Future Work/Life is my newsletter in which I explore ideas focused on the future of work and how to design legendary careers. If you find it interesting, please share it!
I’m enjoying some time off with the family this week, so today I’m sharing an interview I did with Authority Magazine last month. It’s a wide-ranging look at the future of work and careers, including my ‘Top Five Trends To Watch In The Future Of Work’.
Experienced founder and CEO, Ollie Henderson, pivoted his career while juggling the pleasures and pressures of raising a young family. He believes work/life balance is a myth. Rather than seeing career and personal life as two opposing forces, Ollie argues that the secret is to design an integrated approach that allows them to work in harmony. Ollie's weekly newsletter and Top 10 Careers podcast, Future Work/Life, provides news and analysis to thousands of people interested in the future of work, covering subjects like creativity and innovation, data and technology, peak performance, productivity, wellbeing, and workplace culture.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers like to get an idea of who you are and where you came from. Can you tell us a bit about your background? Where do you come from? What are the life experiences that most shaped your current self?
I grew up just outside London in the UK, with my parents and brother. My mum was a teacher and my dad worked in the music business. We had a very supportive upbringing, with one lesson clearly resonating with my brother and me - self-determination. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that we both became entrepreneurs. We share an independent mindset that’s focused on growth and creating new opportunities. For me, after a few years working in large organisations, that meant jumping headfirst into start-up life, and that’s where I’ve been ever since.
In January 2020, a decade after founding my first company, I exited that business to work out what to do with the next ten years of my life. Not knowing what I wanted to do, I started writing about the changing relationship between my work and personal life. After trying and failing to find the perfect work/life balance for years, I realised that the whole idea is a myth.
Shortly afterwards, Covid arrived, and the work/lives of billions of people were turned upside down.
Since then, I’ve been writing and speaking about the future of work and careers. I talk from the perspective of a parent with three young kids, who recognises that work and life feed into one another. Instead of aspiring for work/life balance, we should create a complementary relationship between the two – a Work/Life Flywheel - which is the name of my book.
What do you expect to be the major disruptions for employers in the next 10–15 years? How should employers pivot to adapt to these disruptions?
We’re witnessing the convergence of several trends accelerated by the pandemic.
Firstly, we’re experiencing the greatest work/life transition in history. Never have so many reconsidered the relationship between the time they spend at work and their personal life. While, for most, this has been an opportunity to make positive changes, undoubtedly, challenges remain. Not least, navigating the increase in the time spent interacting through a screen and creating genuine connections between global teams.
Alongside this work/life recalibration, there’s a move towards decoupling work from employment. People are becoming more independent, which creates the opportunity to bring unique skills to more companies over a career.
The freelancer and contractor economy is already growing, but in 10-15 years, our work expectations will be considerably different. For example, while most contractors are self-employed, they still tend to work for only one organisation at any time. In the future, technology will enable workers to be matched more dynamically and rapidly with companies that need specific problems solved and possibilities created. This will result in shorter-term gigs and working for multiple companies simultaneously. The second and third-order effects of this will be extensive. In the first instance, talent marketplaces will become more powerful, meaning the ability to rapidly and accurately assess someone’s expertise, credentials, and attitude is critical.
Also, consider the impact on collaboration - specifically, how we’ll rapidly build dynamic teams of more independent workers, which we’re already seeing addressed through the emergence of platforms like Traktion and We Are Rosie in marketing, or A.Team for product development.
Finally, in an age of tech overload, people need a simple way to individually and collectively track and share their progress.
A fascinating set of challenges!
The choice as to whether or not a young person should pursue a college degree was once a “no-brainer”. But with the existence of many high profile millionaires (and billionaires) who did not earn degrees, as well as the fact that many graduates are saddled with crushing student loan debt and unable to find jobs it has become a much more complex question. What advice would you give to young adults considering whether or not to go to college?
The era of a three-stage life – education, career, retirement – is over. We’re now in what Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott have termed a ‘multi-stage life’ consisting of constant learning, adaptation, and growth. While learning specific skills will always be important in some professions, the rate at which the workplace and the nature of jobs change will make many three to four-year university courses redundant. When my kids leave secondary education, for example, I’ll suggest they look at a wider range of further education options, including apprenticeships and hybrid education/work programmes.
A longer working life will also mean it becomes more normal to take sabbaticals and breaks in your career to upskill, while, in general, the ability and motivation to learn will be top of many companies' lists of skills when identifying future talent.
