The Future of Work

There has been much discussion and debate in recent months regarding how office-based businesses will operate in “the new normal”:

• what will offices look like? 
• how will offices operate in a social distancing framework? 
• will most people return to “the old normal” working style or will “Work from Anywhere” be a real option? 
• is “Blended Working” (working time split between “Work from Anywhere” and “Work from the Office) a solution?
• where and how will businesses recruit new talent and how will they onboard them?

These questions (and many, many more) carry with them massive consequences for businesses and individuals alike:

• do people want to or are they even able to return to “the old normal”?
• do businesses need to carry the current level of real estate and related overheads?
• if people are allowed/encouraged/required to “Work from Anywhere”, how much infrastructure (furniture, hardware, IT systems, connectivity, power, space rental, free food etc.) should a business provide for them and can it be done in in a tax efficient way?

All of these are perfectly valid questions and most businesses will have already undertaken or are planning how to address them. The topic I have heard discussed less though is what is the “Future of Employment”? By this I am referring to how do individuals want to work in the future?

• do people want to “work from anywhere”?
• do people want to return to the office?
• for people with children, what will be the long-term impact of how any changes to how education is delivered (e.g. blended learning) be on their working lives?
• would “job sharing” become a realistic option for more people?

And with this myriad of options, we should also take the opportunity to look how businesses should invest in their people and what the focus of their support should be:

Compensation – how should we pay people? Traditionally, people have always been pay based upon skills, experience, competition and location. Should businesses consider changing this to exclude location, to have pay people for their other traits and leave it up to them to decide where to live and what their personal cost base is?

Wellbeing – if the COVID-19 lockdown has taught us anything, it’s the importance of ensuring that people are both physically and mentally well. Should we focus on proactive rather than reactive when it comes to taking care of our people? Should it be considered a basic obligation (like pensions) rather than a perk?

Talent acquisition & management – where and how do we identify and secure talent in a potentially distributed (even globalised) marketplace? When we have them, how do we ensure that in the new, more flexible environment, that people are onboarded and integrated into a business? How do we ensure that people are able to effectively manage their own life/work balance? How do we monitor “happiness”? 

Learning & training – the COVID-19 lockdown has also given many furloughed people the opportunity to delve into upskilling and new learning. Many businesses already offer their people training budgets and tools/platforms, but few require people to undertake them (apart from professional/qualified organisations) and give them the time to do so during working hours. Mandatory development benefits the entire business!

Management & engagement – throughout the COVID-19 lockdown, many businesses have temporarily moved to a remote working operation. The biggest challenge with this has been the change in communication. People are on endless streams of video calls; management has had to become more formal and regimented to ensure productivity and social interactions are much more orchestrated rather than natural and spontaneous. Time and effort need to be invested to develop much more natural and flexible communication processes that translates into a digital company culture.

There are so many more questions that business leaders need to be asking themselves today. We have an opportunity to reinvent how office-based businesses operate for the benefit of both employers and employees, not seen since the IT revolution in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

We should not “drift back” into old working habits, but we should embrace this new paradigm.