Post COVID-19 : Evolution of Employees

The world of work has changed so quickly in recent decades and the rate of change shows no signs of slowing down. This is considering the trends of the past decades. Jacob Morgan in his book titled “The Future of Work: Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization’” alluded to the fact that world of work as we know it is dead and that the only way forward is to challenge convention around how we work, how we lead, and how we build our companies. Just as the world of work is evolving so also are the employees. Employees are no longer just cogs in the engines of industry; they have transformed themselves and evolved into a company’s most valued assets. How interesting to note that with the right talent, companies are achieving more now than ever before.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on the global economy makes the review of the evolution of employees an interesting topic. Many organizations who have been struggling to accept the reality of changing world of work and the evolving employees have either been or will be forced to accept the reality during and post COVID-19 pandemic.

Let us examine the ways in which employees have indeed evolved in the recent years and the new normal businesses may have to accept and prepare for as the “future employees”

i. Focus on work quality (Past:9am-5pm;Future-Work Anytime): The idea of working 9am-5pm was birthed in the 1980s. It has since remained a norm in the world of work. Employees are expected to complete the clock with less focus on the quality of work done. Workloads seem to be getting bigger, but the ways the employees are managed have changed. Flexible work has been made possible because employers are beginning to realize that what really matters is not having workers sitting at their desks from 9am to 5pm, but rather having employees who are able to get things done. People who have the talent, experience, and expertise to handle their workloads and produce quality work, no matter where they are, are valuable assets to any organization. Therefore, 9-5 organizations may no longer be attractive to future employees.

 ii. Flexible Work (Past-Work in a corporate office; Future-Work anywhere): One of the major impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic is the lockdown forced on major cities/nations across the globe. Several offices have had to be closed as a result of this. It is interesting to know that employees have evolved such that they are able to work anywhere, and anytime. This was made possible by the various technologies in place such as cloud computing, remote access to the office environment, and email on our smartphones (the collaborative technologies in place). Working away from the office was not just only possible but was also very easy. The only surviving organizations in the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic are the ones whose workplace has changed so that employees can focus on getting things done, no matter where or when. This is the only way the future employee will work. Post COVID-19, many organizations will have to adopt and adapt to this.

iii. Use any device: Some organizations as part of their policies do not allow employees to bring their own device of any kind into the workplace. As a result of this, such companies spend money on providing laptops, smartphones and other productivity devices to their employees so they could work away from the office. Now it’s becoming more common for employees to prefer using their own devices, and for employers to allow it. Many organizations in most developed world require their employees to be more productive and therefore put in place an all-inclusive mobile strategy that makes it possible for personally owned mobile devices to be used safely in work environment as this has proved to increase employee productivity while reducing operating costs for the organization. It has also been found that applicants for jobs prefer the work environment where employees can use their devices. Bring your own device (BYOD) is an employee IT ownership model that presents an attractive option to organizations. BYODs are extensions of corporate networks and thus it is essential to secure them in order to protect enterprise networks. Organizations such as IBM, Ford and Intel are current champions of BYOD “Bring Your Own Device”. They all have in place an adequate BYOD Policy. However, some organizations are yet to embrace this in the light of security concerns. It is important to note that, the future employees will be more of BYOD.

iv. Focused on Outcome (a step beyond output): Before now, it has been said that future employees are being evaluated not by how many hours they sit in their offices but by what they produce. This is often referred to as “output”. There is no longer a need for most employees to work from an office or to work 9-5. However, the future employees will focus more on outcomes which answer the questions of why we want to achieve what (output) we set out to achieve. They operate on a more connected/engaged level to business outcomes.

v. Create or Reimagine Their Own Corporate Ladder: Gone are the days employees put in their times with just one company for years to earn promotions. Future employees are better described by their ability to create or reimagine their own corporate ladders instead of climbing the traditional hierarchical corporate ladders. They can experiment with new opportunities by growing horizontally, perhaps with new certifications, or diagonally, by trying out similar skills in a new division or with a new company. Some organizations such as Google and Facebook already foster cultures of growth by helping people follow their paths of natural inclination and excellence. They have already prepared themselves for these future employees.

A January 2018 Harvard Business Review article cited a great example of how this plays out. The authors pointed to how a director at Facebook, named Cynthia, discovered that she preferred solving problems with clients to "leading a large team of HR Business Partners."

In this case, the leadership team at Facebook helped Cynthia move from her people leader role into the problem-solving one she preferred. The organization allowed and even encouraged Cynthia to develop according to her unique strengths, thereby helping to spare her from the "blind breathless climb." Here we see a death of the “ladder”.

vi. Customized work: Currently in most organizations, they operate a type of pre-determined work. This is because essentially the career path of the employee is set out for them once they join the company. If they get hired in the Sales Department, then they will typically stay in that area and build a career path therein. It is akin to a set-up marriage for a child before such is even old enough to make an informed choice. However, future employees operate a type of customized work. Future employee wants to shape their career path within an organization and would prefer a workplace that allows them to navigate to the roles they are best at and most passionate about. 