Despite the doom and gloom predictions, there are, and likely still will be, jobs available. How do you see job seekers having to change their approaches to finding not only employment, but employment that fits their talents and interests?
If you take a passive approach to finding a job, including filling in online applications, you’re already missing out on the opportunity to differentiate yourself. Just as companies are beginning to recognise the importance of having a unique point of view and sharing their ideas, talent should apply the same principle to creating career opportunities. Focus on subjects you’re interested in and care about and then begin sharing your perspective on them. Even if you’re new to a topic, that’s ok. Through writing or talking about something, future employers and collaborators can see your way of thinking and your evolving expertise.
The statistics of artificial intelligence and automation eliminating millions of jobs, appears frightening to some. For example, Walmart aims to eliminate cashiers altogether and Dominos is instituting pizza delivery via driverless vehicles. How should people plan their careers such that they can hedge their bets against being replaced by automation or robots?
Don’t think of technology as a threat but as an enabler. If you can harness technology to augment your uniquely human characteristics – critical thinking, the understanding of context and creativity – you’ll be an asset to future organisations. Embrace challenging technology and consider how it can be leveraged to solve big problems that have previously been impossible to solve. Or, on a smaller scale, come up with ideas on how to help save people time or money. These are the things that really matter to most people and companies!
Technological advances and pandemic restrictions hastened the move to working from home. Do you see this trend continuing? Why or why not?
Remote working isn’t going away. Yes, various vested interests remain hooked on the idea that ‘returning to work’ means returning to the office, but even they now have to accept that hybrid is the best they can hope for. The reality is that a daily commute is a significant friction point, forcing organisations and individuals to consider the relative benefits of in-person and virtual work more carefully. This is a good thing! Certainly, it’s an improvement on blindly continuing to work in the ‘old’ way just because that’s how it’s always been done.
The ‘best’ solution is unique to each person and company. Even down to team level. The trick will be understanding the trade-offs and prioritising what’s more important.
For example, suppose you regard in-person interactions adding significantly to company culture, productivity, and creativity. How much will you sacrifice a bigger talent pool to satisfy your hypothesis? I mean, literally, how much?
If you believe the talent benefit will increase your growth by 50%, while the hybrid work strategy would contribute a 10% upside, it's easy to see the best approach - go remote. If the difference is marginal, then perhaps you take a hybrid approach, focusing on building the best possible workspace to bring the best out of your team.
What societal changes do you foresee as necessary to support the fundamental changes to work?
I live in London and find it fascinating to see how local communities are affected by fewer people commuting into the centre of town each day. We’ve already seen new ventures popping up offering work-from-near-home options in our area and coffee shops buzzing with more people during the week than ever before.
Now, consider how this extrapolates globally, and you can begin to understand how remote work can fundamentally change population flows. One CEO I recently spoke to runs a fully distributed company and shared examples of staff living in rural Philippines. In the old world, they would likely have emigrated to earn the type of salary that would allow them to send money home and improve the lives of their family. Now that they’re connected by decent broadband and empowered by a global organisation, they can remain at home, and their earnings flow directly back into the local economy.
What changes do you think will be the most difficult for employers to accept?
Big changes are never easy, particularly when you don’t have agency over the decision. If you’ve always worked one way and considered it successful, it can take a lot of convincing to believe that another approach can be effective.
Now to some extent, they don’t have to change since we’ll likely see a broad range of work offerings. Companies will begin defining themselves by the way they build their culture and working arrangements, allowing them to appeal to staff who also want to work in that way.
However, eventually, if the tide is flowing away from you, you’ll be left high and dry – which in this case, is more likely for those who miss this opportunity to reimagine a better way of working and just revert back to more of the same.
The COVID-19 pandemic helped highlight the inadequate social safety net that many workers at all pay levels have. Is this something that you think should be addressed? In your opinion how should this be addressed?
This is certainly more pressing in some countries than others. For example, while the system's not perfect in the UK and many other European nations, there are obvious advantages compared to the US.
In the face of future pandemics and the possibility of automation removing a swathe of jobs from the labour market, economists and politicians will increasingly debate whether universal basic income (UBI) is the right solution. Its simplicity is an advantage in its purest form, but given likely opposition to ‘hand-outs’ for everyone, it’s more likely that a ‘conditional’ approach will emerge. In other words, if you’re contributing either by paying taxes or volunteering to support the social system, you’d be eligible to receive the UBI.
Whatever the solution and wherever on the spectrum different countries lie, we shouldn’t waste the chance to have the debate.
Despite all that we have said earlier, what is your greatest source of optimism about the future of work?
