Living & Working in the Cloud. The New Employment Model?

New Book: E-Ployment. Living & Working in the Cloud. A Personal Journey

What happened to books, music & films is about to happen to the service sector & employment within it. Freelancers have suddenly formed globally connected, & organised communities, enabled by the cloud & the new tools that are available. Today they can work here, there & everywhere. It’s happening & it’s happening fast.

As we know the world is changing rapidly. Things seem to be converging more and more as our personal and work lives become increasingly intermingled. Today, we think nothing of watching a fun, viral, video on YouTube at ten o’clock in the morning or answering business emails at ten at night. Work and life have become blurred. This is the picture for many of us who work in service industries.

Traditional employment is fast becoming a thing of the past. But where will it lead next? The aftershocks of the financial crisis are profoundly affecting the way governments and corporations, that have long been the main sources of traditional employment, are now viewing today’s workforce. If we have a safety net at all, it has holes that are growing larger all the time. We’re being encouraged to become more independent so that we don’t cost governments so much money.

Corporations are shedding us and outsourcing so that they can save money and earn more for their shareholders. In this scenario, we have little choice as to whether or not we become independent.

If we become successfully self-employed and work in the cloud, we are then faced with the challenge of finding the right work-life balance. But, we’re told, the consequences of failing to our get our work-life balance right can have disastrous effects on our well-being and our families. We’re also in danger of becoming isolated and lonely without an office to go to and a water cooler to gather around. So there are issues in entering this brave new world. But there is a third way of working, and that is ultimately what this book is about. I know it works because I’m one of its pioneers. I say this simply because it’s true. I don’t necessarily have any more insight than anyone else. However, along with a small group of other people, I arrived at this way of working out of necessity, and not because I wanted to build an empire. (Although I have to say that a modest global empire is quietly building itself.)

We’ve written this short book to give you our take on how employment in the creative services industry, and possibly the whole service industry itself, could be impacted by new business models such as ours. We call our model E-Ployment.

It paints a picture of the world beyond traditional employment, enabled by the cloud, digital tools and a hybrid of remote working. E-Ployees will increasingly form and work in highly connected “global communities”. They will often derive their income from multiple sources and will certainly be more focussed on achieving a healthy work–life balance. They are also people concerned with the environment and there are some big upsides there as well, as fewer people will need to face a daily commute. We’re a small company with a big idea. I wrote this book because I wanted to share that idea with others. I know that working anywhere and everywhere in the cloud offers a huge amount of freedom and massive benefits for people like us and like our clients. This book talks about employment, self-employment and introduces the third new way – E-Ployment.

Quote: 'We wanted to create a third way - not employment, not being freelance but a third way and that’s E-Ployment. Providing the support of employment, with the freedom of being a freelance worker all enabled via cloud based tools.’

Julian Stubbs, Co-founder of UP THERE, EVERYWHERE