With the freelancer economy, collaboration platforms, and new management approaches; employees are now starting to shape their own career paths and how they actually work. They no longer need to focus on ascending the corporate ladder, they are now building their corporate ladder as earlier alluded. Companies like Deloitte offer a “Mass Career Customization Program” which allows employees to change their work preferences twice a year. This was driven by the need to meet the changing needs of evolving employees at different career and life stages while meeting the needs of the business. As a result, employees can make changes in four dimensions of their work such as Pace (options relating to the rate of career development and growth); Workload (choices relating to the quantity of work output); Location/ Schedule (options for where and when work is performed) and ; Role (choices in position and responsibilities). Some other organizations have the culture of allowing employees to completely pick the projects they work on or who they work with! This is a complete paradigm shift from the old norms.

vii. Sharing of Information: Employees before now were known for hoarding useful information as there were neither incentives nor scalable ways for them to share what they have or know with others for appropriate reward or recognition. The system they operate in makes them understand that knowledge is power. Employees were not empowered to think creatively or innovatively. They believe they are in competition with peers within the organization. However, employees of the future have evolved into innovative, creative, risk-taking chain of the entire workplace value chain. They speak up, come up with new solutions and are becoming more valued in the workplace irrespective of their levels or work unit. This has led to increased collaboration, and employees are more likely to feel part of a team they can share information with, instead of competing against one another. This practice is also being incentivized in some organizations. Some have internal incubators to intrapreneurs programs to open innovation programs.

viii. Anyone Can Become A Leader and Leveraging Collaborative Technologies: As earlier alluded above, employees were previously thought of as being expendable assets, which meant they had no voice within the organization. Once again, collaboration technologies (such as e-mails, discussion forum, instant messaging and texting, web conferencing, interactive video and shared work place) have played crucial roles as any employee within an organization stands a greater chance of being recognized as a leader by sharing their innovative ideas, thoughts, concepts, etc through them. Today’s workplace boasts of more leaders. Organizations are encouraging creativity and solutions; more employees have the chance to prove themselves and ascend to leadership roles. The future employees crave for more collaboration because of their understanding and exposure that it is easier for employees to become leaders within their organizations by sharing content and expertise with colleagues, so they can provide support to one another. The future and evolving collaborative employees live by the code “you rise by lifting others”.

 ix. Learning over Knowing (Focused on Adaptive Learning): Knowledge as it is nothing but a commodity in our current world. We are inundated with the statement “Do you need any information, just Google it!” This can happen at the instance of using your smartphones. However, there has been a shift in the workplace from valuing simply knowing the facts to being able to learn. Employees are now expected to adapt quickly and learn new things, constantly updating their knowledge. It’s not enough to know the rules of the game; they need to learn new ones and how they affect the situation. We live in the reality of the era of much spoken about “Adaptive Learning”. Adaptive learning is one technique for providing personalized learning, which aims to provide efficient, effective, and customized learning paths to engage each learner. Adaptive learning systems use a data-driven approach to adjust the path and pace of learning, enabling the delivery of personalized learning at scale. The future employees have evolved to having what we refer to as learning agility. They can continue to learn on the job (experiential learning) and adapt what they have learnt.

 x. Democratized Learning and Teaching (Everyone is a Student and a Teacher): How fast we have moved into the era where people have expertise to share. Technology as we know it has blurred the definition of teacher and student. In most organizations today, if you want to learn something you have to sign up for and attend a class that may be a few days or a few weeks away. Simply being able to connect employees to each other provides a way for democratized learning and teaching in ways that were never before possible. Studies have shown that the best form of knowledge is the tacit knowledge of the subject matter experts (SMEs) inside an organizations. In fact, Google has moved 75 percent of all its learning and knowledge-sharing to a model it calls “G2G” — Googler-to-Googler. With this organizations can tap into the best knowledge and insight which come from their own experts. Employees of the future are no longer engaged or motivated by off the shelf corporate learning and teaching with poor discovery and personalization. Therefore, employees of the future are better engaged in an organization that has the technology and tools to draw out and benefit from the great potential of the minds of its employees. They make it easy for people to share knowledge by acting as a network that facilitates the digitization of the informal learning process, they make it more tangible, shareable and effective. In this way, learning, teaching and expertise are democratized.

In conclusion: It is important to note that as the future of work is evolving, so are the employees evolving too. Technologies will continue to be a major driver in the evolution of work and employees. The jobs of the future are expected to be more machine-powered and data-driven than in the past, but they will also likely require human skills in areas such as problem-solving, communication, listening, interpretation and design. As the world of work and employee evolves, techniques such as design thinking can help organizations define roles that incorporate new types of capabilities, skills, activities, and practices needed to get the work done. During this process, ask the following critical questions - As an organization, have you noticed the evolution of your organization? In what other ways do you think they have changed over the years? How do we evolve as an organization as the workplace and employees’ priorities change?

In order to make this happen successfully, organizations will need to change the way work is conceived and develop the training of their workforce (the evolving employees) to take on new roles and assignments. Otherwise, organizations will be weighed down trying to apply legacy concepts and skills on to the new and quickly emerging world of human-machine collaboration. This will not attract the future employees. They are digital natives.