Employers have been spending roughly $25,000 on each employee every year after salary on an entire ecosystem of people, products, and services needed to support full-time employees all the way through to retirement (Pensions, H.R., IT, Educations, Real Estate, Payroll, Tax, Food, Drinks). But… Employers are doing less today and the ecosystem is slowly fading away. 40% of Americans no longer have a full-time contract with benefits. 53% of employees bring their own devices to work. Employers have cut training budgets by 25% in recent years. 30% of Americans aren’t working in their employer’s offices on any given day, which means they’re paying for their own space, food, drinks, electricity, etc. Today, people have to do a lot more themselves. They have to do everything IT used to do for them. They have to calculate and pay their own taxes. They have to invest for retirement themselves. And, they have to buy their own coffee and find a place to work each day. People can’t do all this by themselves. They’re turning to others for help but all the places they’re turning to were never designed to serve working life. Cafes were never designed to be workspaces. Electronic stores don’t do what IT departments do. A consumer market for professional services barely exists. And business banking is for businesses, not people. Coworking has taken a first step by renting people desks and chairs in shared office space, but it’s mostly just a desk and chair and not the complete ecosystem that employers used to provide. And it probably never will be, because you can’t sell everything from IT through to banking to a small group of the same regular customers sitting upstairs in offices that you have to pay to get into. You need a mass market. There’s a brand new consumer walking around with a lifetime of work-related spending in their pocket. The opportunity is not to redesign the office for thousands of people; it’s to redesign working life for millions.
There’s a brand new consumer walking around with a lifetime of work-related spending in their pocket. They need places to work, a computer, a pension, healthcare, someone to calculate and pay their taxes, food and drink and everything else employers used to provide on their behalf. It’s not just a few freelancers; everyone who works is having to do more and more themselves (30% of American workers are not working in employers’ offices on any given day; 40% don’t work a contract with benefits; 50% of global workers bring their own devices to work). But a marketplace has yet to emerge that does everything that employers have been doing for them: there’s no IT department, payroll company or HR outside the office; people don’t have access to the same IFAs, accountants and lawyers; and while there are many new places to work, nobody’s really thought about what working life could look like beyond offices now that people are choosing and paying for it themselves. work will create an entirely new marketplace of products & services that fills the hole that employers are leaving behind. Our mission is not to recreate the same quality of working life that employers have been providing for nearly a century now; our mission is to create a better quality of working life now that the individual is choosing and paying for everything themselves.
To find out more about the future of work, read our business plan or executive summary. This is a big project and we're going to need a lot of help. If you're interested in the future of work and would like to get involved or invest, help out or join our team or simply give us advice, please get in touch. Ethan Segal. +33 6 95 33 75 67. Ethan's email address. . Ethan's LinkedIn Profile. .Ethan's Website. Ethan has been a founder of several advertising agencies. These agencies became multi-million dollar businesses with 50+ staff handling clients like British Airways, The BBC and Orange. One was bought by M and C Saatchi; another is now part of TBWA. All of them became among the top ten most heavily awarded in their field. Ethan was Strategy Director, but having started these agencies with no clients, revenue or staff, he was used to doing just about everything from leading pitches and client accounts to writing ads. Jody Pou. +33 6 72 13 40 95. Jody's email address. . Jody's LinkedIn Profile. .Jody's Website. Jody has built her own independent creative brand in diverse artistic fields. She created the start-up netlabel, shskh.com, for which she commissioned pieces and directed recording sessions in NYC studios (Avatar and Clinton). Her books have been published by the French National Book Center. She has won two first prizes from the Paris Conservatory and has sung as a soloist at the Paris Opera. She’s also a visual artist selling her work on the Saatchi Gallery online. Jody brings retail and real estate experience to the team too - she’s Vice President of her family’s retail property corporation. She brings knowledge in everything from tenant negotiations to city council ordinances. Alex Ledsom. +33 6 52 36 77 07. Alex's email address. . Alex's LinkedIn Profile. .Alex's Website. Alex has over twenty years experience in Project Management and Operations both in consultancy firms and large multinational blue chip organizations (J.P.Morgan Private Bank, International Herald Tribune, the UK Government). She has run multiple projects and teams of different sizes, mentoring staff and managing client expectations. She has sat on Management Boards, helping to reduce overheads and increase productivity, as well as being responsible for business forecasting, revenue projections and company strategy. Work's Twitter Page Work's LinedIn Page Work's Angel.co Page