A growing number of firms are offering services and products based on the trend towards work/life integration. This is the shift towards work, home and life becoming increasingly blended.
An interesting example comes from the popular dating site Bumble (tagline: Find Your Honey). They are opening a pop-up community center in New York not surprisingly called The Hive.
It's part of Bumble's plan to expand beyond dating and help users in their professional lives.
As the Bumble chart below shows, the planned activities at The Hive blend professional and social events.
This trend towards work/life integration is very apparent in our coworking research.
This shows that while coworking spaces are workspaces, they are also places where members socialize together.
In fact, our findings indicate that most coworking members consider the social side of coworking to be at least as important as the work side.
The blending of work and life is leading to growing numbers of services, places and activities that also blend work and life.
We see this shift in much of work:
- digital nomads are blending work and life in their quest to become "temporary locals".
- "Bleisure" travel" and "bizcations" have become more popular as people combine work and pleasure travel.
- We consistently hear about work/life flexibility and integration as a reason people choose to be self-employed and small business owners.
- Corporations are exploring how to promote employee "wholeness", another term for work/life integration
None of this is a new.
New York University sociologist Dalton Conley coined the term "weisure world" about a decade ago to describe this shift.
According to Conley, activities and social spaces are becoming work-play ambiguous and work and personal time are blurring together.
The 2013 Harvard Business Review article Work-Life Balance Isn't the Point nicely covers this shift. Key quote:
... work and personal life should be allies and that participation in multiple roles, such as parent, partner, friend, employee, can actually enhance physical and psychological well-being — especially when all of the roles are high quality and managed together.
The shift towards work/life integration shows no signs of slowing down.
Expect to see more products and services designed for this market.
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