I recently shared an image on LinkedIn on the evolution of the employee, and it went bonkers; like it went completely viral. It became the most popular thing that I have ever shared on LinkedIn. It's fascinating because this is something I wrote about in 2014 and the whole concept was looking at how employees are changing and how the idea of employees is changing. And even though I wrote about it in 2014, it was manifesting slower--than Covid hit, and suddenly, this became a reality. It’s important to go through this evolution so that you can understand what you need to do as a leader, what you need to do as an organization, or even what you need to be doing and thinking about it as an individual contributor. In the past, employees were working nine to five and we’ve had an evolution towards working anytime. The idea of working nine to five and setting 32 or 40 hours a week is a concept that is probably almost 100 years old. And why are the hours after five o'clock designated for personal time? I think technology has been the great equalizer here. Because technology allows us to stay connected to work anytime, anywhere, on any device. So, we're moving away from this concept of work-life balance to work-life integration. The whole concept here is that work-life integration is about you, as an employee, deciding how you should be working, what makes the most sense for you. If you want to work nine to five, and that's how you choose to spend your time, hey, more power to you. So, it's my choice. It's my freedom. It's my flexibility. This is what work-life integration is all about. The challenge is you need to set boundaries, working anytime efficiently. But it would help if you also were more accountable and responsible for shutting off. This means having self-awareness and paying attention to if you're getting burned out. --------------------------- There are 6 trends that are transforming leadership forever do you know what they are and are you ready for them? Download the PDF to learn what these 6 trends are and what you should be doing about each one of them. These are crucial for your leadership and career development in the future of work! --------------------------- The next one that goes very much in parallel with this is this concept of the past. The past is working in the corporate office and the future is working anywhere. But for organizations that want more, they want to grow, they want to scale, they want to identify complex problems, they want to identify unique opportunities, they want to move beyond just getting stuff done. In that kind of environment, there is still a lot of room for improvement. We're not just talking about productivity; we're not just talking about getting things done. We're talking about going beyond that. Tackling complex challenges, identifying new opportunities, creating trust, and psychological safety, being influential leaders, if we want to take it one step further. And you know what, there is still very much a place for in-person work. I do believe that, and guess what? All the executives that I've been interviewing think that now that role for in-person work doesn't mean that you're going to be in an office nine to five. It might mean you show up for a couple of hours a day or it might mean you show up once or twice a week--it might mean any number of things. That's what workplace flexibility is all about.  Work is no longer a place that you go to work, it is something that you carry with you; You can pretty much get anything done on your smartphone or on a laptop that you can take with you. So, technology is pushing this forward. So that's another significant evolution that we're seeing. The third way is moving away from using company equipment towards using the device. We're very much moving towards a world where people are using their own devices to get work done. And not only their own devices, but they're finding their software. Suppose your organization offers software that empl