💬 “One impact of COVID-19 is that some workers now care less about the external signs of success and care more about things like freedom, flexibility and autonomy. That is difficult for some companies to shift towards, because it means they have less control over what success looks like. @Diane Mulcahy

This is a conversation with Diane Mulcahy

🎙️ Diane is the author of the bestselling book ‘The Gig Economy’. Diane is a consultant, speaker and lecturer and currently an Advisor to the Kauffman Foundation, where she manages the venture capital portfolio. She is the author of ‘We Have Met the Enemy … and He Is Us’, a widely read report on the VC industry.

🎧 In this episode, I asked Diane if COVID-19 has changed, revealed or accelerated the future of work. She perceives that predominately it has accelerated the future of work towards more permanent remote working, and it’s established new types of employee motivations. Diane discusses how leaders and leadership models are adjusting to reflect changes in employees desires for increase autonomy and flexibility.

But not all employees want to be based from home and although a number of high profile technology companies announced permanent work from home strategies, that may not be the end of that story. We haven’t yet discovered the longer-term impacts of distributed teams on creativity and innovation. Whilst the future may be uncertain for remote working, Diane has hopes that the change in mindset created by COVID-19 could encourage employers to increase flexibly in areas like holiday and working hours and to recruit from a far wider geographic pool of candidates. Diane is an expert on gig working, and she talks about trust within the workplace, particularly around the collection and use of data. She also explained how a lack of trust can drive employees towards freelance work or gig work where they have more control over their work, including their hours and location. Finally, I asked Diane for some advice to people entering the workforce for the first time during the global pandemic.