How the Future Works

In this episode, Barry and Eleanor discuss the Great Resignation, the move from fixed employment models to flexible freelance working models, and the benefits and risks associated with taking the big step.

They are joined by Tom Brooks the founder of Yon Living www.yonliving.com a brilliant concept that combines staying in great locations, designed for working and relaxing, with meeting like-minded digital workers and creating community.

Tom explains the story behind Yon, explains how the model works, which cities Yon is currently located in and their expansion plans for the future.

It’s an entertaining and inspiring conversation with an entrepreneurial founder who has created a model for the digital worker.

www.yonliving.com

www.open-assembly.com

www.transformationofwork.org

In the latest episode of How The Future Works, Barry and Eleanor are joined by Emily and Alex Marcham

Emily and Alex are a married couple who decided that life was too short to be employed in a 9-5 and so made the big life decision to resign from their jobs and embrace the digital nomadic lifestyle.  Emily went from being a legal secretary to becoming a virtual assistant, social media expert and blogger and Alex left behind his role as a HVAC engineer to embrace a new future as a web designer. They now live the freelance dream and travel the world, work for themselves and earn income from client projects through open talent platforms.

It’s a fascinating and inspiring discussion that might just tempt you to think differently about what work is all about!

Emily’s details linkedin.com/in/emily-marcham-255b3095

Alex’s details linkedin.com/in/alexander-marcham-44280657

www.open-assembly.com

www.transformationofwork.org

In this episode Barry and Eleanor reveal some exciting news in that Re-source the open talent consulting business that they run together, has merged with Open Assembly the world’s leading learning resource and consultancy for the future of work and the open talent economy. 

They discuss the podcast which will continue under the same name but under the Center for the Transformation of Work (CTW) banner – the CTW is a community project established by Open Assembly designed to support the needs of freelancers around the world. 

They are joined by Ray Wolf the CEO of A2K Partners.  Ray and A2K make the future of work a reality for business leaders and they have developed a VDI based security solution that’s designed to enable freelancers from any platform to safely and securely access enterprise systems.  The key to open talent enablement in the enterprise.

www.A2kPartners.com

www.open-assembly.com

In this episode Eleanor and Barry discuss the increasingly popular model of companies turning to elastic teams of expert freelance tech resources to deliver projects. They meet Callum Adamson Co-founder and CEO of Distributed. www.distributed.co Callum founded Distributed in 2017 and the business has seen rapid growth with demand coming from prestige brands, attracted by Distributed’s model of sourcing the best independent talent in the world managed through a quality based process and delivered via a digital platform. They have a great discussion on the benefits of the elastic, freelance model and have a bet live on air as to whether freelancing will be the predominant employment model for technology professionals by 2025.

Barry and Eleanor also discuss Turing, Braintrust, MBO Partner’s latest research showing a 34% annual increase in independent professionals in the US, orange wine, ultra-marathons, the Great North Run and so much more – go on, have a listen!

www.distributed.co
www.re-source.uk
https://foilsurfing.co.uk/

In this week’s episode Barry and Eleanor discuss the importance of taking some time off especially when working as an independent professional  (which explains the slight gap between the previous episode and this one!) they discuss the Open Assembly’s latest publication Networked Organization – a play book for implementing open talent at scale  https://lnkd.in/egFrUMEA and discuss the growing trend for businesses to engage teams of freelancers. 

As companies grow more comfortable with marketplaces as an alternative to agencies or consultancies, they are also increasingly asking freelance platforms to assemble multiple experts to complete more complex, strategic, projects.   

