The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future

by Julia Hobsbawm

Overview

Named one of the Financial Times' BEST BUSINESS BOOKS OF 2022

What has changed in the workplace? Everything.

The traditional office was probably doomed anyway. Then a global shutdown changed everything we thought we knew about work, including where and when it needed to take place. Automation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution have accelerated, and perhaps as much as one third of the world’s permanent workforce will soon become remote. In The Nowhere Office, Julia Hobsbawm offers a strategic and practical guide to navigating this pivotal moment in the history of work and provides lessons for how both employees and employers can adapt.

Hobsbawm draws on her extensive networks in business, academia, and entrepreneurship across  generations to offer new ideas about how to handle hybrid working, as well as provides deep insight into how the way we work is being transformed by larger issues such as community, hierarchy, bias, identity, and security. The Nowhere Office describes a unique moment in the history of work which, if understood and handled correctly, can provide a springboard for the biggest transformational change in the workplace for a century: something better, more meaningful, and more workable for everyone.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541701939
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	04/12/2022
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Julia Hobsbawm is an entrepreneur, writer, and consultant who addresses the challenges of the hyper connected age, in particular remedies of what she has called Social Health for organizations. She is Chair of The Workshift Commission and is Founder and Chair of the content and connection business Editorial Intelligence. Her bestselling book The Simplicity Principle: Six Steps Towards Clarity in a Complex World was published in 2020 and won the American Book Fest Best Book Award 2020 - Business: General and the NYC Big Book Award 2020 - Self-Help: General. Awarded an OBE for services to business, her articles are amongst the most downloaded on the Strategy + Business site and she is an adviser to the British Academy’s Future of the Corporation project.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction 1

1 Shift 1: Placeless, Timeless 13

2 Shift 2: Worker Beings 45

3 Shift 3: The Productivity Puzzle 66

4 Shift 4: New Networks 85

5 Shift 5: Marzipan Management 101

6 Shift 6: Social Health and Well-being 116

Reinventions 133

Acknowledgements 145

Notes 149

Further Reading 175

Index 185

Editorial Reviews

02/14/2022

Business consultant Hobsbawm (The Simplicity Principle) delivers a rose-colored look at how the rise of remote work during the Covid-19 pandemic has provided the opportunity for a “wholesale realignment of priorities.” Contending that the “relentless rise of automation and new technologies” had led to “stagnant productivity and endemic stress” among office workers, Hobsbawm envisions a world in which a hybrid home/office model is the new normal. She contends that corporate offices will need to become more geared to networking and “learning, training, and development,” rather than impressing clients and encouraging “presenteeism,” and imagines that cities, in order to stem the tide of workers fleeing to the suburbs, will redesign their central business districts to be “much more mixed-use, residential, artisanal, and flexible in use of space.” Elsewhere, she calls on businesses to accept the idea “that it’s OK to work less, and to be more productive” and encourages HR departments to more clearly distinguish between their recruitment, training, conflict resolution, and firing functions. Though Hobsbawm’s prescriptions are high on optimism and short on specifics, her message that “work can and should be not only a source of raw income but also a purposeful life itself” is inspiring. CEOs, managers, and employees will take heart in this encouraging thought experiment. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

A tour de force of insight, clarity and . . . common sense.”—Adrian Wooldridge, global business columnist, Bloomberg

“Where else are you going to find such enlightening insights into the future of work?”—James Bell, VP, Pew Research Center

“A masterful analysis of the reinvention of work in a post-office world.”—Andrew Keen, author of How to Fix the Future

“Julia Hobsbawm is brilliant at seeing tomorrow’s ideas today.”—Joy Lo Dico, columnist, Financial Times

“Even-handed and sensible appraisal of the future of work. . . A priceless injection of nuanced thinking and practical suggestions.”—Rory Sutherland, vice chairman, Ogilvy UK

“The Nowhere Office brilliantly captures the zeitgeist issue of our times—how and where we work.”—Ayesha Hazarika, journalist and broadcaster, Times Radio

“Every manager or leader who is wondering what to do next about their offices and people needs to read The Nowhere Office.”—Ben Page, Global CEO, ISPOS

“We need big bold thinkers like Julia Hobsbawm right now more than ever.”—Polly Mackenzie, chief executive, Demos

