If the last year and the pandemic have taught us anything, it is the wisdom of the old saying, 'where there is a will, there is a way.' When it comes to the business world, this saying has never been more true. With the onset of Covid-19, employees were sent home and began to learn the art of working from home, or what is called 'remote' work. Surprisingly, over the following months, many businesses discovered that having employees work remotely was pleasing and profitable to both.
This brings up the question and the subject of this Rules of Thumb blog post from MoneyThumb, Is the Future of Business Remote and Digital? Popular opinion and those of the experts seem to think so. After much research, we found this article at Fast Company we particularly like and wanted to share due to the fact that it is straight-up and honest. That's the best kind of helpful information, honest with no fluff.
The article is titled The Office as We Know it Is Over, and That's a Good Thing. Here is a quote from the article, "For decades we’ve had the tools, case studies, and best practices to evolve beyond an outdated cubicle culture. What we lacked was the willpower to leave the office behind. But the pandemic accelerated a transition that was years in the making. As lockdowns went into effect, the proportion of remote workers skyrocketed from 3.4% last February to about 42% in April. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many Americans realized they preferred Zoom meetings to the tyranny of a desk. According to a recent study by FlexJobs, 65% of newly remote workers don’t want to go back to the office.
Amid the devastation of COVID-19, it’s worth pausing to reflect on what this future portends. Reduced commute times. Asynchronous communication. Less carbon in the atmosphere and more livable cities. A world in which employees are more productive, organizations are more resilient, and workplaces are more equitable."
Fast Company introduces three major predictions for the future of business and remote work. We have listed those below:
- Workplaces will become more equitable--It should make it more equitable for people to get praised and promoted for the right things—that is, the results that they drive—not the wrong things, like the kinds of clothes that you wear, or the way you verbalize in a meeting, or just because you happened to get an office next to someone you can rub shoulders with. The politicking that had a negative impact on anyone that wasn’t a white male, hopefully, that will start to degrade, and you can build more equity around advancement and career progression tied to results.
- Cities and towns will become more livable--There’s been a lot of research done on the ghost-towning of the world, as people feel like they have no choice but to move to major urban centers for the best-paying job,” Murph explains. “It hurts on two levels; the place that raised them is losing their tax dollars, and the place that receives them, there’s never really that connection of home. They may care about the place, but they’re not invested in it.
- Companies will become more resilient and productive--By decoupling work from a single location, organizations become better insulated from regional challenges such as natural disasters, outbreaks, or infrastructure outages. At the same time, studies suggest that employees who are able to choose where they live and work are more engaged, productive, and loyal to their employer.
The above concentrates on predictions for what will occur in the future for corporate entities and their employees. But what about small mom-and-pop shops and individual businesses? The fact is unless a business has an online presence--which has been true for a long time, even before the pandemic--they will not be nearly as successful, and may not even survive. This is true now more than ever.
For small, privately owned businesses, digital marketing is the future, without a doubt. Digital marketing includes social media presence and promotion, blogging, advertising online, building traffic and followers to your website, and email marketing, to name the most prevalent forms of digital marketing. Seasoned digital marketers are making millions using these methods.
Learning digital marketing is a process, but if you have the right attitude, it's also a lot of fun! If you are just starting out with marketing your business online-digital marketing-we'd like to suggest you attend this free webinar presented by Joe Pulizzi, the Amazon bestselling author of Content Inc., Killing Marketing and Epic Content Marketing, which was named a “Must-Read Business Book” by Fortune Magazine. The webinar is on Tuesday, March 30, 2021, and is titled The Future Marketing Model: Building Digital Audiences that Measure Up.
Below are some of the main things you will learn by attending this free webinar:
Identify the intersection of your expertise and your future customer’s needs
· Determine how to "tilt" your sweet spot to find a place where little or no competition exists
· Establish your number-one channel for disseminating content (blog, podcast, YouTube, etc.)
· Use social-media and SEO to convert one-time visitors into long-term audiences
· Translate data points into engagement insights that will ensure success
The Rules of Thumb blog from MoneyThumb would appreciate it if you would share this blog post with your friends on social media so that they too can benefit from its content.
Leave a reply