Future of Work - Let's get Phygital!
It is said that the present defines the future and the future builds on the foundation of the past.
What better situation than now to embrace this thought? I say this as I have just delivered a webinar and pondering over my thoughts to pen down this article. I am sure Webster’s is going to include ‘zoom fatigue’ as the word of 2020! And as I finish this article, I will be joining another session online – a musical concert. Who would have thought! Well, the times have changed, and how.
I am sure none of us would have anticipated that a pandemic of this nature would have the capacity of putting the world at a standstill, and yet here we are still in the thick of it. But given human race’s resilience and the power to cope with setbacks, we have been moving along hoping for the best.
At a macro perspective, every realm of Political, Economic, Social and Technological space has been hit, and in few cases hard. Looking through the lens of our Indian ecosystem of Political or Government lens, there have been labor laws that were amended specifically given the crisis. Laws related to industrial disputes, health and working conditions of workers and migrants will be defunct for a stipulated period of time. International politics has also witnessed a massive dent in few countries owing to lack of care for citizens and critical healthcare facilities being available. Who knows how the future government reforms will get impacted due to this crisis. The Economic slump has and will affect workforce adversely. CRISIL has predicted that there would be ~4% permanent loss of GDP. Fiscal 2022 will likely see a V-shaped recovery at over 7% growth. However, the sustenance will not be able to lift GDP volume to its trend path even by 2024. Sectors such as manufacturing, construction and hospitality will bear the maximum shocks. It is said that one must never let a good crisis go to waste, and with this sentiment the National Education Policy (NEP) has also been launched. With majority of the US universities operating virtually in the near future and the long term deeply uncertain for an in person mode, the NEP could not have come at a better time. The NEP proposes restructuring institutions into multidisciplinary academic platforms with thousands of students being enrolled via different programs. So, a Princeton Mumbai or a Harvard Hyderabad may not be a very distant future! Societal norms and workplace cultures have also seen a radical shift. Needless to say, Work From Home (WFH) is the new cool owing to the situation, but Work From Anywhere (WFA) will be the trend going forward. The concept of ‘People going to work’ is no longer relevant but ‘Work coming to people’ is what will be. With WFH and WFA there also come new leadership and managerial styles that call for a change in behavior – collaboration, flexibility, autonomy and accountability have taken on a whole different meaning. How does one really imbibe these aspects when the teams do not meet daily? I am sure all of us have realized who the real leaders in such situations are! Technology (apart from the virus) has been the universal leveler in this situation. OTT movies that got released via these platforms had the same viewership irrespective of them being a 100 crore film or a 15 crore film. For the students of 2020, Zoom has become the new classroom, Google Hangout the playground and Microsoft Teams the blackboard. ? 469 crore is the Indian government’s budget for digital learning for 2020-21. $1.96 billion will be the market for online education in India in 2021. The numbers speak for themselves.
The practices and new ways of work defined in this pandemic will most definitely pave way for the Future of Work.
As with everything else revolutionized, the famous Maslow’s hierarchy has also seen a twist given the recent events. No longer are the Physiological, Safety, Esteem and Self-actualization needs holding good but future workplace tenets of Technological, Emotional and Purposeful work are taking over. The Physical aspect of a workplace has gone into oblivion – where earlier there was a scramble of real estate for corporate offices, has now seen a slump and for the good. With WFA the new adage, talent has also gone boundaryless. I can now hire a fully functioning virtual team from Bay Area while my start up runs in Bangalore. Not that it was unheard of earlier, but with technology pervading into the work sphere all the more, this is the way forward. Another facet that throws open a challenge is how I engage my employees and enhance Employee Experience in this digital era. As HR, interaction with employees is high touchpoint and a virtual experience may not be the answer for every conversation. Technology has also democratized talent to a high level. Open source platforms like GitHub, Kaggle and Analytics Vidhya call on coding specialists to showcase their skill and have them ranked amongst the best. Futuristic roles and organizations no longer look at resumes but asses candidatures via GitHub or Kaggle personas. With the Digital Population in India surging ahead, active internet users as on Jan 2020 is 687.6 million and over a 3 year horizon till 2023 is at 876.25 million. (Stastista.com) India is only second to China with digital consumption. With new strands of Emotional and Purposeful tenets sewn into Future of Work, new age talent is no longer looking for a lifetime of employment. Work life is going to be a series of sprints than a marathon. As I interact with the new generation at work, I realize that their emphasis in on personalization and valuing experiences than tangibles. The way we recruit has also shifted. I recall when we were trying to scout for a senior Facilities Manager profile, the expectation was no longer someone who has the traditional mindset of architecture and buildings, but someone who is in terms with change – can they think of newer more digital ways of work in our campus? How will infrastructure planning change according to that? One would definitely want someone who has had different stints in organizations, that too of different flavors that will add diversity and dimension to their profile. The biggest question one faces as a leader to engage with the young workforce is towards giving them a purposeful work environment. Simply put, where and how does my work connect to the larger scheme of the organization’s strategy? A research document ‘What Percentage of Your Life Will You Spend at Work?’ by Revise Sociology (2016) showed that the average person works 1,842 hours a year, or 92,100 hours over a 50-year career! While new leadership traits have been born out of this pandemic, the digital nomad generation or better still the ‘phygital nomads’ need to do their own thing at work. No more archaic managerial styles will work. How do we work today? Mobile. Tomorrow? In an even more mobile way! A laptop, good broadband and themselves. That’s all that matters. Digital Collaboration tools have carved a new space for themselves. Organizations with strong online social networks are 7% more productive than those without. (“How Social Networks Network Best”. Harvard Business Review. Feb 2009) and a median 20% increase in employee satisfaction (“How companies are benefitting from Web 2.0: McKinsey Global Survey Results”. McKinsey Quarterly. September, 2009)
While talent has seen an upheaval in every sense, our physical workspaces would also undergo a radical shift in planning and building. While we all know how the concept of a Digital Twin works in manufacturing by managing the performance, effectiveness and quality of a manufacturer’s assets, the foray into corporate workspaces is still new, but given this era, who knows if this might the next revolution. Last year when the Notre Dame Cathedral was razed down in flames, the world held its breath to see if we can ever recreate this piece of art. Until recently, the restoration would have involved going through dusty blueprints to guide the repair. But with the advantage of Digital Twin at their disposal, engineers and architects were able to recreate the French cathedral as much as possible. Not only were they able to recreate it, but also add innovations in design and materials. The Digital Twin market is estimated to grow at a staggering $26.07 Billion by 2025. Imagine what a Digital Twin of a workspace can do and how it can benefit building owners, property developers and most important, employees and Employee Experience managers. This totally changes the perspective of strategizing space and asset management. It allows the space manager to look at planning and coordination via digital collaboration; no more clunky diagrams and charts but real time inputs can be recorded. Gen Z wants their office environment to be connected and be as smart as their home and cars, with the ability to create a personalized experience. How often have you sat in a boardroom with an uncomfortable AC setting? Instead of calling housekeeping (where ACs are centralized) or even changing the setting on your own, how would you like it if the room was already set as per your liking before the meeting? Digital Twins have a far bigger impact than just personalized experience. Intelligent Building Management is about knowing how effectively you can utilize energy resources and also save them, are lights on when employees are around? Are there entire floors vacant when teams are WFH? All this and more with Digital Twinning!
