Korn Ferry reported that 85 million jobs would go unfilled by 2030 at the cost of $8.5 Trillion. They concluded, “Much of the shortage is based on simple demography.” At the time of the report, there was no clear path for addressing the changes in population demographics and the shrinking access to top talent.
The pandemic changed everything. Companies went from an attitude of, “it would be too hard to scale remote work” to 74% of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) looking to make more jobs permanently remote.
As leaders in the C-Suite embrace the move to a larger number of remote workers, Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs) now can change their recruiting approach to fill jobs that have lingered open for increasingly extended periods. With remote work initiatives, hard to fill positions could be reclassified as boundless jobs, with no time zone or geography restrictions.

The seeds have been planted to pivot to a distributed workforce. The trend will continue as companies go through an accelerated digital transformation, and the skills gap widens. The future of work will be a digitally connected distributed workforce, which increases employment opportunities for professionals.