Shaping the Future of Work
Research shows us that businesses looking beyond the COVID-19 pandemic are going to be facing a new kind of challenge: Managing a highly complicated, hybrid workforce. A Gartner study found that 82% of business leaders say their organizations plan to let employees continue to work from home at least some of the time, while 47% plan to allow employees to do so permanently.
As business leaders, we need to shift our thinking and look at the hybrid workforce as a strength within the organization. The sequence for change with any organization considers a framework that includes workplace modernization, the well-being of teams, a new organizational structure, and talent enablement. Modernized new processes will need to be optimized for a hybrid workforce, including the investment in the right set of tools to enable teams and creating an outcome-based strategy that will lead an organization through it’s transformation.
How do we create social connections in an organic way to help create a new workplace culture?
Modern workplaces use to be defined by open-concept spaces that promoted collaboration and social interactions. The pandemic has completely redefined the modern workplace and employees have the flexibility to work remotely and not just from their homes but also anywhere in the world. Physical workspaces are not a thing of the past, but a reinvention of the employee experience and how the virtual and physical environments will interact to set the tone for a redefined workplace culture.
As leaders, we need to think about creating meaningful human connections to support our teams and culture within our organizations. There are tools available that focus on social interactions such as Donut -a platform that spontaneously pairs people to have conversations with each other that they would not have otherwise interacted within their roles. Similar to the experiences we once had in the office at the water cooler.
Studies show that ‘video call fatigue’ causes our brain to process information differently. So to combat this issue, Microsoft has developed a feature called “Together-mode” in Teams. This feature creates a more human experience and reduces the cognitive load, caused by the overwhelming amount of virtual meetings we are now attending. Next year, Microsoft will also be launching a Virtual commute or blocks of time when users will be encouraged to set goals for the day and reflect on wins, losses, and to-dos to help individuals with work-life balance.
How can we empower the health of our employees every day?
COVID-19 has put more responsibility on HR departments than before while exposing gaps in today’s approach to employee health, benefits, and well-being.
Employees have difficulty simply finding, understanding, and juggling the use of different tools and plethora of offerings available to them.
For employers, the economic strain and administrative burden has increased. The pandemic has highlighted the difficulties of making workforce decisions without access to real-time data on employee health and risk areas. And on top of that, the demand for virtual care in increasing leaving many employers scrambling.
How are you using data to understand how employees are feeling so that your organization can intervene before an employee experiences burnout?
A newly emerging category of HR technology is the ‘Health Operating System’ (Health OS). This is the next-generation technology that brings together health, benefits, and well-being into a unified platform that delivers a personalized employee experience.
How do we enable talent to lead and drive an outcome-based strategy?
The hybrid work environment can be viewed as a strength, not just a challenge. It presents a unique opportunity to democratize the way we work and design a new org structure for the future of work.
A suggested approach is to implement agile systems and ‘fluid roles’ to perform tasks that need to be done, rather than functional siloes and hierarchical teams. This approach creates a dynamic system that is performance-based and allows leaders and managers to lead their teams in the best way possible.
Most business leaders are well-acquainted with the software as a service (SaaS) model, which is widely associated with efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and scalability. And companies are now taking advantage of the talent-as-a-service workforce model (TaaS).
TaaS is the fast delivery of high-skilled, on-demand workers who are accessible to companies through a cloud-based platform. Similarly, to SaaS, TaaS also helps companies cut costs and increase efficiency.
The obvious benefit of adopting a TaaS workforce is that it enables flexible schedules and the ability to work from any location, however independent workers enjoy many other benefits, such as:
Zero commute time
More time with family
Ability to work and travel anywhere
A less stressful work environment
More meaningful work
Opportunities to learn and advance
Flexibility to complete tasks outside regular work hours
More opportunities to engage and work in ideal state of flow with less distraction
In conclusion, we need to evaluate the best approach that works for our people, processes, and current technology stack. While managing a hybrid workforce is undeniably complex, modern leaders have the opportunity to prove themselves; by looking outside the box of traditional thinking and develop an outcome-based strategy that will lead organizations through a successful transformation.