So, what really is the Future of Work conjuring up to be? From the manner of working to technology platforms to driving a more purposeful work, the new work paradigm holds exciting opportunities, and challenges at the same time. Talking about the manner of working, the new generation does not believe in archaic hierarchies and coveted designations, but believes in wierarchies (coined by Jon Husband) – the organizing principle for an era of interconnected knowledge, trust and credibility. Traditional hierarchies will not go away but a blend of both is what will work best – a more versatile and fluid model. Our jobs are what define us. Do they? In the future, it will be imperative to look at jobs as a combination of different tasks that we do. No wonder machines and robots are taking away our tasks! (not jobs J) Tasks are repetitive, let RPA take care of that. Jobs are what demands our creativity, intelligence and ideas. No machine is ever going to take that away. How does this change the future you may ask? When you evaluate your career as pieces of tasks, it is easier to move from one career to another. And that is how the future will deconstruct candidatures. Your Personal Assistant is no longer going to be a PA. Welcome RPA, again. That is what Siri, Alexa and our very own GPS systems have already been doing.
Tools of the future will elevate our working to the next level. While technology has been ubiquitous in every sphere of work, how has it translated Employee Experience in an organization? Artificial Intelligence is enabling passive candidate sourcing by identifying likely candidates from verified data sources. Using recruiter-defined parameters (e.g. location, skill set or industry), AI can return lists of potential candidates, predict their readiness for a move, develop and send communications, and map responses. Learning & Development Companies on the cutting edge of AI implementation are using AI to create or adapt training programs that fit company and employee needs. Training platforms powered by Machine Learning can analyze an employee’s background, their current role, and career aspirations to recommend relevant training programs through services such as Lynda or Udemy. Analytics has been a recent entrant but taken the workplace by storm. Who does not love numbers and especially when they are linked to your bottom line! With Analytics into the foray, even qualitative departments and functions in an organization work with metrics to quantify their findings. RPA assisting with transactional tasks is a well-known fact, but can it do more? Deep Learning based conversational AI is the next level. Another exciting immersive technology is around Mixed Reality comprising of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. VR is a classic example of how it can be used to simulate an environment for new joiners. It can simulate actual scenarios for employees and prepare them for how the actual organization looks like, easily acclimatizing them into the new world. VR technology can also be used to detect various behavioral habits and attributes that are required for evaluating the employees and their personalities. How does it enhance an HR professional’s or manager’s time spent? Leverage technology so one has the time freed up that can be utilized for tasks a machine cannot do.
How will this transition towards a more purposeful work and a genuine work environment? The future workforce is here to speak up and have an opinion. This generation is bold, fearless and has what it takes to challenge status quo. On the occasion of the 74th Indian Independence Day, I am reminded of a video that a popular media network released on how today youngsters will shape tomorrow’s world. It focuses on traits of independent thinking and being strong willed. After all, this is the voice that is going to be running future corporates. We have all lived with the Service Economy. What’s next? The Experience Economy. Life and work is all about experiences, personalized. I order my food and shop online. The app understand my preferences and suggests what I might like next time. Adidas’s tryst with 3D printing has it personalize a shoe to your individual feet dimensions. No longer do you have to ‘adjust’ with mass shoe sizes. At work, I do not have to ask my manager on what courses to learn. The learning bot has my performance data, sees my skill gap and suggests what courses I can take up, which will also predict where I will be in the next 3 years of my career. This is what new age up skilling will all be about. A one career throughout your lifetime is no longer coveted. This is the age of experimentation, finding your calling and hopping jobs till you get the ‘one’. Truly progressive organizations are respecting this about candidates. The education – employment – career – retire cycle no longer holds good but probably education – drop out? – learn – job – experiment – repeat (no retire!) is what the future holds in store.
Alvin Toffler had famously quoted, It is not the rate of change but our ability to absorb it that matters. It is no longer about will I get affected by this or can I stay cocooned in my current state? But there is a streak of optimism to all this anxiety. If it leads to greater efforts of skilling, and reshaping the workforce then this is what is required. It could be that this uncertainty produces the preparedness!