Getting the work environment right

Have you ever woken up and just known it was going to be hard to get through the day? We’ve all felt like that sometimes and it’s not pleasant. No one wants to be in that scenario – and certainly not every day when contemplating work. But sadly it’s the reality for millions of workers worldwide.

Getting the work environment right is therefore vital – and I’m not just talking about the physical environment or office space. We need to look much wider than that.

More than just the office

Tech disruption, Covid-19, cost pressures, geographic migration, changing expectations and other factors have fundamentally changed work forever. But the building blocks of work – from schooling to hiring, deployment, recognition and reward, learning and growth, right through to exit – have simply not kept pace with these changes.

With automation increasingly replacing many basic roles, we are seeing a move along the value chain and a need to re-skill and cover more complex / different types of roles. These roles need us to carefully consider how we can add differentiated value – as individuals, as employers, and as society as a whole.

How do we gain purpose and security and drive a happy and productive work-life balance?

Tackling this from an employer’s perspective, we must do much more to optimise the potential superpowers we have at our disposal as an organisation, including:

• Execution excellence
• Customer focus
• Cognitive diversity
• Creativity and innovation
• Elite performers

I will discuss each of these in subsequent short posts, but first let’s explore holistically what areas should be a focus and where work urgently needs to be done.

Focus areas from an employer’s perspective

• Physical environment – cost, safety, control vs innovation, learning, relationships, culture
• Relationships, community and belonging – in a virtual / hybrid world, how will you drive innovation, pride, team spirit / purpose and belonging?
• Meaning and purpose – do you have a clear value proposition for colleagues and clients for talent attraction, retention and performance?
• Wellbeing (health and financial) – what percentage of your company’s total cost base is people-related? Is that spend optimised? And let’s not forget the social obligation
• Competency (experience & education OR skills & potential) – do you have the right talent you need today, and will that look different tomorrow?

?Supporting components that have not kept pace

• Are skills and potential built into hiring, recognition and growth? In many cases they are still trumped by experience and qualifications, which in turn hurts diversity efforts
• Matching potential with opportunities – at an individual and?team level, and not just at sourcing, but throughout the career journey
• Agility – forming, breaking and re-forming teams focused on tasks rather than setting up static roles that are left to run annually
• Performance management – hybrid workers can no longer measure input and therefore need to pivot to outcomes, but is performance management aligned?
• Pay and benefits – these are still largely calculated on an annual cycle and with a one-size-fits-all approach rather than customised and matched to an individual’s perception of value at that time and in that situation
• Cognitive diversity – while more widely diagnosed and understood today, neurodiversity is still not recognised and leveraged in mainstream work environments. However, some of our greatest thinkers and innovators are neurodiverse.

As you can see from the list above, the ‘human capital balance sheet’ is not being adequately leveraged and there is a lot still to do.

Are there any issues on your mind around any of these topics? What challenges are you facing? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

#HumanCapital #FutureOfWork #WorkforceResilience