Who’s heard of Faith Popcorn. I came across her book Clicking in the 90s. She had identified a series of trends that would emerge in the coming decade.

She got many of the trends right – it’ really is worth looking up the book if you’ve never read it.

So we are now heading into 2021, 2020 will be behind us. For all its dramas 2020 has challenged the whole working world. With many of the things we all took for granted being challenged.

I wonder what Faith Popcorn is suggesting will be trending in the 2020s I need to look it up.

Surely she must have predicted some of the trends that Covid has shone a light on. I wonder if her trends for the 2020s included the 10 that I’m starting to see be discussed the most, in terms of ways of working?

1. Work from anywhere will clearly take off. A number of my team have already moved away from the office, this is a trend that surly will continue.

2. The virtual team room will replace inboxes, shared drives and individual “to do” lists. I currently have emails, team chats and files scattered across the various comms channels, consolidation into virtual team rooms will make far much more sense.

3. Working “on camera” will be the norm. It’s not as easy to “sense” “the feeling” of the room online but being on camera has to be a step in the right direction.

4. The online experience will self generate actions and track “to do” lists. Being online so much more of the discussion can be automatically captured with actions being dynamically taken and shared at the end of a meeting and then even tracked post meeting.

5. Unstructured data searches and analysis will identify new insights and patterns previously going undiscovered. The processing power of unstructured data and voice analytics is getting increasingly sophisticated. If a AI bot can synthesise information quickly and accurately based on a number of open questions then we could be waving good bye to the online form.

6. Working hours for some roles will become irrelevant it’s what gets done rather than how many hours worked. Some people will continue to work 9-5 it suits their life style others will work early and finish early and others will work and make sure life happens throughout the day.

7. A new breed of employment type will emerge something like a “flexible” contract all the perks of the permanent role but with ultimate flexibility. This could extend to people being able to work across multiple contracts, it will be different to being self employed but being able to be flexible will open up the opportunity to maybe work for more than one company.

8. The company car will be handed back and the home office will emerge as a significant perk. Commute time and petrol pump expense will get replaced as people’s homes office environments will be key. Look out for more garden rooms with funky office set ups arriving very soon!

9. Forget your corporate airmiles time will be better spent “online” rather than “in the air”. This will change the make up of the airline industry and could make going abroad on holiday a bit more expensive than it is today – but the corporate travel perks could be a thing of the past.

10. You’ll work from where you live rather than up sticks and live where you work. For many realising that there is more to life than work could come as a surprise. But for those that embrace life as well as work the opportunity to experience the community where you live more than the community where you work could open up more opportunities.

None of these trends should be a surprise to anyone … the seeds have been planted and even watered during the bizarre year of 2020.

What trends do you see emerging in the way that we will work?