Linda Gratton’s tips for How to Reinvent Work and ‘hybrid right’

It was glorious to be at the CIPD Conference in Manchester this week and I think the talks were the best I’ve ever seen – well done Peter Cheese and the team!

Linda Gratton, Professor at London Business School, Author of The 100 Year Life and a lady I am lucky to have met in the past was our opening keynote. And she joined us virtually which was a fab way to kick off this hybrid event of Zoomers and Roomers (a phrase I heard first from Linda - how cute!).

Long term trends to set the scene

Linda reminded us of three long term trends that have been disrupting work way longer than Covid-19:

1.??????Longevity

The current shortage of lorry drivers is predictable, in fact talked about in Linda’s previous books – it’s an ageing population, they retire at 50 and it’s a hard job. Every ten years, life expectancy has been increasing 2-3 years which means if we live until we’re 90, we’re going to be working into our 70s. Therefore the idea of a 3 stage life – full time study, full time work, full time retirement, is ridiculous. And so work needs to be reimagined to deal with multiple stages, which is one of the reasons why entrepreneurial endeavours are increasing.

2.??????Technology

Technology is the trend we tend to focus on most but it doesn’t really disrupt work according to Linda – it changes it. Upskilling and reskilling in response and in preparation for this is top of the agenda.

3.??????Society

Major societal changes happening – more women in senior positions and returning to work after having children. Two people working in the household gives more choice about how both of you work after pandemic.

Impacts of the Pandemic

Everyone is worried about Retention! When 150 people on her webinar told Linda that Retention was their biggest challenge, she hadn’t predicted that.

Here are the key impacts of the pandemic that might be causing the problem:

• Energy depletion – people are exhausted and that’s a big reason why people are resigning. ‘Doing seven hours of Zoom a day is ridiculous’ – I know this but hearing Linda say it had more impact than me thinking it.
• Network constriction – less meaningful contact with less people which arguably stifles innovation as well as happiness
• Working harder, longer, faster
• Problems with boundaries – between work and life, and the different ‘hats’ we wear throughout our day
• Veil of ignorance – a term from Philosophy which I understand is a positive impact from the pandemic – meaning if you want to imagine how the world should be, you should see the world through the eyes of someone else, and imagine what the world should be like for them. This is something home working and video conferencing has enabled like never before (Philosophers, do comment if I’ve understood that wrong!)

So how do we reinvent work now?

Short term: Focus on Flexibility

The pic below shows that we have two axes of flexibility to play with – Time and Place. We’ve explored different workplaces and talked extensively about this in the news. Now its time to consider Time, and consider policies like at Arup, where people have autonomy over when they work their 7 hours.

Long term: A chance to redesign work

Linda says to the thousand HR people in the room, ‘If you aren’t doing this as we move into the new year, you aren’t doing your job’. The 4 steps Linda recommends are:

-?????????Understand what’s going on and what matters

-?????????Reimagine

-?????????Model and test

-?????????Act and create

UNDERSTANDING WHAT MATTERS

If you design based purely on what people want, you’ll have a ‘Yahoo moment’ (they asked people what they wanted, let everyone go home and productivity plummeted so they brought everyone back). So you need to know what matters to people, in the context of helping them to be productive.

Four types of productivity:

-?????????Some jobs require energy

-?????????Some required focus

-?????????Coordination

-?????????Cooperation (to build something greater than what can be achieved individually)

Understanding which jobs require which type of productivity is critical, as well as understanding how knowledge flows around the organisation and the structure of networks.

REIMAGINE

Autonomy is one of the big 4 things that make a good job.

To reimagine Time as well as Place, Linda defines Synchronous time (spent together, coordinating tasks, coaching and catching up) versus Asynchronous time (undisturbed blocks of time, autonomous tasks and flexibility over energy and work preferences). A big reason why people are unhappy at the moment is they aren’t getting any asynchronous time, so this needs to be factored in.

In summary, Linda sets us a task to redesign work by consolidating

What can we imagine? + What principles do we want to guide us? + What do we want to protect?

And if in HR we don’t get this right, then shame on us. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Let me know what you think of Linda’s top tips and if you’d like to chat over coffee about this, or any other HR and Digital Transformation topics.?