“The pandemic has changed the way we work. Julia Hobsbawm’s The Nowhere Office makes the case for embracing the opportunities this brings.”—Financial Times, “The books to read in 2022”

“An intriguing consideration of this bewildering “liminal in-between time in the history of work.”—Kirkus

“[A] concise and highly readable assessment of where we are now, how we got here and where we might go.”—Forbes

“Hobsbawm explores the future of both how — and where — we will work. It is in part a cast back over long-term trends that have shaped our working lives, part a treatise on the future of work and part practical handbook…While the book is clear-eyed about current and future challenges, the tone is optimistic…This enthusiasm will refresh anyone grappling with ‘the new normal.’”—Financial Times

“Hobsbawm envisions a world in which a hybrid home/office model is the new normal…her message that ‘work can and should be not only a source of raw income but also a purposeful life itself’ is inspiring. CEOs, managers, and employees will take heart in this encouraging thought experiment.”—Publishers Weekly

“Julia Hobsbawm, a British entrepreneur and public speaker on social health, examines why we need to rethink the necessity of being in the office and both the benefits and pitfalls of encouraging a work-from-home culture.”—Fortune

“As higher education shifts to the new normal of endemic Covid, we must rethink the campus. The Nowhere Office is an excellent book to catalyze a conversation about the hybrid campus.”—Inside Higher Ed

From the Publisher

2022-01-22
An entrepreneur and business consultant shows how the world of work is being remade—and so rapidly that in some respects it’s unrecognizable.

Even before the pandemic, Hobsbawm observes, transformational shifts were occurring in three areas that had implications for intellectual and office work: politics, “specifically the issues of inequality and sustainability”; society, with the largest cohort of workers being Generation Z but mingling generations on either side; and technology, with a shift to what’s called the metaverse, “where virtual reality becomes far more real in our lives than we ever thought possible.” The pandemic accelerated the recognition that people didn’t need to work in an office on a regular schedule, and that in turn sped up the “increasing backlash against work”—work, that is, that did not have a clear purpose and wasn’t life-enhancing in some way. As Hobsbawm observes, such work is generally simple, at least in its conception: We’re going to fix this problem; we’re going to build this. Yet offices have grown complex, mostly due to the proliferation of complexity-making middle managers who aren’t needed in a world of remote work, wherein “much management energy will need to go into fresh challenges: scheduling hybrid working, reframing the measuring of performance.” In this matter, writes the author, corporations must reframe both their approaches to human resources, returning the “human” to the equation, and their relationships with their employee: “The onus should be less on the employee having their performance evaluated and more about the organization being asked: how are we performing for you?” There may be institutional resistance to such changes, but, Hobsbawm warns, the genie is out of the bottle. Those Gen Z and millennial workers simply aren’t going to show up to places that treat them like cogs in an outdated machine.

An intriguing consideration of this bewildering “liminal in-between time in the history of work.

Kirkus Reviews

British social health writer Julie Hobsbawm narrates this important audiobook with comfortable pacing that makes her insights and suggestions easy to digest. She says work-from-home paradigms and digital communication are part of the new flexibility people are enjoying at work. Work structures have been loosening for decades, allowing people to feel more creative, independent, and respected. Post-pandemic, the author predicts, we will arrive at an equilibrium between the remote working that technology enables and the benefits of working under one roof. The new paradigms will prioritize deeper relationships and growth opportunities—all of which will humanize work and help production. These thoughtful perspectives and Hobsbawm’s gentle speaking voice give this audio credibility that will promote hope in the midst of these unprecedented cultural changes. T.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2022 - AudioFile

British social health writer Julie Hobsbawm narrates this important audiobook with comfortable pacing that makes her insights and suggestions easy to digest. She says work-from-home paradigms and digital communication are part of the new flexibility people are enjoying at work. Work structures have been loosening for decades, allowing people to feel more creative, independent, and respected. Post-pandemic, the author predicts, we will arrive at an equilibrium between the remote working that technology enables and the benefits of working under one roof. The new paradigms will prioritize deeper relationships and growth opportunities—all of which will humanize work and help production. These thoughtful perspectives and Hobsbawm’s gentle speaking voice give this audio credibility that will promote hope in the midst of these unprecedented cultural changes. T.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2022 - AudioFile