I've been fascinated by the future of work since joining General Assembly back in 2011. I'd never worked in an open floor plan office, had so much flexibility and responsibility or worked remotely. I soon started traveling frequently to open new GA campuses and had to learn how to build a global organization for the first time.
Although I'm not a fan of the term 'digital nomad', I do believe in offering employees the option of working remotely and have been doing so myself for the past year and a half. Below are a few companies who I think are doing particularly compelling work towards pushing the boundaries on how we live and work today.
Werk
I was immediately intrigued when I discovered Werk, a new type of job board that pre-negotiates flexibility terms for senior roles, aimed at providing women more career options. Users can sort jobs by whether they're remote, part-time, or require travel, among other qualifiers, and is attempting to provide women with flexible options to continue advancing their careers after childbirth.
Jobbatical
I discovered Jobbatical when I was on my own two-week sabbatical in 2015. Instead of enjoying myself, I found myself working on a side project and taking meetings with entrepreneurs and business leaders and realized that although I love traveling to new destinations I'm not great at actually taking time off work.
Jobbatical is a platform that connects talented individuals with international work opportunities and is intended for people who want to spend time in a foreign country but also want to continue working. Jobbaticals can last from three months to over a year with most taking place in Europe and Asia.
WorkMarket
WorkMarket markets itself as "OS for Work" and is a cloud-based freelance management system that helps companies scale flexible workforces. Workforces have changed over the past decade and WorkMarket enables companies to scale their talent network by hiring freelancers, full-time employees or vendors from their "labor clouds". They recently received investment from Accentureand has set a new bar for workplace automation, I'll be very interested in watching them grow.
A few other companies to note are Teleport, Roam, and Unsettled. Interviews with Douglas Coupland are fascinating reads as well. All are creating unique global communities that are changing the way we make connections and work together.