Publishers Are Launching, Expanding ‘Future of Work’ Coverage

The pandemic has upended work as we know it, but a number of enterprising publishers are hoping to turn that uncertainty into opportunity. Some, like the recently launched Charter, are new efforts dedicated entirely to the subject. Others, like Protocol | Workplace, are nascent extensions of existing publishers. Forward-thinking brands like Quartz, Bloomberg Media and Reuters have also taken the opportunity to revamp their future of work offerings. While the immediate motivation for this new wave of coverage is the nationwide reckoning over remote work, experts agree that the pandemic has set in motion a larger, irreversible change that will make the subject relevant for years to come. “For a lot of people, the American relationship to work feels pretty untenable right now,” said Charlie Warzel, a journalist and Substack author cowriting a book on the subject. “It feels broken, and that renegotiation is not going to be solved in the next year.” Workplace uncertainty led to reader interest Although Quartz has devoted coverage to the future of work since 2017, the publisher began rapidly expanding its reporting on the subject when the Covid-19 pandemic struck. In March 2020, it launched and then found sponsors for its biweekly virtual events series, which explored topics related to remote work. The hour-long events, which ran until earlier this month, attracted between 500 and 700 attendees on average, 90% of whom stayed for 54 minutes, said CRO Natalie Diamond. In April 2020, Quartz launched its future of work newsletter The Memo, which has since racked up 45,000 free subscribers. Future of work-related content is a "top-five converter" when it comes to turning readers into subscribers, Diamond said. Workplace, which Protocol launched in late June, has also seen rapid adoption. In its first week, the Workplace newsletter has accrued "thousands" of free subscribers, said Protocol president Tammy Wincup. Their readers' professional titles, which range from chief people officer to chief product officer, signal C-suite interest in the subject, said Wincup. Charter, which launched as a standalone media business last week, was created by Quartz cofounders Kevin Delaney and Jay Lauf alongside New York Times veteran Erin Grau. It began last year as a newsletter called Reset Work. Since its inception, it has accrued 20,000 subscribers. Other publishers with existing coverage on the topic also used the pandemic as an opportunity to refresh their offerings. In September, Reuters launched The Great Reboot, its section dedicated to future of work coverage. Bloomberg Media has also expanded its Work Shifting vertical in recent months, launching a Quicktake original series in December called Future of Work. It hosted the Work Shifting Summit in March. The future of work welcomes advertisers Hoping to look innovative by association, brand partners have lined up to advertise alongside future of work content. The Workplace newsletter has already sold out its advertising inventory for the remainder of 2021, Wincup said. And Quartz at Work, the publisher's vertical dedicated to the topic, has seen year-over-year growth since its launch in 2017. In 2019, it doubled the percentage of total revenue it contributed to the Quartz franchise. "Quartz has always been forward-thinking, and clients depend on us to help them align with that idea of innovation," Diamond said. Likewise, Charter has seen a rush of brands looking to sponsor or advertise alongside its content, including Citrix, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. The new publisher aims to “transform every workplace” through a blend of reporting and professional services, and it will generate additional revenue by offering online courses and hosting summits. “This is not a side-project for us. We think that there needs to be real change in the way businesses and workplaces are run,” Delaney said. The future of 'the future of work' If the field has grown crowded quickly, part of the reason is because there's money to be made. In the last year, whole industries have cropped up to help businesses navigate the new workplace, and they are looking to reach prospective customers. The last year alone has seen $10.5 billion invested in the HR technology sector, according to Erica Volini, the principal and global human capital leader at Deloitte Consulting. The publishers that can successfully stake their claim as thought leaders on the subject stand to gain immensely. Plus, the topic will only grow more relevant in the coming years. “The ‘future of work’ has gone from an academic talking point to an immediate challenge,” Volini said. “And it’s not going to be solved in the short term. I think this is going to be a long-standing issue.” In a white paper created by Vice about the future of work culture, a survey of 3,300 people found that 6 in 10 respondents expect the pandemic to “forever change the role that work plays in people’s lives.” And in what some are calling “the great resignation,” between 25% and 40% of U.S. workers are considering leaving their jobs, after a year of introspection led them to reevaluate their priorities. Likewise, on a managerial level, the 2021 Global Human Capital Trends survey from Deloitte found that executives are shifting their focus away from work optimization and toward work reimagination, with 61% saying they would focus on “reimagining work going forward,” up from to 29% before the pandemic. “There has been a fundamental reevaluation of the role that work plays in our lives,” Warzel said. “It’s economic and it’s cultural, and I think it’s going to be the story of the next decade.” Microsoft Aims to Define the Future of Work For the Post-Pandemic Office

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Publishers Are Launching and Expanding ‘Future of Work’ Coverage

The normally evergreen subject has taken on a fresh sense of urgency

Mark Stenberg

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Mark Stenberg