New businesses are increasingly likely to start remote
ALSO: will the whim of a new CEO upend your life?
New businesses are increasingly likely to start remote
Remote working has spawned a surge in the number of businesses being created - and interestingly most new businesses are starting as remote-first operations.
Why remote first? It's cheaper and it's much more nimble. Both reasons that might make slower moving bureaucracies have pause for thought about their own approach to flexibility. Are we using the office because of corporate disfunction?
Firstly since the pandemic we've seen a surge in new business formation.
This trend has been observed in the US and the UK. New business founders are likely to cite preferring to work from home because of the cost saving involved.
In data from Nick Bloom at Stanford he compared the amount of capital that start-ups required and compared it to their working practices. Almost 60% of business owners who needed less than $15,000 to acquire or start their business work fully remotely.
We might expect this. Small businesses don't want to spend scarce capital on desk space. But interestingly almost half of the businesses who raised more than $500k and above chose to be remote first.
If young start-ups of all sizes are seeing remote working as the way to move fast, then we need to ask if we're showing our age by rejecting these innovations.
Mental health inflation
‘The phrase mental health can mean everything from extreme delusional psychosis to not having a fun day at your office job’ said comedian Ed Night in a social media post a few weeks ago, and it’s a theme that The Economist took up this week asking if we 'over medicalising' mental health?
In the UK 57% of university students claim to suffer from a mental-health issue.
Three-quarters of parents with school-age children sought help or advice over their child’s mental health in 2021-22.
We increasingly describe grief and stress as mental illness.
In the five year 2022 there was a 22% increase in the overall mental-health workforce in UK. But patient referrals rose at 44%, twice that rate.
Fascinating Economist piece that suggests we need to avoid trying to tag such a vast array of situations with a catch-all label.
The way the CEO whim blows
Nationwide Building Society demanding a 'return to the office' will get the headlines, in truth their 2-day-a-week office policy is still flexible compared to many organisations.
Their CEO Debbie Crosbie had form to suggest that this was coming. On International Women's Day she wrote that women should be in the office if they want their career to progress. This was in a company that had gone totally remote.
The issue isn’t a firm having a two-day-a-week policy, the issue is that companies (who in this case milked plenty of PR from saying they were liberating employees from going to the office) have now made a decision which expects them to upend their lives to get back to the workplace.
Sold your house, moved your family and headed to Scotland? Great, you’ve got four months to reorganise your life.
While it’s true that many organisations are still working out their policies it is seems unacceptable to ask workers to reorganise their lives because a new CEO wants to stamp their mark on the organisation.
Are you feeling lucky?
Nir Zicherman was on his way up to an interview. The lift doors opened to reveal a woman holding a tray of coffees.
"You must really love coffee," he said as they went up together. He says that one remark changed his life. The coffee carrier loved the quip, and turned out to be the hiring manager for the job. His whole career direction changed overnight.
What incredible luck, we might think.
But people who study luck say that there are characteristics of lucky people. They tend to be cheery, optimistic and open. Like the sort of people who make jokes in an elevator ride. This Wall Street Journal article on luck was a great read.
Time is the new money: Employees at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have requested a four-day week, an ask that has been immediately shut down by the government - but it’s a sign of what workers will be increasingly asking for
It used to be the case that a third of romantic relationships began at work but man, never bet against the internet:
Should part-time workers have to give up on ambition? I’m joined by Ellen Scott and Matthew Cook to talk this and the other themes of work from the last few weeks.