It is hard to believe the quarter century mark is just a few years away. The pace of technology has been frenetic since the turn of the century, and the upcoming milestone that 2025 represents is an opportunity to reflect upon what it means for a workforce that has gone from dotcoms to Zoom. A number of technology innovations have impacted the workforce, but mobility stands out as one of the most personal factors for the daily life of the global worker. “Mobility” has all types of capabilities, from the road warrior tool kit of phone, tablets and applications to the on-demand documentation of events as seen by police body cameras and witness/spectator videos. Beyond the device influences is the plethora of connotations the word “mobility” conjures. One thinks grudgingly of the always-on, always-working drudgery of day-to-day work, or of upward mobility, which feels like a promise for better terms, better salary and a resulting better lifestyle. There is the career question, often asked in decades past: “Are you mobile?” drawing images of far- away work assignments and new cultural experiences. What better way to examine the promise of mobility for the 2025 workforce than to ask those in the thick of it?
Healthcare, Energy Assessments and Shopping
Three professionals were interviewed for their vision of mobility in 2025. Each was chosen to show the diverse needs of different industries, to highlight potentially different requirements for mobility technology and systems, and to understand workforce desires from both professional and life balance perspectives. One interviewee works as a nurse practitioner for a major hospital, a seemingly stationary career, confined to the hospital environment. The second interviewee, a clean energy consultant, started a new venture two years ago, but with more than 20 years of work experience in support of her entrepreneurial efforts. The third interviewee started a career in software development after college, but quickly left the corporate world to start a business in retail trade and logistics. The most mobile of the three professionals interviewed, the retail trader, works anywhere and from any secure device, not even necessarily his own device. All three participants have been in the workforce for more than ten years, and all have changed careers at least once.
Interestingly, there were common desires for the quarter century mark. Access to accurate data is a top priority for all three, on-demand, to suit their business needs and the needs of their customer/patient bases. Availability regardless of where they are working or where their target market is located is a critical need that was also highlighted by all three. Flexibility was the third must- have aspect of work in 2025 that the three felt mobility should provide. For us as risk management and audit professionals, one can imagine how mobility might impact our information systems risk and audit work, or one can contemplate how our risk and audit skills can be applied to meet the workforce demand for mobility that results in good data access, application and systems availability from any location, and flexibility through secure connections for the on-demand needs that 2025 presents for these three professionals and industries. It is time to spend a few moments in the working shoes of the three gracious and interesting professionals whose names have been fictionalized to protect their employers and clients.
Healthcare
Rosalie Sherman has been working in healthcare for 11 years. She has always had a passion for medicine and patient care and chose to start her career as a registered nurse (RN). Work as an RN is not something one would think of as very mobile, other than being on one’s feet all the time, spending as much face-to-face time as possible with patients who depend upon a personal touch. Sherman found the environment to be as expected: high stress and fast paced. She also found her responsibility for long-term patient outcomes was limited given the overall short-term hospital stay of her patients. Eventually, she opted to reduce her work hours and simultaneously pursue a graduate degree, which earned her the status of nurse practitioner (NP). Returning to a full-time schedule, she found her goals of having additional responsibility and greater patient impact brought her to a more mobile work environment in her role as a team member in the highly specialized field of post-transplant care.
Telemedicine has been an available option in healthcare for quite a while, but without widespread acceptance by health insurers, it had not gotten much traction until early 2020.
Greater mobility, though, is all a matter of perspective. No longer tied to the shift schedule work on the hospital floor, Sherman’s day-to-day duties include remote work; face-to-face, in-facility sessions with patients; and telemedicine. In comparison to the other two interviewees, the work is the least mobile of the three, yet it is no longer stationed full time at the hospital where patients show up for appointments and leave for home until the next appointed time to review their status. Sherman’s mobility is enabled by different requirements, namely a need to access and analyze lab results, which she can pull from multiple devices from any location. The pandemic accelerated mobility for both the transplant staff and patients via telemedicine. Telemedicine has been an available option in healthcare for quite a while, but without widespread acceptance by health insurers, it had not gotten much traction until early 2020, when it was viewed has a necessity to keep everyone safe as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ability to use mobile devices has not only benefited staff, but has made a big difference for patients who had to travel long distances, sometimes in hazardous weather and with costly overnight hotel stays. Telemedicine reduces the stress of an already stressful situation for both patients and families.
Sherman’s care plans anticipate a long-term relationship. Since many patients were already under her care prepandemic, Sherman does not have concerns regarding the risk of mobile appointments and potentially missing nuances in behavior that might be indicative of new health issues. Her existing relationships make it easier to pick up behavior cues that are often only detected during an in-person appointment. Sherman feels the added mobility for the medical team and patients creates a more efficient and less stressful experience for all. The fact that Sherman and others on the transplant team can access the data she needs, along with the beneficial flexibility that telemedicine provides to her patients, is a win-win for all.
