Why We Need to Dare Question the Workplace Status Quo

Join the first exhibition of Humans of New Work — a movement for a new world of work.

Monika Jiang
Journal of Beautiful Business

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It started last year, on a typical Berlin autumn day when SOULWORX brought together a handful of like-minded individuals from our network to exchange thoughts on the topic of new work.

Steeped in buzzwords like digital transformation, industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence, we were fascinated with exploring the more humanistic side of these emerging work trends. Through discussion, we came to feel as though the key to a successful, more livable future lies in the idea of humanity itself. Contrary to the wave of innovation in digital products and services, we asked how individuals would adapt to rapid developing changes in the world? Where are there still gaps between the demands of a young workforce and workplace environments? And where and how are new work concepts already starting to unravel?

As chance or, perhaps, fate would have it, a co-thinker approached us with the idea of creating a platform where individuals could share personal narratives surrounding concepts of new work. Instantly we felt the power and relevance of this idea, started to build on it and decided to kick it off as a new work movement. And so, the digital storybook Humans of New Work was born.

What inspired us

Naturally, we’re familiar with Humans of New York; the photography project started back in 2010 by Brandon Stanton. Because of the project’s unique approach to portrait personalities, its popularity has spread quickly throughout the globe. We wanted to kick-off our project from a similar vantage point, with the ability to peer into the personal stories of individual protagonists. So we couldn’t resist evolving our idea from the zeitgeist of Stanton’s project. By doing so, we honor the original initiative, while taking on new perspectives in our journey to map out the rapidly shifting work environments.

The collective journey

From our first impulse until now, we’ve been confronted with plenty of questions and challenges. Thankfully we’ve been quickly fueled by a few new supporters who’ve been open to contributing their hearts and talents to our initiative. Through personal connections and like-minded recruiting, our list of protagonists has increased faster than anticipated. Today, we’re continuously meeting up with new personalities and visiting diverse work environments from corporate office to co-working space. We remain curious where this journey will take us next.

Our vision

What does the future hold? We don’t have the answer.

However, we do have a lot of questions, and we believe you do too. What happens if the workforce is increasingly taken over by robots and AI? What would our new role be? If we can peek into the future, how would we behave at work today? How do people in less urban environments think about new work? Are these workplace changes only occurring within our insular bubbles? Why should and how can companies adapt to new ways of working?

It’s time we dare to dream — a necessity if we’re going to take responsibility for making the changes we would like to see in the world. So, we choose to start now.

The collective stories of Humans of New Work focus entirely on each person’s character, their experiences and individual opinions on the dynamics that are driving change in our current work environments. We see this social platform, as our Soulworker’s mission to inspire and activate change to foster the new humanistic work movement.

Join our Humans Of New Work exhibition at the House of Beautiful Business and if you like, play a round of quartet to get to know our protagonists. Take a sneak peek here.

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