Workquake: Embracing the Aftershocks of COVID-19 to Create a Better Model of Working

The future has never been more uncertain for both employers and employees.

They face the same profoundly unsettling dilemma: neither knows what skills they need to develop for the future. Futurists and the media tell us that over 50 percent of jobs today will soon be replaced by automation and AI.

Turnover is higher than it has ever been. The percentage of the workforce that is actively disengaged has never been higher. The shelf lives of certain skills are diminishing rapidly. Longstanding industries and industry leaders are being disrupted. These staggering changes are challenging our concepts of what a career really looks like today and how we should build organizations going forward.

This is the workquake.

It’s time we change the conversation. It’s time to talk about how being human has never been more critical and how we have more agency in applying our talents than at any other time in history. We need to have more real and honest conversations about how to build a better model of the future of work, one in which both employers and employees feel safe and energized.

COVID-19 has presented us the ideal opportunity to tackle this important challenge. Workquake is an attempt to articulate a compelling vision for the future of work through a number of stories, case studies, and author Steve Cadigan’s own experiences.

An expert in the future of work, Steve Cadigan is considered a corporate culture guru, bringing winning insights from over thirty years of HR experience with industry titans like Google, Salesforce, The Royal Bank of Scotland, McKinsey, and the BBC, as well as venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia. Cadigan’s inspirational keynotes, seminars, and workshops at global conferences and major universities have garnered rave reviews.

Cadigan is renowned for leading LinkedIn’s first talent push and architecting its world-famous culture, now considered the gold-standard. Throughout his twenty-five-year career, he has led teams, cultures, and organizations that have been hailed as “world-class” performers by the Wall Street Journal, Fortune magazine, and more.

Steve graduated from Wesleyan University with a bachelor’s in history and received a master’s degree in HR and organizational development from the University of San Francisco. He lives in California with his family.