Future of Work
Leaders tell me collaboration is suffering, culture is fraying, productivity is harder to see. I understand the anxiety. But I believe this fundamentally misdiagnoses the problem. The issue is not where people work. It’s how work itself is designed, measured, and led. Forcing people back into offices is not a return to stability; it is a retreat to familiarity. And familiarity is not the same as effectiveness. For more than a decade, my business partner, Alex Hirst, and I have been exploring a different approach, one we named ‘workstyle’: the freedom for individuals to personalise their work around their unique needs. We didn’t arrive at this idea theoretically. We arrived there through burnout, parenthood, two cancer diagnoses, caring responsibilities, and running a business by engaging people in a completely new way. We have supported thousands of individuals to define and
respect their own workstyles, and gathered longitudinal research into the impact of autonomy on wellbeing and productivity. As a result, we were named as one of HR Magazine’s five most influential HR Thinkers 2025 and among the most progressive organisations in the world by Thinkers50 and the Haier Model Institute. Yet we remain frustrated because so many organisations are moving in the wrong direction. What we have learned is simple, but uncomfortable for many leaders: autonomy, not attendance, is the lever that drives sustainable performance and competitive advantage in the digital age. Hybrid working is often presented as a sensible compromise between the old world of offices and the new reality of remote work. In practice, it usually adheres to the assumption that work happens at set times, in synchronous ways. The only change is that sometimes this happens at home
rather than in an office. Hybrid working, flexible working, and the 4-day-workweek do not challenge the deeper question: why do we still measure work through time and location? Workstyle is different. It offers a practical framework to shift the focus from hours to outcomes, from control to clarity, and from compliance to trust. This improves results by strengthening wellbeing, removing the structural barriers that disadvantage many groups, and allowing everyone to be at their personal productive best. The evidence for autonomous working is robust. Randstad’s 2025 global survey identified work-life balance as the top criteria for attracting talent; Gallup found employees with greater schedule control are 2.7 times more likely to be highly engaged; and Stanford University found that self-chosen work arrangements can increase productivity by up to 22 per cent. Moving to autonomous working
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