JJ Caffey believes that work is fundamentally broken. People are spending more of their waking hours working than ever before, many of them spent alone and behind a screen. According to JJ, the way the average person works is no longer productive, and, in fact, our work habits are leaving many of us more burnt out and lonely than ever before. 

When it comes to millennials and Gen Z, who represent the future workforce, it’s more important than ever before to find a better way to bring productivity to our time on the clock. JJ thinks she has a way to do that. 

JJ is the founder of Order In, a remote-productivity membership club providing accountability, community, and structure to young remote workers, and an elite network of leaders imagining "the future of work" for remote & distributed teams.

On this episode of Future of Tech, JJ breaks down exactly what is wrong with work as we know it, and she prescribes some solutions that could make a world of difference. For example, JJ believes that A.I. and automation can and should be utilized more to help eliminate tasks from our day-to-day responsibilities and give us more time to do deep work and collaborate in ways that only humans can. Additionally, JJ explains that as Gen Z starts to enter the workforce, companies need to focus on what is important to them and implement policies and offer opportunities that will make that generation eager to work and effective when they do. 

What are those policies? How should companies be evaluating employees who have moved to working from home? And how are we going to see A.I. enter our work lives more? Find out on this episode. Enjoy!

Main Takeaways:

• How Do You Feel?: The future of work is constantly changing, but recent trends indicate that more people than ever before will be working from home some or all of the time. There are positives and negatives to this shift, and it is important to understand that some of the negatives include an impact on how people feel mentally. Addressing feelings of isolation and loneliness should be areas of focus for all businesses, and there are technological tools available now and on the way that will offer support.   

• Work is Broken: According to numerous studies, in the U.S. the workday is getting longer and more and more people are doing work outside of normal working hours. However, even if a person works for nine hours a day, they are actually only productive for a fraction of that time. There needs to be a revolution in the way we work that combines technology, automation, and productivity tools to help future generations create the most efficient and productive organizations possible. With A.I. and automation, we could shorten the work day by automating many of our tasks so that we can focus our energy into being productive in high-touch areas that require human skills and interactions.

• Focusing on Everything From A to Gen Z: As the next generation begins to enter the workforce, more data about what they care about is being gathered. Companies that want to get the most out of Gez Z need to focus on committing to a mission, maintaining a good company culture, and implementing ethical policies from a human and environmental standpoint.

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