A celebrated tech startup has fallen on hard times recently, but still plans to open in San Antonio in 2020. Wework has been heralded for its view of office space as a tech commodity rather than a stuffy old bricks and mortar driven approach. The philosophy behind the startup is to apply principles inherent in technological innovation-- analytics, modularity, flexibility, and open office sharing-- to urban office environments in a way that is attractive to modern enterprises that expand and contract quickly.
Wework has really taken a plunge in valuation (market-wise) and esteem (among the cognoscenti) recently. It turns out there was a lot more puffery and salesmanship to Wework than data-driven innovation. But the ideas that drove the over-estimation of Wework-- modularity in work environments, tech-driven economy, and flexible staffing/employment arrangements-- seem to be the future, as much as Wework couldn't really capture all of that into a neat real estate formula.
What does this mean for workers' compensation and injury claims? Probably not much. What the tech industry has shown is that there is a lot of computer and brain-driven work to do, but a lot of this has the net effect of creating disposable income for tech workers to pay people to do what most blue collar folks used to do themselves. And that is all the stuff that makes you sweat and makes you likely to get injured. On top of that, as much as tech allows electronic communication, face to face never goes out of style and my perception is that there is as much if not more business travel as there ever used to be. The boundaries between work and life are more fluid, not less, and this contributes to the always-on mentality that can often result in injuries occurring to the most white collar of tech employees. Workers' compensation is not going away anytime soon.
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