WHEN employees work may be more important than WHERE

Your chronotype, or specific circadian rhythms, define your individual levels of alertness, activity, concentration, creativity, decision making and more. (Image: David Palmer/ALM)

The world of work is changing in fundamentally different ways since the COVID19 pandemic was officially declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March of 2020. The pandemic has accelerated changes already taking place and catalyzed new changes. Many of these changes are captured under the umbrella of the “future of work.”

Benefit professionals working in their own firms or embedded in other organizations are at the forefront of many of theses changes, such as expanding health networks for an ever-increasing remote workforce who moved since the pandemic but still work at the same organization. This mobile, remote workforce are also being induced by small cities even offering them cash to relocate to these small cities now called “Zoom towns” in a Wall Street Journal article, “How Remote Work is Reshaping America’s Urban Geography.” To date, 5 million workers have moved with a forecast of another 19 million given the flexibility of remote work, according to an article appearing in Business Insider.