Leveraging Disruption For Future Growth: Themes from the Work Without Limits Summit

Our relationship with work has changed permanently. Remote work, freelancing, digital transformation, flexible hybrid teams—once, these were seen as strategies for professionals and companies on the edge. Now, they’re a day-to-day reality for people around the world and businesses of all sizes are rethinking how to grow and compete.

To help you get and stay ahead of these changes, Upwork recently hosted the fifth annual Work Without Limits (WWL), a one-day summit that featured business leaders, influencers, and top freelancers with experience and insights to share about navigating the new work marketplace.

“Remote work has garnered a lot of the spotlight but I believe the bigger and more meaningful change for work is actually still ahead of us,” said Hayden Brown, CEO of Upwork, in her opening remarks.

“Embracing the fact that a lot of our work can be done collaborating remotely widens the aperture of who we work with. This is actually a much more powerful work transformation.”

—Hayden Brown, CEO of Upwork

‍

How can you use that transformation to your advantage? Here’s a look at some of the highlights, and watch the full sessions here.

There is no right way to work

‍

“The right time, the right platform, the right way of working—it doesn't have to be as prescribed as it used to be. [Instead] it’s about asking: What does working without limits mean to you?”

—Fran Murphy, VP of Community & Talent Success at Upwork

‍

Remote work has been on the rise for years but COVID-19 gave it a hard shove, which created an opportunity to reassess assumptions about how work gets done.

In the pandemic’s wake, the growing wave of independent workers is emerging as a win-win:

• 79% of Upwork clients who increased their freelancer hiring last year said the increase was permanent
• 60% of the 20 million people who gave freelancing a try in 2020 said you couldn't pay them enough to take a full-time job
• 10 million Americans still have an eye on freelancing
  

The reality, Brown said, is that the traditional work construct was never well balanced—particularly for people such as working parents, people with disabilities, family caregivers, and those whose roots are outside of major urban centers.

Now, she explained, millions of workers are deciding to make a different choice: “[They’re] realizing they want to work differently going forward, in ways that are more on their terms and in accordance with their own values for how they want to spend their time, inside and outside of work.”

That’s giving businesses unprecedented access to talent that can contribute to their most important work in a way that’s timely, budget friendly, and adaptable.

Diverse hybrid teams create new opportunities for brands

At the start of the pandemic, Adrienne Young, creative lead for Amway’s global marketing team, was tasked with a new campaign that would speak to an audience spread across more than 100 countries and territories.

With multiple COVID-related limitations, that meant rethinking how she approached productions and built creative teams.

“We needed true representation across the gamut. Upwork was a great solution because we knew we could tap into talent globally and really build a hybrid team of people across the world.”

—Adrienne Young, Lead Art Director, Amway

‍

The creative team at Budweiser agrees that tapping into a more global pool of talent can lead to incredible results (like the #RaiseABud campaign launched for Labor Day).

“We never want to have a one-trick pony or get too siloed into our way of working,” said Jake Vizek, Senior Brand Director, Innovation & Design at Budweiser. “And we know that, a lot of times, freelancers are the best in the business."

Vizek’s colleague, Brand Associate Justin Alvis, agreed that independent professionals—particularly those with the experience to pitch fresh ideas and defend their work—can be a tremendous asset.

“As a brand, we may think we know everything and we may think we know what's best, but understanding and listening to that different perspective is so important,” he said.

The real question for business isn’t location, it’s communication

‍

“We need to figure out not necessarily how much we have to be on-site versus remote, but rather: When do we need to be synchronous in our communication? And when do we need to be asynchronous?”

—Adam Grant, Organizational Psychologist

‍

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant told WWL that workplace disruption has given businesses a unique chance to make work better, attract and retain talent, and get the most from the potential of remote work.

However, he wonders how many organizations will miss the opportunity.

“We live in a rapidly changing dynamic world where we have to be as quick to rethink as we were to think in the first place,” said the author of “Think Again”.

COVID-19 has often challenged and even obliterated work-life boundaries. Grant sees a lesson to be learned from this natural experiment, but it isn’t the superiority of office life. Instead, he thinks doing great work is a question of empowerment and structure.

“We need to radically rethink the boundaries that we allow people to set,” he said. “We need to give people focused time to allow them to concentrate, to find flow, to get into that zone of total absorption or engagement.”

Adaptability as a way to futureproof your business

Like Grant, Tsedal Neeley feels that it’s time to embrace change and adapt. “COVID-19 accelerated the shifts and changes in ways that I've never imagined. But this...has been underway for a very long time.”

Neeley is the Naylor Fitzhugh professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and an expert on remote work. She feels any rigid ways of thinking about work that linger will be fleeting: “Work has changed, service has changed, consumption has changed.”

And technology continues to change. “Design [your business model] around people and technology—those are the two things that are very important,” Neeley said.

“We cannot use the lens that we had during the industrial revolution to imagine the future of work. It's a different world,” she said. “People, technology, and data will continue to drive how work gets done, and it's not going to be butts-in-seats and nine-to-five.”

Ready to learn more?

Get access to recorded sessions that feature inspiring speakers such as:

• Kristen Kish, chef, author, and TV personality
• Executives from companies such as Budweiser, PGA of America, Amway, and Automattic
• Independent professionals from around the world
  

Watch the sessions from Work Without Limits now.