The Future of Work

The Future of Work
Covid has dramatically accelerated changes to the world of work. For startups, it has led to new use cases for existing solutions and prompted the creation of entirely new products. It has also changed the way that founders engage with colleagues, investors and clients.

We asked five FinTech founders to share their expectations around the future of work and highlight the opportunities and challenges that may lie ahead.

The Future of Work Podcast
Speaking on the Rise Founders Coffee Club podcast were Joyce Zhang Gray, CEO and founder of Alariss, and Trent Bigelow, CEO and founder of Abound. Their insights included:

• Be careful with the terms you use when talking about new ways of working. For example, ‘remote working’ can have negative connotations while ‘distributed working’ sounds more positive.
• Distributed working can reduce hierarchy and improve equality of opportunity. It also allows global access to talent. This globalisation reflects how innovation and funding is less focused on a few geographic hotspots such as Silicon Valley, New York and London.
• Attitudes towards career success and job satisfaction will change, meaning that businesses will need to work even harder to attract and retain the best people.
• Employees will want to work with intention, to be more fulfilled and see that they are developing and being upskilled. Company culture will therefore become increasingly important.
• Providing mentorship, learning, support, purpose and a positive culture can be an effective way for startups to compete for talent with larger organisations. 
• Employees will expect greater flexibility in how, when and where they work. This means that communication and trust between employer and staff will be more important than ever.
• Digital platforms will make independent working increasingly common, including as a way for employees to generate side income.
• FinTech solutions will help independent workers to look after their personal finances including taxes, pensions and insurance – replacing the role of the traditional HR departments.

The Future of Work Event
The Rise Refresh ‘Future of Work’ virtual event focused on using technology to run your business more effectively. Riccardo Conte, Founder of Virtus Flow, Ridaa Murad, CEO of Breakform Realty, and Leo Efstathiou, CEO of Finsight Group, discussed how companies are using automation and other emerging technologies to boost efficiency, support worker well-being, accelerate outputs and achieve new outcomes. Part of their conversation considered the impact of remote working:

“​​Covid accelerated digitisation but you can always bet on human nature and togetherness. As a manager I have a deep interest in keeping my team in the same place as often as possible because it builds culture, builds loyalty and allows us to communicate the tribal knowledge that is required to be successful”. Leo Efstathiou

“Remote working is really tricky for employees starting out in their career, the IP doesn't trickle down as fast as it should, there’s a massive loss in networking ability. The types of interactions that bond people are missing a lot because of the way we are working now.” Ridaa Murad

“If you have something that is flexible enough, you can have the best of both worlds, a person when they are needed but also you can work to digitise using technology and processes for both the new entry person and the manager level.” Riccardo Conte

In August, we’re turning our attention to crowdfunding. Industry experts, speaking at a Rise Refresh event and on the Founders Coffee Club podcast, will share advice and consider the benefits and challenges for entrepreneurs looking to use this increasingly important form of fundraising.

• To learn more, listen to the full Future of Work podcast on Apple Podcasts, or catch-up with Rise's previous podcasts online.

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