How does Sherman imagine her career in 2025? She has two visions for the quarter century mark:
- Her current role in 2025 would be enhanced by mobility that allows more remote visits. To do this, systems need to work well with applications that are intuitive to staff and patients alike. Her vision of a more mobile approach means a deeper relationship where she has more patient interaction through calls, video conferences, texts and a variety of other media. Equally important is her patients’ access to their health information anywhere, anytime. That has already come a long way, as Sherman confides that some patients “watch their lab numbers like the stock market.” The 2025 world of a mobile relationship would help deepen the trust between the care team and patients by not only providing intuitive applications with accurate and complete health information, but by having ubiquitous platforms for conversations on the go when needed, from all convenient spots so patients benefit from the care team consults and advice vs. patients taking information access to the do-it-yourself (DIY) extreme.
- Sherman sees more that mobility can enable in 2025 and a potential new and rewarding role she can pursue. She believes the future of medicine is bringing care to the community with mobile care teams that travel to neighborhoods and homes. The care team would have a truck of needed supplies and would thrive on technology that allows on-demand access to specialists from anywhere in the world who could consult with the core team while the core team is with patients at their homes or workplaces. If that were possible, healthcare would no longer be a set of appointments people scheduled when they were not well. Healthcare would become an integral part of daily well-being.
The Feasibility of Clean Energy
Linda Evens has been working for more than 20 years and recently partnered with an associate to start a new venture providing clean energy consulting. Evens’s business works with municipalities and US Native American governments, conducting energy feasibility studies that assess solar, wind and other clean options. Her vision of 2025 is in the same career, with a desire for better technology for the clientele she serves. Mobility is a critical component of her ability to conduct accurate assessments and interact readily with utility companies, government officials and regulators, financial backers, and developers/installers. Evens defines mobility as allowing her to work efficiently from the best place possible for making the energy system evaluation and creating an analysis that is both compelling and actionable. Her future would involve less travel, saving her clients money, but she would expect better on-site connectivity to allow her adequate and fast access to the tools that enable her analysis.
Evens’s chosen target market presents unique challenges that she is eager to overcome. Clean energy and green technology are all the buzz, but availability for her target market is hampered by the social justice hurdles some of her clients face, especially the Native American sovereign nations. Located on remote and often barren lands, many Native American sovereign nations face challenges, namely technology access and connectivity gaps, that were solved for other communities in the United States years and even decades ago. Evens told the story of a water pump system in a community where she is conducting an analysis. Instead of using applications to confirm water pumps are on or off, the maintenance teams need to physically examine the pumps due to lack of reliable connectivity to the pump sites. They even use the community to conduct their maintenance rounds: People living near pumps are asked to notify the maintenance team when they hear or see that a pump is not pumping, a low-tech, but effective way of keeping the water running. Given the limitations of some client locations such as those described in the water pump story, Evens’s effort to produce her analysis can also often be a manual effort, while feasibility studies elsewhere thrive on enabling applications. In addition to completing the analysis itself, proposal functionality must be reviewed to determine whether a solution is cost effective or whether system monitoring and maintenance must be a manual effort, negating the potential benefits of an automated, error-free solution. Evens must be mobile to do her work, and the key control point is whether wireless devices are possible for the assessments she conducts and the solutions she proposes, given the connectivity limitations.
Given the limitations of some client locations such as those described in the water pump story, Evens’s effort to produce her analysis can also often be a manual effort, while feasibility studies elsewhere thrive on enabling applications.
As with Sherman’s vision, data are everything for Evens. They are critical in the assessments she conducts, and they drive her proposed solutions, including the type of energy proposed. Evens’s vision looks to the promise of proposed US federal infrastructure legislation to provide access to technology through basic connectivity, regardless of municipality or location. With a strong risk and project management background, Evens is trying to get as mobile as possible without reverting to a decades-old manual effort for collaboration and proposal acceptance by US government officials and Native American sovereign nations.
Retail Trade
Ian Jakubowski has always been on the move, and that did not change when he finished college in 2011. He got a job in software development, but decided to start a side business that quickly did well enough to become his mainstay occupation. As a retail trader, Jakubowski buys products in bulk and sells them online, using rented warehouse space to manage inventory. He has grown the business from being the sole worker to having two employees whom he knows and trusts to work collaboratively with him for the business’s continued success. Work is fast paced: Looking for goods to purchase is key to bid in a timely fashion for the sales he makes to consumers in Canada and the United States. He has worked with vendors, but found quality was unreliable for one segment of his business, while very successful for another. He chose to bring the work of repackaging and kitting back in-house, while continuing the vendor partnership with the online marketplace and shipping vendor he started with when he launched his business. From choosing warehousing options to his approach to employees and his willingness to try outsourcing, it is clear that accepting certain risk factors to assess different ways of getting the job done is part of Jakubowski’s success.
