It’s 2:15pm, and you’ve just taken a quick break from work to check your phone. You open the social media folder in your iPhone, where you have applications like Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. You open Twitter to check the feed for any important pieces of news you might have missed. The first tweet you see is something that someone you follow has retweeted, and instead of getting caught up on current events, you spend the next 30 minutes reading through the battleground taking place in the comments.
No, you’re wrong. I hate you.
That’s the takeaway you get from accidentally sinking so much time trying to figure out why unknown people from all over the country – even the world – are fighting to the virtual death over a fairly innocent tweet expressing a rather uncontroversial opinion or introducing a novel concept.
Now, imagine just two years into the future, and the overwhelming majority of corporate jobs are performed remotely. All communication takes place over company instant messaging platforms, meetings are performed over Zoom and the face-to-face interaction that has come to dominate the business world is effectively non-existent. What impact will that have on how we do business?
Social media, despite the demonstrable benefits that it brings, has also created quite the divide…will the same happen in the business world? What other surprising effects might there be?
Of course, no one knows what the future will look like in two years, but it certainly isn’t an out-of-this-world prediction that the move to online work will have a significant effect on how we interact. Humans are built to be communicative. We do that at our best when we are able to have conversations with one another, and really think about and digest what the other person is saying. The internet and social media have made communication easier, faster, and ubiquitous. There is no doubt…the effects have largely been borne out. The era of social media began more than a decade ago, and we now have years of history to examine some of the key effects. While some fields – most noticeably the technology industry – have had a remote-work capability for years, it was uncommon before COVID-19 for the broader economy.
Here are some of the key things to look for as we get deeper into this new decade, and business becomes less face-to-face.
Business from Afar
- Employees often cite company culture as one of the biggest factors in determining where to work, and whether to stay. How will company culture – and by extension, employee satisfaction – be affected by little-to-no personal interaction? If employees become unsatisfied and turnover increases, what impact will that have on the viability of the company, and perhaps even entire industries?
- Much has been said and written about when it comes to the rise of technology and its potential negative impact on future job creation. While a great number of jobs have been and will continue to be created as a result of technological advancement, the jury is out on whether there will be more or less overall jobs in the long-term. Will online work help us or hurt us?
- If you can work anywhere in the world, why would you live where you live? I understand this question reads negatively, but really, do you need to or even want to be where you are if you are no longer required to be physically present somewhere? And if not, where would you move and how would you live? I’m sure this is a question that someone working in the real estate industry would love to have answered and is without a doubt a question they are already beginning to explore.
However, it isn’t just about real estate. Where people live is also where they spend money, and most importantly, where they live determines the way in which they spend money. For example, someone living in Florida spends money in service-oriented establishments (Disney, beach bars and restaurants etc.), whereas someone in Utah likely spends money on skiing and other forms of outdoor recreation.
In closing, the world will be different. That much we know. The rest is anyone’s guess, but it might just pay off to be thinking ahead.