How the Future Works

In this episode, Eleanor and Barry Matthews meet Charlotte Gregson, UK Country Manager for Malt www.malt.com  Malt is rapidly expanding and Charlotte is responsible for growing the UK business.  Malt already has 500,000 freelancers and works with 60,000 businesses.  The discussion covers Malt’s country specific strategy, the importance of community and customer experience, the opportunities and challenges for flexible working posed by the current economic climate and of course Charlotte’s first and worst jobs!

"This episode is a symbolic one as it marks the final episode of How The Future Works in its current format. Open Assembly’s two podcasts “Work” with John Winsor and “How the Future Works” with Barry and Eleanor Matthews are being combined into a single podcast titled “Transform Work.” As the title suggests the new podcast will continue to focus on how traditional work formats are being disrupted by digital platform-based open talent models and will include discussion, debate, and interviews with many of the leading thinkers involved in transforming the industry.

Please note, we cannot move your subscription from this podcast to the Transform Work podcast feed.  In order to get the same great Open Talent-related content, please search and subscribe to Transform Work wherever you get your favorite podcasts."

In this episode Eleanor and Barry are joined by Colton Chorpenning; digital nomad, author and Senior Interactive Producer for Nest and Pixel at Google.  Originally from Denver, Colorado, Colton has designed a digitally nomadic lifestyle, spending half his time in Denver and travelling the world the other half. To date, he has worked in over 16 countries including Turkey, Austria, Italy, Thailand, SriLanka and India . Colton is the co-author of What The F*ck Is Next - a book he wrote with his father to help people live a life of intention.

The discussion includes the Kerala Knowledge Economy Mission, Chat GPT and LLMs and the dangers of eating gummy bears in Colorado!

This episode Eleanor and Barry talk about the Trusted Talent Platform Partner survey and travel plans for work to help boost the freelancing industry in India and Saudi Arabia. Their guest is Ahva Sadeghi, CEO of Symba, a platform with a purpose — to open up the workforce by helping businesses establish remote internships, enabling them to invest in the next generation of talent, and commit to diversity and inclusion.

She talks about the lightbulb moment when she realised that Symba had to exist, the benefits of a well-managed internship programme, and the importance of finding the right business partner.

Find out more about Symba at symba.io.

The guest on this episode was Glen Hodgson, CEO of Free Trade Europa, a “Think Tank and Do Tank” focusing on liberalisation, free trade, innovation, transparency and the rule of law across Europe. In our conversation he explains what that means and what he predicts for 2023 in way that European governments and other bodies respond to the ongoing growth and expansion of freelancing as a valid career choice for the future of work. Eleanor and Barry also talk about all the speakers from 2022 and what 2023 has in store for Open Assembly.

Eleanor and Barry discuss topical news including the Autumn statement from the UK chancellor and the recent happenings at Twitter. Their guests this week are Lizzie and Alex Hirst, authors of Sunday Times bestselling book Workstyle: a revolution for wellbeing, productivity and society.  

Lizzie and Alex tell their stories and why they felt compelled to create a new word to describe an autonomous way of working, reorientating work to fit around your life instead of the other way around. They also describe Hoxby, the purpose-led company they have built around this philosophy and of course talk about their first jobs, worst jobs and life hacks.

Find out more about them at hoxby.com and buy the book Workstyle on amazon.com or any good bookstore

Eleanor and Barry discuss the UK Government’s IR35 hokey cokey and the latest industry facts and figures from Staffing Industry Analysts, before welcoming guests, Casey McElroy and Sam Orrin from Worksome. Worksome defies classification and fits into a number of the industry’s boxes, so we explore where it fits, what makes it different and what the future holds for the company that is on a mission to reduce friction between companies and their external workforce.

Find out more about them at worksome.com, on LinkedIn @worksome or search for worksome on other social platforms.

In this episode Barry and Eleanor talk to Neil Hughes, LinkedIn Top Voice winner, prolific podcaster and all round nice chap. They talk about the extraordinary growth in podcasting, how it can be a useful tool for promotion and profile-building for freelancers and how to find enough motivation and inspiration to record every day. They also pick apart the recent changes in IR35 and what it will mean to UK freelancers if and when it is executed.

In this episode of How The Future Works, Eleanor and Barry are joined by Tanveer Mohammed UST UK’s head of Innovation.  They discuss how the open innovation model enables UST to collaborate with employees, customers and targeted groups of external experts who can all contribute to solving challenges on behalf of UST’s clients.  They discuss how UST is using open innovation to solve problems related to fraud associated with deep fakes and malicious use of AI, as well as a range of diverse client challenges.

The team also discuss their plans for The Great North Run, the new PM and Tanveer’s 5x10 round

In this episode of How The Future Works, Eleanor, and Barry meet Kal Sahota, CEO of Open Innovation platform HeroX. She explains how organisations tap into solvers from around the world to find the answers to their big conundrums.

As a completely open crowd, the solvers (or Heros) compete for prize money, but as Kal explains their motivation is more about being part of something bigger and the intellectual challenge.
They also discuss Barry’s recent trip to Boulder, Colorado, and Eleanor’s resulting FOMO.

https://www.herox.com/
https://www.youtube.com/c/Herox

In this episode of How The Future Works Eleanor and Barry meet Matt Dowling, founder of The Freelancer Club and find out more about how the expectation of work for free is a real thing in the freelance industry for creatives. Their #NOFREEWORK movement aims to put an end to that expectation and was born from Matt’s own experience of being ripped off by a client.

They also discuss Upwork’s upcoming Work Without Limits event, lightbulbs going on in a family-run brewing company and possibly the best ever worst job.

https://freelancerclub.net/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dowlingmatthew/

www.open-assembly.com