SPOTLIGHT: Embracing the Nowhere Office, With Julia Hobsbawm

The Gartner Talent Angle

The hybrid world has upended traditional norms around the role of the office. Author Julia Hobsbawm joins the Talent Angle to discuss how talent management leaders can apply the insights from her book, “The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future,” to take advantage of the emerging opportunities created by hybrid ways of working. Hobsbawm argues we are in a new era of work — marked by unclear boundaries and changing attitudes — and she shares advice on what organizations should do as they continue to shape the role of the office in this new era. She looks to the past at how earlier innovations in knowledge work changed offices and to the future at how physical spaces will support employees in sustained performance. Julia Hobsbawm is an award-winning business author and futurist of work who writes the “Working Assumptions” column for Bloomberg’s Work Shift. The author of the acclaimed book “The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future,” she was a founder of the U.S.-led Workforce Institute, was chair of the inaugural U.K. Demos Workshift Commission, and now co-hosts the popular podcast, “The Nowhere Office.” Julia is the author of six books, including the award-winning “The Simplicity Principle,” and she was awarded an OBE in the late Queen Elizabeth II’s Birthday Honours List in 2015 for services to business. She regularly consults for and speaks to corporations, governments and changemakers around the world. Jessica Knight is a vice president of research in the Gartner HR practice. She leads research teams to identify best practices and new opportunities for addressing HR executives’ most urgent challenges. Her areas of focus include employee experience, organizational culture, change management and the future of work.