Reflections on 2021, the Year We Rediscovered the Humanity of Work

Every year end our mailboxes get overrun with “trends reports” and “next year’s predictions.” As the tradition goes, forecasts of the future are designed to confirm back to us what we ourselves have reported on the surveys and interviews over the year. The prediction machine repeats its annual cycle running on a treadmill rather than competing in a marathon where every mile matters. We need to hit the brakes on the tradition of predictions and reflect on the step change that the year 2021 has brought to the workplace culture. There are six noticeable shifts in the collective attitudes that will forever change how we see work, workplace, and the worker for years to come. They all center on rediscovering what it means to be human at work.

#1. The pandemic changed WHY people work, not just HOW they work. Year two of remote working made it abundantly clear that the Great Resignation has become a feature not a momentary glitch. Many across generations hit the reset button on their lives, jobs, and relationships. Great Reassessment can better describe what the phenomenon is all about. The pre-pandemic focus on Employee Experience, as curated by the employer, has evolved into the employees taking control of their own lives. Individually and en masse workers became increasingly aware of how their time was being spent and whether they were being valued. The most frequently asked question was not one of survival, but one of meaning in life. In the year ahead, every business striving to be on the winning side of the workforce contest will have to accept that incentives alone will not make the cut. Competing on human centered experience, not the manufactured employee experience, is the new battle ground for the workplaces going forward.

#2. Simplified and personalized workplace becomes the norm. Remote working changed the way employees show up at work. The zoom screen equalized hierarchies and leveled pre-pandemic protocols and standards. Expectations of authenticity and personalization introduced more informal touch. The “zoom shirt” and the “lockdown haircuts” reset expectations of appearances. The cosmetics industry took a hit as make up washed off faces on the zoom call. Universal sentiment that the society had become too concerned with the external appearances and superficial representations got an unexpected boost. People began to look, sound, and express themselves differently on their screens. The domino effect is beginning to kick in when even the most traditional workplaces began loosening dress codes to ease some of the “return to work” pressures. One Harvard professor predicts that we will see the end of man’s necktie at work once the pandemic is over. The post-pandemic etiquette is beginning to take shape and will be informed by the desire for self-expression, concern for sustainability, and convenience.

#3. Looming Attention Recession challenges the Work tech. Even the best-intentioned organizations rely on technology to deliver their workplace personalization and employee experience. Yet, zoom fatigue, screen glare and eye strain added to the extracurricular demands from streaming, games and after work entertainment taxed employees’ attention to the limit. Organizations need to get smart about treating employee attention as a scarce resource. Rationing and prioritizing communications to compete for employee attention is a skill employers need to learn from advertisers who are a few steps ahead of the employers and have been in the fight for consumer’s eyeballs since the pre-internet times.

#4. Imperfect Leadership moves to the center. The pandemic demanded of everyone to connect to the most basic, down to earth side of their lives. Leaders turned up on calls and made most consequential decisions -- zoom shirts with no neck ties while kids, pets, and plants hovered in the backdrop. There was no time nor tolerance for the curated leader image and its unreal standards of perfection. Leaders who failed to reach deeper into their humanity, show empathy, and connect with their employees, missed out on a once in a lifetime opportunity to meet their organizations where they are and seal their trust.

#5. Regaining the sense of control. It is impossible to live through the pandemic without experiencing a sense of loss, disempowerment, and trauma. Physical danger aside, employees across all demographics reported mental health challenges, anxiety, and stress and organizations will have to deal with the consequences for some time to come. One strategy all organizations must embrace is giving employees back their sense of control over their lives. Whether it comes down to time off, such as Nike's Corporate Week Off, or similar approaches and flexible remote working policies that are introduced and supported, the effect of these is the same - employees feel more in control of their time and destiny.

#6. The rapid rise of the alternative futures. From cryptocurrencies, NFTs and the full blown world of the Metaverse, the pandemic accelerated the development of alternatives to today’s institutions. Once only understood among a relatively fringe community of technologists, futurists and sci-fi writers, these technologies are now quickly becoming the household names. While most organizations today are carefully watching from the sidelines, blockchain enabled currencies, non-fungible tokens, and metaverses are expanding outside their firewalls. The gig economy lost its appeal in the pandemic, while the rising allure of crypto and metaverse options draws the next generation cohort of explorers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. The next step for companies would be to explore the alternative future and provide a bridge to broader acceptance, adoption, and expansion of these technologies for internal use. The list of companies accepting cryptocurrencies is still limited but will be expanding to unlock alternative experiences of work.

One of the many lessons we have learned in year two of the pandemic was to honor our humanity, recognize its fragility, and embrace its potential in the coming 2022.