WLP318 How Things Changed This Year for Organisations and Freelancers
Maya and Pilar review how new ways of working have landed in organisations and how the freelance landscape is evolving - mainly in relation to remote work. Recorded on 5 December 2022.
Organisations and remote work
Our co-hosts start off the conversation with reference to the article: Is it time to revisit unproductive flexible working arrangements?
Maya and Pilar talk about whether people mainly going into the office on Mondays and Fridays is an issue, and whether senior employees working from home are “setting the wrong example” amongst other points in the article.
Legal considerations are playing more of a role now, compared to during the forced, sudden remote work period when they took second place, if any… Organisations are being more specific about where employees can work from and for how long, before people have to be treated as employees abroad.
For example, Hubspot are very clear on which countries remote people can work from. Check out this article about hybrid at Hubspot .
Expectations have really changed for employees, and they haven’t been made explicit, there hasn’t been time… We recently delivered a webinar on how the psychological contract has changed after the pandemic, as expectations about what the workplace is and what it’s for have changed.
Plus, the experience of remote work wasn’t great during the pandemic so there are still assumptions of what can and can’t be done in the space, such as socialising.
The office is being seen as the main social space for teams and colleagues - not necessarily a bad thing and it does mean that it’s being used more mindfully, like for having breakfast together! And if the only thing people have in common at work is the space they share, hybrid and remote can reduce the sense of belonging.
At the end of the day, adopting remote work in a way that works and is sustainable takes up a lot of time, a lot of good will and a lot of effort…
On the plus side, new conversations have emerged around what the office is for, how to best retain people, the value of the organisation and our work, and mental health.
Finally, the role of Head of Remote has become very popular this year. Check out this resource from GitLab about the role, and the list of organisations who have the role in the organisation, including Deloitte and Unilever.
Pilar mentions the Pointer Remote newsletter, and this link will take you to the subscribe page.
22.50mins
The Freelance Landscape
Maya launched this year the podcast The Future is Freelance!
Maya has always been interested in the world of freelancing, and she’s seen the spectrum in this kind of workforce widening, but it looks like the number of freelancers is increasing, even compared to last year, according to this US study: The Number of U.S. Independent Workers Continued to Surge in 2022
Freelancers are also great for organisations in many different ways - in terms of flexibility and in terms of having access to the right person for the right project. Maybe the remote work experience has made people in organisations more open to hiring freelancers that don’t come into the office to work near us.
There are lots of new digital nomad visas now, as countries want to increase revenue to their countries, offering their natural resources to a different kind of tourism. There is a difference between a digital nomad visa and a remote work visa, the former sometimes being a visa valid for different countries, whereas the second one tends to have a longer valid period, and sometimes is seen as a path to long-term residency.
Maya refers to John Lee, who was on the Future is Freelance podcast, explaining the different tax rules freelancers and solopreneurs should be aware of
This was the first year that we saw local residents turn against remote workers and digital nomads for the effect they might be having on housing. (Check out the section on digital nomads in episode 309 for an example )
Will the recent layouts in tech lead to more freelancers/consultants/startup founders? And will some of them leave the tech industry to support more traditional organisations to become properly digitised? And will some people move away from the tech hubs? (Pilar mentions the podcast After Hours., episode 17 Nov 2022)
Talking about the freelancing community, so many freelancers have been congregating on Twitter, but we’re not sure of the future of the platform, so where will all those informal communities gather? Private online spaces?
Finally, Maya has observed solopreneurs paying more attention to their legal structures. You can find out more about this in her blog post Solopreneurship and e-residency: when small is beautiful.
41.20 mins
One more point around the future of work: the Chat GP3 is generating some interesting stuff, so what does the future bring for writers? Maybe our next What’s Going On can be created from questions we ask AI. Send us your questions, listeners!
Pilar and Maya give their predictions: Pilar is fearing the meta verse (as opposed to balancing sync/async) while Maya thinks we’re approaching an “analog backlash”.
46.02mins
And thanks to listeners Richard, Scarlett and Marion for listening and their feedback!
Happy 2023 everyone!
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