The vast majority of knowledge workers don’t actively use coworking spaces: until now these workplaces have mostly actively been used by small business owners or freelancers who want a professional business address, need the space, and benefit from a sense of community.
On March 14, Founder Denise Brouder will be participating in a panel discussion at SXSW entitled, “Work in 2023: Half the US Workforce will be CEOs.”
This panel is part of the Workplace Revolution Track at SXSW 2023 exploring the “radical transformations in the way we work.” SWAYworkplace continues to be a key player in this revolution as Brouder and her team speak with employers and employees daily about their changing relationships with the office.
The Future of Work is evolving quickly. “Hybrid” was the buzzword of 2022, but we know that what employees really want is completely flexible work. The hybrid model, an awkward blend of the “9 to 5” and “remote work” lifestyle, has served its useful purpose and created space for something new to emerge. It’s time to rethink your approach to flexible work, to bring out the best in your current employees, and attract the top hires in the job market.
2022 was the year many companies finally made it back into office. Some companies with strict policies saw a quick decline in employee engagement. While others accepted remote work and opened up opportunities for new hires across the country or the world.
Why should you trust us with your team or your company? Through an interview with the founder, Denise Brouder, we’re showcasing the team behind SWAYworkplace, our vision for the Future of Work, why SWAY exists, and why we deserve your attention in the hybrid work conversation.
Most sources define productivity as the measure of the efficiency of a company’s production process using the number of units produced relative to employee labor hours (Investopedia). Or in the workplace, you may define productivity simply as…
Whether you think you should have more days in the office, or you want to move and work remotely, you’ve noticed the workplace has changed. At SWAY, we’re working with companies to build happy hybrid teams, and the first step is acknowledging that even the meaning of “hybrid work” has changed.
Summer vacations for a hybrid team: do they exist? Many people don’t have the best boundaries when working from home or working a flexible schedule, and you might feel it most during the summer. You’re sitting on the beach replying to emails or responding to Slack messages from your phone. You remember the in-office days where you didn’t work if you were away from your desk.
SWAY has been traveling the country presenting workshops that build happy hybrid teams. As we’ve measured data from each team and discussed their hybrid experiences, we’ve noticed they struggle to define the differences between asynchronous and synchronous work, making async adoption difficult. We believe success in the future of work relies on transitioning to async by default, so let’s get started on breaking it all down.
After two years of remote work and staggered Return-to-Office plans, we still don't have hybrid work figured out. We understand the confusion. At SWAY, our singular focus is to build happy hybrid teams. Here are five of the most powerful questions we are asked about how to make hybrid work, work.
In this blog post, we take a deep dive into SWAY’s newly redesigned “Leading Hybrid Teams” workshop, designed to empower managers to drive performance in their hybrid teams.
While no businesses can exist without quantifiable results, no business or individual worker can excel without managing emotions in a positive way. Studies link empathetic leadership to more innovation and higher employee retention: now is the time to sharpen your soft skills.
Proximity Bias is defined as a subconscious bias, a natural preference towards those closest to you, who you see physically more often than others. As the “return of the office” campaign picks up traction, many leaders fear that proximity bias will take root in hybrid teams, endangering productivity and performance.
While working from home has been in place for almost two years now, most workers continue to struggle to create healthy routines. With many offices closing or being downsized, employers are increasingly granting WFH options, and hybrid work is officially here to stay. It’s time we build those boundaries, routines, and habits that ensure success in the future of your work.
Human-centered design has been critical to innovations in production and web development since the 1990s, and then in 2008, IDEO.org popularized it among nonprofits to enhance accessibility and inclusiveness in programming.
Now, companies and executives are applying human-centered design principles to the workplace and creating an environment that works better for their employees.
Because we receive instant updates from around the world, circumstances change within an instant. Over the past year, we’ve seen over and over that what was true yesterday is not true today. Those changes have made careers obsolete overnight while catapulting others to the top of the hierarchy.
Over the past year, we’ve had the opportunity to see the Future of Work realized. Each day, we’re moving closer to the flexibility employees need to produce their best work.
However, some companies are reverting back to the old way of working, modeled after the industrial era. Let’s walk through some of the trends we’re seeing from this past year — good and bad — and how they can be addressed with a futuristic mindset.
We’ve seen the shift happen in our everyday lives: our friends and family are less afraid to mention seeing a therapist or protecting their mental health from toxic relationships. Do these conversations still catch you off-guard? Do you find yourself thinking, “they see a therapist? Things must be worse than I thought.”?
But as we see that evolution from stigma to strength in action, we realize many of our friends are seeing a therapist to prevent situations from getting worse, protecting their mental health before they burn out or lose themselves in harmful behaviors.
We have networked more in the past year than ever before: our increased social media consumption and Zoom events prove that. But we’ve also completely created a new normal for networking. You don’t need to attend official networking events to meet industry experts or promote your business: you can just start connecting with them online like any other friend.
At SWAYworkplace, we believe the Future of Work is in our uniquely human capabilities like creative problem solving and collaborative work. With AI taking over our repetitive tasks, we have more time to do the work that makes us valuable. Now we need the skills to communicate that value through digital mediums.
The Future of Work no longer requires skills you learned in school—technology moves too quickly for that. Instead, we’re expected to become fluent in new software quickly, build trust over video instead of expensive, corporate-paid dinners, and collaborate with teammates at all levels of the company hierarchy.
These “soft skills” are flexible and make up the Future of Work: they can be applied to any industry, allowing you to pivot your career when the unexpected arises.
These five skills will take you far in your current workplace and make you a critical part of any team in the future.
Emotions may be the most misunderstood component in the World of Work. We believe they hold us back and make us less efficient, but the opposite is true.
Understanding your emotions is the key to building resilience, channeling stress, keeping you motivated, and helping you stay focused. If you develop your emotional intelligence, you’ll unlock productivity and become a better teammate in the office.
One of the big misconceptions about remote or flexible workers is that they only want to work in their pajamas watching Netflix. While the forced remote work environment of 2020 may have dissolved that perception, building a routine now lands on the individual and requires a new degree of personal responsibility.
Our workplace culture is experiencing a crisis of trust. Many professionals are still uncomfortable working remotely, missing the easy trust-building exercises of staying slightly later than everyone else at the office or grabbing a coffee for the boss on their way in. With remote or flexible work, you need to earn trust through actionable work, managed expectations, and clear communication.
The Future of Work is more than just working from home. Here are the basics you need to know about operating in the Future of Work as you pursue a Work-as-a-Lifestyle career.
The world of work was forced to change -- some of us have been waiting for this change for a long time, while others want everything to go back to the way it was before COVID-19. Every day, we learned how to adjust to make room for homeschooling or alternating video calls with our partners. Looking forward, some may never return to the office full-time, and businesses have accepted that, yes, employees can be productive when working from home.
The future of work is here! Through 2020’s “crash course” in flexible work, we've gotten over that initial loneliness of working from home and demonstrated the efficiency of remote work. 2020 taught us to communicate better and set boundaries, while managing family needs and fear for the future.
For the past few months, all offices have been tentatively pushing back their in-office start date. Some companies decided early on that no one would be back on-site before January 2021, while others suggested September… and then October… before admitting we simply don’t know when it will be safe for in-person office work.
In the flexible workplace, it's up to you to manage your personal energy effectively and work the hours that work best for you. Of course, while virtual or home schooling, sometimes those hours may be dictated by your child's schedule, but you can still have some control over your energy levels by asking yourself a few questions.
At SWAY, our speciality is working with leaders and managers to create effective flexible work environments. We find that we hear the same struggles at all levels, at all companies, even from tech companies with every tool they could need.