It’s almost impossible to think about the tech industry without also thinking about careers. Media fervour surrounding the glittering world of tech is high, and global fascination with what it must be like to work with the tech giants is nearly overwhelming.
Dropbox’s global head of customer experience, Adrienne Gormley, took to the stage at Inspirefest 2016 to talk about the future of work, and how the workplace is set to change and develop in the coming years.
“We all want to work… somewhere that allows us to realise our potential, allows us to maximise our skills, allows us to be productive, be creative and also be happy,” said Gormley, before going on to list some of the ways that could be made a reality.
For Gormley and the team at Dropbox, a major trend will be flexible working. According to an Ipsos MORI survey* commissioned by the tech giant, flexible working is one of the main concerns of today’s employees.
This leads into the issue of collaborative working. Aside from being the backbone of external interactions, useful collaboration tools are of major benefit to office-based workers and employees working from home.
“What we really wanted to look at in this survey was looking at working flexibly and collaboration, and what happens when you combine those trends,” said Gormley. “And what we found is that combining those trends makes people happy at work and allows them to be able to be more creative.”
Most important, said Gormley, is a need to make it easier for people to work, allowing employees to bring their own devices, use platforms that they use in their day-to-day life for work, and they also want to be surrounded by diverse teams.
The bulk of the work, then, when it comes to creating happy, creative workplaces, falls on the organisations themselves.
“The right organisations will build the best future work environments because of their attitudes, because they will listen to the people in their organisations, and because they understand that the way we work today is changing dramatically,” concluded Gormley.
Inspirefest is Silicon Republic’s international event connecting sci-tech professionals passionate about the future of STEM.
*The full survey results can be found here.