The relationship Jakubowski has with his employees is unique and perhaps a sign of the future beyond 2025. Jakubowski's employee relationships began as friendships that then turned into business partnerships that satisfied everyone involved. Jakubowski had to get reliable and trustworthy personnel to keep his business growing, people willing to learn from the ground up. His friends longed for a lifestyle that did not compel them to be on the road more than 200 days a year in regional sales management. Once Jakubowski trained his employees, their means of communication moved from face-to-face to the most convenient and efficient manner of doing business, namely phone calls, text messages and pictures they share to examine and decide on purchases. Jakubowski and his employees can work from anywhere and use any secure device, since their means of selling is online and does not require custom applications. In fact, Jakubowski indicated he has reviewed online orders from Argentina on one occasion and borrowed another friend’s laptop to finalize a product bid from the comfort of his friend’s house on another occasion. He noted that he has not seen his employees physically or via Zoom in more than one year because their other means of getting the work done have been the most efficient for the divide-and-conquer style that helps them buy and sell goods.
Jakubowski and his employees can work from anywhere and use any secure device, since their means of selling is online and does not require custom applications.
When asked about his foray into vendor management, Jakubowski elaborated on how, as an enterprise of only a few people, they have been able to assess which vendors work well for their business without having to be present at a specific location on a structured schedule. The vendor Jakubowski has worked with for the online posting of his products and delivery of the goods to consumers has guidelines he follows, but none of the guidelines involve a static location, other than having a specific warehouse for product pickup. Jakubowski's foray into product packaging was not as successful, but it was also easy to assess without being physically present or meeting the vendor. Instead, Jakubowski relied on his knowledge of product packaging requirements and customer responses to products they received. When customer complaints arose and charges for work done became inaccurate, Jakubowski could not take the risk of poor quality impacting the customer base he had worked hard to build and now does the repackaging work within his company.
Jakubowski ’s company bids online for goods or might physically go to a seller to inspect and buy the product. Except for the buying decisions that are made by a physical review, nothing is tied down, and all three company members work wherever they need to, connected by their phones or laptops without seeing each other, infrequently meeting with the people they buy from, and never meeting their end customers. Location simply does not matter, except for product drop-off and subsequent pickup for shipping to the buying consumer. Workdays are flexible and, as Jakubowski puts it, vacation is unlimited. It is fast paced, with the need to pay attention to detail, but the concept of an office with four walls does not fit his business model.
Is this where the workforce of 2025 might be headed? Jakubowski says it is a combination of new and old that now suits him best. If it is a sunny day, it does not need to be a workday, or he can take his business with him on his phone to wherever he would like to travel. Yet he has found that after a work-from-home environment for several years, having a specific office location is not a bad thing. He has opted to buy office space that is colocated with his warehouse, a 30-minute commute from where he lives. The office space gives him the physical separation between work and his personal life that he now prefers.
The three professionals, despite working in vastly different industries, all saw their future on the move, mainly because technology liberated their work lifestyle.
How to Prepare for the Quarter Century Mark
The three professionals, despite working in vastly different industries, all saw their future on the move, mainly because technology liberated their work lifestyle. These are exciting times for them, which brings great consultative potential for those of us in the risk assessment and information systems audit profession. The governance advice and controls assessment we provide can make mobility productive and secure for our enterprises and clients as well. Several key takeaways are worth consideration as a starting point to serve the future workforce:
- Awareness of risk, preventive controls and monitoring are key learnings that information systems risk and auditing professionals can and must provide to our enterprises and clients. Awareness implies that we participate in the business planning to understand how the business envisions the future. Talking with business stakeholders and understanding where they see their mobile potential is the best starting point.
- A mobility risk assessment that weighs the beneficial outcomes against the risk of mobility is important. The assessment can be a tightly scoped review that focuses on the newly imagined work environment. It is important to request a seat at the table for the business discussions so that mobility risk rating is carefully reviewed and agreed upon between the business and risk management.
- Targeted controls for mobility that can be operationalized and measured are essential. Many enterprises may have mobility controls in place but need to imagine how controls must enable and protect future business transactions. Risk management and audit professionals can facilitate the risk/controls conversation to bring standards from the current operating model to the mobile needs of the future workforce.
- A continuous improvement model is a key success factor risk managers and auditors can contribute. An effective improvement plan builds actionable and achievable steps from the organization’s present foundation with realistic milestones that are tracked, reviewed and agreed upon by all involved parties.
Finally, there is a great deal of mobility opportunity for the risk and audit profession that is enticing to consider. Why not imagine the potential for our own careers? After all, we are well suited to plan carefully, assess the risk, and properly execute mobility and the lifestyle we would like to have in the future. Bring on 2025!
Author’s Note
The author is grateful for the contributions of her interviewees, Amanda Carrington, Todd Isherwood, and Joe Tricarico, who kindly shared thoughts about their industries, the community and customers they serve, and their personal aspirations for their work future.
CINDY BAXTER | CISA, ITIL FOUNDATION
Is director at What’s the Risk, LLC. Her practice focuses on integrated risk control and process assessments for cybersecurity, privacy and business continuity/disaster recovery. She views risk management and control assessment as a chance to learn the nuts and bolts of a client’s business and help them worry less because gaps have been uncovered and a stronger operating model can be built. Baxter draws upon her experience in banking, insurance, healthcare and technology after holding compliance and management roles at State Street Corporation, American International Group (AIG), Johnson & Johnson and AT&T. When she is not doing risk and audit work, she enjoys volunteering on climate and environmental issues that impact her community.