of virtual communities.
Steve Rubel says:
Digital Nomads[36] are growing in numbers and they will create ripples. This trend will accelerate use of Web 2.0 technologies in the workplace. Over time, this may slow the efficacy of e-mail marketing and accelerate the reliance on social media engagement.
However, it goes deeper than that. If you don't allow your employees to become nomadic, they may do so and even compete against you in the process.
In the very near term, I think a few things happen. I think that employers are definitely in a spot where they might have to consider how their employees work. On one side, the management challenges are huge. It's not easy to shift around leadership and management styles. On the other hand, when there are cost savings to be had, a shift in flexibility might provide some hidden rewards. (Flex hours did this for a lot of companies. Suddenly, they had what amounted to shift workers without having to pay a premium.)
I also think that the idea of employees-as-brands-as-employees will stir more bees in the shorter term, but might start to make more sense as we become more comfortable with that lifestyle. Businesses are primarily organized in 1950s-era style right now. If we can adapt measurements and management style, I believe the downstream benefits are going to outweigh the interim headaches. Will all employees at all businesses feel these changes? No. And at least some employees will still have to be hands-on and nearby. (By the way, lots of people can't manage themselves very well and can't work remotely because they're easily distracted.)
One of our clients, Citrix Online, worked with us to launch the blog Workshifting.com, which talks specifically about this. We write together about the mobile and distributed workforce. This isn't a maybe. It's a now, and a "now what?"
Fuel costs are rising. Bandwidth is everywhere. Jobs are shifting into knowledge delivery and networked communities rather than face-to-face affairs.
It sure makes for a complex picture, but I don't know that we're going to stop it.
What do you say? Could you work remotely? Do you? How has the price of fuel affected you? What motivates you to attend a face-to-face event these days? Will you be changing your conference-going trends in the coming years? How about your hiring trends?