Any opportunity to create positive change should be grasped. There’ll be plenty of stumbling blocks in the coming years, as people’s work experiments don’t always go to plan and businesses fall by the wayside by failing to adapt quickly enough. But we’ll also see incredible innovation as millions of talented people fulfil their potential through access to a global market. With that will come opportunities we can’t even imagine. That’s something to be celebrated, however difficult the journey will be.
Historically, major disruptions to the status quo in employment, particularly disruptions that result in fewer jobs, are temporary with new jobs replacing the jobs lost. Unfortunately, there has often been a gap between the job losses and the growth of new jobs. What do you think we can do to reduce the length of this gap?
Invest in building the skills that will help us bridge the gap.
Yes, that means technical skills, including cyber security and understanding how to work with and prompt AI. But that also means advocating new, more open-minded ways of thinking, the ability to communicate clearly and concisely through text and video, and cultivating a belief in people that they can craft their own futures – whether by building businesses or operating side projects alongside the traditional idea of the job.
We need more entrepreneurially-minded people, willing to share their ideas and create new possibilities.
Okay, wonderful. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “Top 5 Trends To Watch In the Future of Work?” (Please share a story or example for each.)
1. Rise of side projects alongside main jobs
In the short term, a smart solution for employers balancing tighter margins with the need to retain top talent is a more flexible attitude towards side projects. Not just tolerating but encouraging these will cultivate new entrepreneurial skills (which they can bring back into the business) while granting people the opportunity to increase earnings. After all, if we’re insistent on putting ‘entrepreneurially-minded’ in job descriptions, we should mean it!
2. Unlocking new ways of using async video and audio
The pandemic made everyone aware of the possibility of asynchronous work, but many businesses aren’t yet properly taking advantage of these tools, which partly contributes to the prevailing sense of tech and meeting overload. While real-time conversations remain critical, observe how short video and audio check-ins between leaders and their teams balance clear communication with a reduction in time poverty that’s a burden for so many people.
3. A more independent workforce
The number of people moving into freelance careers has been on the rise since the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009, but since 2020, the rate of new company registrations in the UK and USA has accelerated. A new wave of entrepreneurship has emerged as so many have explored the benefits of becoming free agents for the first time. Despite the economic challenges ahead, this trend will continue, and more fluid and flexible workforces will become the norm for organisations.
4. The personalisation of work
We live in an era of digital personalisation, but the personalisation of jobs hasn’t kept pace with our experience as consumers. The future of work is personalised, meaning for the first time, we’ll have the opportunity to focus not just on what we're good at but on what we're passionate about too. Thanks to the internet, you can now easily connect, do business, and collaborate with someone on the other side of the world, who shares your interests and needs your expertise. Those that develop the skills and systems to take advantage will shape how the future of work evolves.
5. A revolution in our work/life data
Personalisation of the consumer experience is possible because of the proliferation of data. The past decade has seen an acceleration in how businesses collect, organise and deploy customer data insights. On the other hand, if you consider how we record and reflect on our work/lives, it’s clear there’s a gaping chasm. In the future of work, every individual should have a simple system to collect, curate and share the key moments that define their growth and contribute towards achieving their potential - this is one of the most significant developments we’ll see over the next decade.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how this quote has shaped your perspective?
The biggest obstacle holding most people back from making changes in their work/lives is fear – usually of failure or reputational risk:
“What if it doesn't work out, and will I look like an idiot? What will people think of me if I don't get it right? How will I look at myself in the mirror if I quit my successful job and try something that fails?”
In Daniel Pink's research for his book, The Power of Regret, he ran a global survey asking people to share their greatest regret. Among the nearly twenty thousand people who contributed, the overwhelming wish when looking back was that they'd adopted more of a bias for action. And the greater the time that passes, the more profound the sense of regret.
Which is why I love this beautifully simple quote from author Stephen King:
“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I love Floodgate founder Mike Maples Jr’s perspectives and have tried adopting many of his mental models in my work over the past few years, so it would be great to sit down with him and chew the fat about start-ups, technology and life. In particular, his point of view on applying ‘Backcasting’ to build a breakthrough idea has directly impacted how I’m designing the next phase of my career. On which point, stay tuned, as there’s plenty to come over the next year…
Our readers often like to follow our interview subjects’ careers. How can they further follow your work online?
Check out the Future Work/Life website for links to all my work. Or go directly to the Future Work/Life newsletter on Substack, the podcast on any major podcast players, and connect with me on LinkedIn.