To help them to explore the teaming topic in more detail they are joined by Dr Hans-Ulrich von Freyburg the founder of  Vicoland and Niklas Lieb  Vicoland’s head of Busines Development.  Vicoland stands for Virtual Company and is a really innovative platform based business that creates virtual companies or “Vicos” comprised of freelance experts who then provide a specific service to an enterprise client and all supported by Vicoland’s digital infrastructure.

https://www.vicoland.com/

https://www.re-source.uk/

In this episode, Eleanor and Barry meet Mark Hannant and Munni Trivedi a married couple who met at work and run multiple businesses together.  They compare notes on what it’s like to be married to your business partner as well as learn about Mark and Munni’s business; Indigo Premedia that provides outsourcing services to creative agencies.  They discuss the rapid rise of outsourcing creative services as well as the wider industry, the disruption of human cloud marketplaces the importance of providing managed services, and how to create a movement (see link to the video below)

Mark and Munni are fascinating guests with a brilliant story and a really positive energy which makes for a fun-filled, entertaining conversation.

https://indigopremedia.com/

www.re-source.uk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO8MwBZl-Vc 

In this episode Eleanor and Barry discuss the “talent paradox” and look at the reasons why enterprises find engaging with human cloud models so challenging.  They role play a scenario to bring to life how companies can overcome concerns about security, compliance, employment classification, IP protection and more and discuss how despite having solutions for each one, enterprises still find it difficult to engage readily available open talent due to “organisational inertia” and they look at the role of HR experts and Change Managers in helping to make the change happen.

To bring the topic to life they are joined by Mark Brooks-Lewis the Founder of LavaSourceHR the new talent marketplace and community for HR, HR Tech and OCM Professionals.  Mark describes why he established LavaSourceHR and how he expects the market to develop in response to enterprise demand for HR professionals, HR Technology experts and Change Management practitioners that are now available through his new platform.  Mark also discusses his first and worst job and his long-time prediction that England will win the Euros!

www.lavasource.co.uk

www.re-source.co.uk

In this week’s episode, Eleanor and Barry discuss the importance of workforce culture and how culture can be maintained and improved within an ecosystem environment.  They discuss the importance of feedback loops and how the ability to give feedback in an anonymous, safe environment should be a fundamental right that transcends employment boundaries and be universally available for all workers.

They are joined by Claire Schmidt, founder and CEO of Allvoices; an anonymous reporting tool and case management system that was built with both the employee and the employer in mind.  AllVoices provides workers a way to report wrongdoing and feedback anonymously and company leaders the opportunity to have two-way anonymous conversations with reporters. 

Claire left her position as a tech exec at 20th Century Fox to start AllVoices after reading Susan Fowler’s blog about the harassment she experienced at Uber, which ultimately led to Uber’s CEO stepping down. Susan is now on the board of AllVoices. 

The team have a great discussion that covers BrewDog’s recent challenges with employee feedback, the importance of anonymity and how its achieved, positive as well as negative feedback loops and the spin-off benefits of trust and transparency on workforce culture.

Links

https://www.allvoices.co/

www.re-source.uk

www.humancloud.uk

In this week’s episode Eleanor and Barry discuss the growing trend of workforce ecosystems and how enterprises are starting to think more holistically about how work gets done and who does the work, treating employees, agency workers, open talent platform work, gig workers, outsourcers and robots as an ecosystem to manage. 

They discuss the World Economic Forum and Willis Towers Watson’s formulae for accounting for work:  Return on Work (ROW) = Total Revenue / Total Cost of Work (TCW) where the TCW includes all work sources. 

They are joined by Hassan Khadra-Brooks – Founder and Director of The Hive – a platform for staff sharing and the future of B2B Collaboration and they discuss the benefits of non-competing enterprises collaborating and sharing staff.  Hassan explains the benefits of sharing staff to fill talent needs, to balance supply and demand and to up-skill and develop skilled employees.  Hassan also shares his 5x10 answers, including his predictions for the 2021 edition of Euro2020!

Useful Links

https://thehive-enterprise.co.uk/

www.re-source.uk

www.humancloud.uk

In this episode Barry and Eleanor discuss the world of Customer Experience (CX) and discuss what makes good CX and why.  They discuss how after over a year of managing with the pandemic  companies shouldn’t be using COVID as an excuse for poor customer service and they discuss how flexible, remote working models with mixed teams of experts can improve CX by attracting experts to work remotely on flexible terms. 

They are joined by Jitender Mohan, Executive Vice President and head of Customer Experience at WNS who discusses WNS’s approach to CX and how they have developed an open talent model based on mixed teams of domain experts working flexibly and remotely as part of hybrid WNS teams.

www.wns.com

www.re-source.uk

www.humancloud.uk