While the long-term economic effects of the COVID crisis remain unclear, one seemingly permanent change will be how and where we do most of our work.
Just this week, both Facebook and Shopify signalled that they are unlikely to ever go back to the previous arrangement of having almost all of their employees working from the office on a daily basis.
“As of today, Shopify is a digital by default company,” said Tobi Lutke, chief executive of the Ottawa-based e-commerce giant on a Twitter thread Thursday.
As of today, Shopify is a digital by default company. We will keep our offices closed until 2021 so that we can rework them for this new reality. And after that, most will permanently work remotely. Office centricity is over.
— Tobi Lutke 🌳🌲🛒🕹 (@tobi) May 21, 2020
“COVID is challenging us all to work together in new ways. We choose to jump in the driver’s seat, instead of being passengers to the changes ahead. We cannot go back to the way things were. This isn’t a choice; this is the future,” he said.
The Future of Work is also the focus of next week’s Ensemble, the first ever virtual event held entirely online (for obvious reasons). Speakers include digital innovator, author and journalist Amber Mac; Twitter Canada’s Laura Pearce; former ad agency creative turned data visualization software engineer with NASA Ben Feist; Rachel Kelly, founder of the co-working community Make Lemonade, and Conor Holler, experience and innovation consultant with PwC.
Click here for more information and tickets.
