How Close Could We Be To Individual Role Design?

Another week, another LinkedIn Post circulating articles about getting the ‘lazy’ back to the office where they belong!

And so it goes on, following another round of Caleb Bond's post from late last year demanding that those who continue to drag their feet in coming back to the office should be paid less. What? Aren’t we supposed to be one of the most modern and forward-thinking countries of the world?

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Although this article enraged me (again), it continues to be an early-2024 theme hanging on from 2023, like a bad hangover from the night before. And like all good remedies, there are some smart individuals dishing out the aspirin to have us thinking clearly (like this example from Scott Farquhar at Atlassian in January)

But it did get me thinking about completely the opposite. How close are we to being able to offer workforces individual role designs that better suit and motivate people?

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Hear me out. I want to say up front that this doesn’t work for every industry, or every company (nothing does), but in a country where an increased number of roles are more what Scott calls 'distributed', why aren't they offered?

Yes, it would initially be a headache on both a practical and legislative level to offer this as an accepted mainstream employment model. It would require a sophisticated and intelligent framework for both companies and individuals to be protected, supported and heard as part of the process. But is that the reason not to do it? If an employer and employee can sit down and craft something sustainable for both parties, why wouldn't we?

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Let’s look at some of the gains. Motivated employees. Present parents. Equality in the workplace. Increased mental health. Reduced absenteeism. Reduced road congestion. Reduced carbon emissions.

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Some of the losers? Office space. Small business in CBDs. Multi-story carparks (heart-breaking). Micromanagers.

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The productivity argument has already been won with hybrid, flexible test cases, run both during COVID (because we were told to), and post-COVID (because we had to). But something very special has started to emerge: the possibility that there may be a fourth mainstream way to earn a living (the first three being: work for someone else as an employee in a very restrictive model; go freelance with increased flexibility; become your own boss and risk it all). A January article in the Australian also by Scott highlighted the obvious: this isn’t just about WFH and the binary decision about whether we should or should not be allowing it (even debating the number of days and the % of time in the office misses the point). It's more about whether we are brave enough to use the IRL test case that was COVID to make a seismic change to how we employ people and how they are engaged in the modern worforce.

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We have increased choice is so many other areas of our lives: how we exercise, how we insure our cars, how we shop. But how we are rewarded in exchange for the skills and expertise we offer the world hasn’t changed in decades even though we have the tools to be able to do it.

It's nuts that we can negotiate our car insurance based on how we use our cars but not be able to have some agency on how we spend the majority of our waking hours.

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So how far are we from individual role design?