The Future of Work—3 Principles to Decide What's Right for Your Company
Like many organizations, LiveRamp is preparing for the “Future of Work” beyond COVID. Together, we have an opportunity to leave the pandemic behind stronger than ever: Better connected, more effective, and well-equipped to grow our team, platform, and customers’ success.
In this article, we outline the three principles guiding LiveRamp's Future of Work effort. By taking this approach and coupling it with internal and external data, we have an opportunity to reimagine how and where work gets done at LiveRamp.
We hope that the following blueprint proves useful to others, while acknowledging that the future is uncertain and we are still learning ourselves. Think of this as a conversation-starter: If you want to swap notes, reach out! We'll go farther together.
1. Start with your beliefs (and assumptions)
Even before defining what you want to be true for your company beyond the pandemic, what do you believe about the future of work for organizations like yours?
At LiveRamp, we're using both external data and perspective from our own employees to arrive at three three core beliefs about the future of work for our company:
- Work model flexibility can unlock high levels of performance, creativity, and belonging—but importantly, many teams still benefit from periodic in-person collaboration.
- The market for top talent may become more global, but will be no less competitive.
- Flexibility and empathy are musts in a talent economy that is changing in unpredictable ways.
Put simply: We believe that the future of work is increasingly distributed and asynchronous. And we are giving our team permission to update our view as we learn more from our employees and customers.
What is your organization’s view of the world? And which of those beliefs are most likely to change in the years ahead?
2. Define what you’re designing for, and for whom
Once you’ve established your core beliefs around the future of work, and bearing in mind your organization’s values and strategy, you’re ready to define what you’re solving for—and for whom.
For example, you might conclude that you’re solving for how to:
- More quickly grow, diversify, and retain your workforce
- Grow and delight your customers
- Increase the productivity of specific functions
- Boost the ability to ‘get stuff done’ regardless of location
- Do all of the above in ways that are more diverse, inclusive, environmentally and socially just
This list is more-than-familiar to LiveRampers working on our Future of Work project—it’s a consolidated list of our “solve-fors.”
It’s worth noting that none of these solve-fors are novel, though how to best approach them may be changing in your industry (and quickly) as a result of the pandemic and its effects on talent markets and employee preferences.
Lastly, note that naming who you’re designing for comes even before addressing what you are solving for. In particular: Are your customers at the heart of your future of work effort? How does seeing the world from their perspective influence your focus?
3. Build (and re-build) with a product management mindset
We believe that our employees’ ability to connect, create, and thrive is based on a complex set of factors that should be informed by, and designed for, as thoughtfully as any externally-facing product.
Our People & Culture team uses the same user-centered design methodology deployed by LiveRamp’s product managers to scope, prototype, ship, and continuously improve our external offerings.
As an example: We recently shipped the beta version of GSD@, aka Getting Stuff Done at LiveRamp. This suite of employee-facing tools and resources are organized around five pillars: Productivity, Knowledge, Learning, Community, and Wellness. Like any customer-facing solution, each of these pillars has a dedicated People & Culture product manager and a set of KPIs (preliminary, for now) meant to help us understand the usage and impact of each offering.
In closing
As the saying goes, “There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen.” For many industries and organizations, COVID has accelerated the unbundling of knowledge work from physical spaces. And while no one can say with certainty what the future of work will look like in the years ahead, we believe that future is bright for any organization whose planning is grounded in humility, curiosity, and customer-focus.
Special thanks to Eric Nelson, LiveRamp's Global Head of Workplace Experience, for his contributions to this article.
Talent Amplifier | Change Catalyst | Team Builder | Executive Coach | Ex NIKE, Intel, Kaiser Permanente
2 个月Valuable, Brandon, thanks for sharing!
Prune your purpose to achieve caffeinated growth! ?? ERG + First Gen + Career Coaching = My Happy Place
3 年What is your organization’s view of the world? And which of those beliefs are most likely to change in the years ahead? In relation, I think people are readjusting, healing, suppressing, and processing the impacts of the pandemic. And this doesn’t include disparities historically excluded people have faced prior. As a result, the world a head will need to adjust it’s views, resources, culture of avoidance of mental health. I’m curious how companies can lead those efforts by modeling a new way of people taking care of themselves. With many companies taking on a hybrid working model, I think more people will be able to, for example, take care of their mental health with weekday appointments. In contrast, if we don’t change our ways (view, culture, etc) with a hybrid working model, people can better hide symptoms and ultimately not get well but suffer in silence. How will that impact business?
Awesome article! Great statement: “There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen.” These changes have been slowly building for years, but the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the move away from traditional workforce models faster than many were prepared for. As we move forward, company leaders must recognize the importance of flexibility in the workplace and within the workforce, in the form of blended teams that utilize full-time and contract workers. By putting flexibility at the forefront of future plans, companies will continue to attract and retain top talent that is searching for more autonomy in their career. The future is flexible!
Great example of how human-centric needs will come first in future work strategies (with a focus on both the employee and the consumer)
Executive Coach and Organizational Development Consultant
3 年Great thought piece, Eric and Brandon