Return-to-office mandates are just a blip; Setting your alarm before sunrise and standing shoulder-to-shoulder on a packed train, just to sit at a desk for eight hours, is going to be a relic of the past. And it’s going to be extinct much sooner than you probably expect.
According to Mark Dixon, CEO of IWG, the world’s largest workspace provider, commuting could be extinct within the next 15 years. Gen Alpha will be so used to pulling out their phones and clocking into work from anywhere convenient, that they’ll find the very idea of commuting into an office as ancient as riding a horse to work, or writing by candlelight before electricity existed.
“In the future, you’re going to explain to your kids that you used to commute,” Dixon explained to Fortune, while adding they’ll think it’s “mad stuff” that bosses once asked their workers to “travel 100 miles to sit down and use a computer.”
“They’ll say, why did you do that? Because they won’t understand that people traveled long distances to use a piece of equipment somewhere else. It’s going to change a lot—the workplace of the future is everywhere. And it’ll be very productive,” he added.
“It’ll be just normal to go on your phone, and say where’s the nearest place to work and you go there and work.”
The CEO added that most while-collar work is already online and “in the cloud,” so the very idea that your workspace is physical is outdated. And the kids agree.
Research from IWG and global engineering consultancy Arup has revealed that long daily commutes could be extinct by 2040.
Currently, the average New Yorker spends around 53 minutes on the train to get to the office, with Londoners experiencing a similar trek. But looking ahead, just a quarter of Gen Alpha say they’ll spend more than 30 minutes traveling to work. The majority think even that’s too long, and expect to have the flexibility to work closer to where they live—if not, at home.
A staggering 80% of Gen Alpha, the oldest of whom are 16 years old, believe flexible working will be the norm by 2040.
As boomer and Gen X bosses retire, working from home will make a major comeback
Dixon’s not the first to suggest that the pandemic era of working from home is expected to make a roaring comeback in the next decade or two.
A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that Gen Z and millennial bosses are far more likely to let staff work remotely than their older counterparts.
The data, which analysed 8,000 U.S. workers, showed a clear pattern: as CEOs get younger, the number of days they demand their staff work from an office decreases—with those working for a 20-something-year-old chief clocking in from home the most.
And it’s only a matter of time before they take over and bring their affinity for flexibility with them. The researchers concluded that as older leaders retire, the days of commuting five days a week are likely to fade with them.
Bosses clinging to the office aren’t just outdated—they’re not serious about AI
Interestingly, the National Bureau of Economic Research also found that leaders who embrace remote work are also more likely to adopt new technologies and software-driven approaches to running their teams.
Dixon similarly pointed out that firms that prioritize physical presence over remote, AI-driven work will fall behind.
“Forget about where people are working. Most companies will go by the wayside if they don’t embrace AI,” he told Fortune. “If you look at winners and losers, the winners are the ones that embrace technology—the whole of the technology, which is flexible work, flexible location, and using technology to get more out of your people.”
Brian O’Kelley, the tech founder who sold AppNexus to AT&T for $1.6 billion in 2018 before founding Scope3, echoed that leaders who cling to the old ways of working aren’t serious about embracing AI.
After all, remote firms like his have the top pick of top global talent and can operate around the clock.
“The best companies are going to actually dump their offices to learn to work with non-bodied employees,” O’Kelley told Fortune. “Anybody who has a back-to-office culture is actually hurting themselves.”
