The Upside-Down World

8 trends that might shape the new workplace

Jeroen Wels, BP Biddappa

Life, as we know it, has been turned upside down in the second quarter of this year. In one fell stroke, billions of people across almost every country in the world have been locked down in their homes with no certainty about when it will open up again – and, in fact, when it does, in what form. We now start to see in countries like China, New Zealand and Australia and European countries, what ‘opening up’ could mean for the workplace. 

Whilst our primary focus in Unilever is to keep our people safe and healthy, a small multi-disciplinary team looked at early trends, sentiments, and employee preferences in a post-covid world. While this study was, by no means, exhaustive, it did study employee responses and feedback at Unilever, internal and external social listening on what people had to say across several countries over a period of time and a review of other published research.

The team, comprising #IlkozErsoylu, #MelHunt, #DavidTregidgo and #ManishMakhijani, isolated 8 trends that might shape the workplace in the coming weeks and months and years.

1. Back to Cottages: the distributed workforce

Employees are far more open to agile working; and that doesn’t mean just working from home but from anywhere really (Unilever employees, for instance, say they would be in favour of increasing the proportion of time they spend working from home post the pandemic). This saves the trouble of commuting, upholds social distancing, reduces distractions while increasing focus time and generally drives work life balance. External research shows that whilst employers see this as a cost saving opportunity, they may also look at how to monitor productivity in this new context. For this trend to succeed, it is imperative for Companies to ensure their people have great IT infrastructure, trusting and empowering line managers and collaborating employees. Four things we are very lucky to have at Unilever.

2. Offices are the safe and inspiring place to meet

With the heightened hygiene measures taking place to keep the offices germ free - including checks at the entry point, enabling of social distances via wider gaps between working stations - offices would actually be safer places to meet – more than several other public places. People would go to office when they need to collaborate, complementing the home environment as a focus space for working. Offices would allow lot more personalisation of spaces since people would want these spaces to feel more like home - thereby creating a comfortable collaboration environment. They will also be crucial, in inspiring creativity and innovation that will be critical to businesses not just surviving but also thriving in the future.

3. Life-Long Learning Comes of Age Online

With a potential decline in the number of jobs available in the market today and existing employees expected to 'flex' their skills a lot more, employees would need to constantly upgrade their skills to do not only their current jobs but to also keep themselves fit for the emerging opportunities within the organisation. People would be far more accepting of virtual training programs, and the programmes would also improve as learning technology continues to improve. The gig economy is likely to grow further, fuelling the need for people to be on a perpetual learning curve. 

4. Heightened Awareness of Wellbeing and Work life balance

Consciousness of wellbeing (including work life balance) shows an increase, with people more actively seeking happiness, meaning and balance in everything they do. This trend manifests itself in all other trends. The urge to reduce the commute, constantly learning to upgrade, seeking purposeful organisations etc – all of which are reflections of a heightened sense of wellbeing and need to be thriving both personally and professionally. 

5. Safe havens stand out

Companies genuinely looking after their employees, consumers and partners would become employers of choice as issues like pay cuts, personal/medical leave, health benefits etc once again rise in importance. Pride in working for organisations with purpose at the heart of everything they do would be far higher than the pride of working for the hottest ‘newbie’, for instance. These organisations would be expected to be a lot more transparent about their plans, their purpose and be a lot less bureaucratic and with simplified decision-making structures.

6. E- Everything

Not surprisingly, with the rise in digitalisation, virtual collaboration would be the default – many networked people would collaborate online to create and produce ideas and knowledge and content. People would be hired to contribute irrespective of locations and time zones. This would also give rise to lot more acceptance of diversity and inclusion within teams – a super important, and possibly, tectonic shift.

7. Emergence of frontline heroes

COVID has surfaced a new breed of heroes and heroines – roles that might have been traditionally undervalued (delivery drivers, factory operators, care workers etc), shifting the balance from a focus on a few visibly key roles to critical workflow roles that companies and societies rely on. These 100 or more days have inverted our pyramids and put the front line at the heart of our society.

8. The immobile workforce 

The economic fallout would reduce vacancies and, hence, attrition, resulting in a more static workforce. Potential unemployment in the near future could mean a rapid shift in balance from the employee to the employer and a change from the “war for talent” to the “war for employment”. However, there are some skills which would be even more in demand and so it will be crucial for organisations to have a laser focus on retaining talent with key skills who are harder to replace. 

What also clearly seems to come across, in a world with scarce resource and need for speed is a heightened need to step up on two actions – building agile ways of working and redeploying talent to areas of highest value. Over the next few months, it will be interesting to see which of these trends would sustain and lead to a change in mindset and societal thinking. Whichever trends sustain, this could well be the start of a new and more aware era. Like it or not, given the global world that we live in, pandemics may visit us again and so new days will mean new ways!

We'd love to hear your point of views as we explore what is here to stay and what might change forever.