By Soller Shirley
The world of work concerns my brain today. I have been observing as friends, changing jobs in 2025, are negotiating on terms I would never have thought would happen. In my working life employment experiences have been in the corporate world, family-owned businesses and in my own company. All of them required attendance at an office and (apart from my own business) a distinction between employed, and my own time.
As the mobile phone came into the world, lines got blurred with many employers not respecting personal space and time. The assumption from some employers that you would take work home because you were accessible, and never get paid any extra, was a big feature of that world.
In 2025 the conditions my friend will accept are beyond my imagining. This new world has emerged from the experiences many had of working from home in the Covid days. Some companies have incorporated this into best practice and a hybrid 3 days in the office and 2 days home based is common. Some companies are now insisting that 5 days in the office is the only employment contract they will offer.
Working life consisting of a daily commute, attendance at physical meetings, travelling across the globe, when necessary, is considered unacceptable. Time is proved to be more valuable and productive if concentration on the job in hand is allowed.
My negotiating friend is about to sign a contract which allows her to set her own schedule and work from wherever she is. All this comes with a great salary and powered by the contact opportunities of the internet.
Hospitality, Healthcare, Farming, Police and Armed Forces, are amongst the many careers which would be difficult to administer remotely. The key to remote possibilities starts and end with control. If you are given work to be completed by a certain date, does it matter if you complete it between 9 and 5? The choice is yours as the employee.
It is only the boldest companies who go down this route. To give up control of the minutiae of an employee’s life needs a trusting mindset which is rare.
Industrial revolution, technical revolution, working from a beach revolution…
The world moves on and in Mallorca we meet more and more people who are living this new working life.
