The imminent shift in work, workforce, and workplace

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The 40-hour workweek has a history of more than 100 years. It was widely adopted with US Congress passing the Fair Labor Standards Act in the 1940s and became a global mantra later. This model has an underlining assumption that work will happen at a workplace, away from home.

Businesses grew complex, professions evolved, and the average workweek increased by 50–100%, but the way we work remained constant. New technologies, high-speed broadband, and the demand for increased productivity forced us to rethink work models. The solutions like digital transformation and workforce automation were in the offing, though with a slow adoption rate.

The recent pandemic has fired up many things at many levels. Satya Nadella recently quoted that we experienced two years of digital transformation in the past two months. Countries went into lockdown, and employees started to work from home (WFH). Companies fast-tracked tech adoption foe, e.g., cloud-based collaboration tools & video conference tools, and implemented work from home policies. As per a Mckinsey Article, 200 MN Chinese professionals started working from home for the first time this year. As per Livemint, 90% of IT employees,70–80% of BPOs, e-commerce, and SMEs are now working from home in India.

People working from home have mixed views about this phenomenon. Professionals in busy cities are expecting flexible WFH to continue. The productivity jump due to this arrangement does have the peril of increased working hours and lesser social interaction. A few dipstick surveys did highlight that many professionals were willing to take a pay cut to work remotely. On the other hand, schoolteachers are longing to get back as most of them are teaching their kids as well as taking online classes, which increased their workload.

Fundamental shifts

We are expecting fundamental sifts in the following seven areas, going forward.

1. Alternate Employment

Increasingly, organizations would now tap into different types of workforce arrangements. On the other side, multiple gigs would be then ‘new normal’ for professionals. Other than regular full-time, part-time, or fixed-term employments, organizations now would increasingly look the following arrangement to hire or redeploy existing workforce

· Contingent / Consultant — Hired for a specific task/job and typically for a limited period to be done from the workplace. They could work for multiple employers.

· Gig / Free agents — Online contingent, self-employed workforce.

· Outsourcing — Services/functions done by a third party in or outside the workplace

· Talent platforms — Digital work platforms that provide online peer-to-peer intermediation through which users can have temporary access to other users

· Partnerships/alliances — agreements between businesses, usually motivated by cost reduction and improved service for the customer

· Internships — Students working in an organization to gain experience with or without pay

· Volunteers — people who do jobs by free choice usually with no payment expected or given

· Bots/robots/ programs — non-human workforce, backed by technology.

Each of these arrangements not just has a different legal, compliance, and security set up but also has a different team, performance agreement, and output systems as well.

2. Structures

· Smaller teams: the shift from large functions to smaller teams is eminent as its easier to sustain and manage smaller units in the new way of work

· Dynamic / Shared teams: With the changes in the work model and team structures, most of the team members could work on multiple projects at a time

3. Work models: Some of the popular models that could evolve would are

• Work-from-home + Office: Could be the most popular model where people would need to come to the office only when it’s required. The model has many positives, but the company would be required to maintain a more massive infrastructure
• Centralized Office + work-from-anywhere: would have fewer employees in an office set up and let employees work from anywhere there is stable internet and access to data.
• Office less: it is a fully remote work arrangement without an office, which is the most advanced remote work arrangement.
• Small distributed setups: Companies will have smaller office setups or meetup spaces due to technological limitations, data security reasons, or the nature of work itself.

The existing work form the office/ workplace model will remain for a few types of jobs in industries like healthcare, warehouse, retail outlets, to name a few.

4.Work processes

• The influx of machines: many work processes would adopt bot/robot/programs in functions like customer service, sales, marketing, HR, finance, and similar professions. This change would be not just in transactional/ routine jobs but interaction, analytical and content jobs.
• Work routine: With more people working from a different location, at their convenience, work routines would also undergo a transition

5.Tools & Technologies

Employees would have an arsenal of tools and technologies for communication, collaboration, pay, and productivity, Every professional would evolve like fictional characters with their unique skills and custom weaponry. The digital workforce would pair up with the human workforce to maximize output.

The digital workforce would pair up with the human workforce to maximize output.

6. Reward

We are expecting significant shifts in the way we reward employees for their work

• Output-based pay: Shift from monthly/weekly pay system to daily or hourly pay system or an output-based pay system, is eminent in most of the work engagements
• Individualized pay systems: Pay to be a ‘super personalized,’ which will consider the individual’s output, the budget of the role, and market dynamics.
• Rewards Supermarket: Companies would sign up for an array of pay and benefits options for employees to choose from, based on their budget allocation.
• Digital Pay: Global cash cards, digital currency payments are slowly picking up, New Zealand recently legalized cryptocurrency salaries

7. Performance

· Continuous performance: Shift from Annual KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to much more agile OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) — a team-based goal setting, reviewed and adjusted on a monthly or a quarterly basis

· Check-ins: Team managers to have regular 1–1 check-in with the teammates

· Feedback: Structure feedback from different sources on a real-time basis

The definition of an organization is evolving. The need for physical space is under question for some of the entities. The way people work is also changing. Till now, ‘work mode’ never included family or children in it. Single employment was/ is a legal requirement, and alternate employment and pay models are amending this as well. Many professionals will transform themselves as entrepreneurs, willingly or not.

Many professionals will transform themselves as entrepreneurs, willingly or not.

Our entity, peoplsense, resonates a lot with the new, evolving world. Peoplsense has a purpose, a story, and a small team. We’ partner’ with companies to help them manage work, workplace, and workforce to create a people-centric organization. We reach out to experts when required and uses technology to deliver our work. What we do not have is a physical office space, and 50% of our team is not even in the same city.

Please do let us know your views about this article or write to us at hello@peoplsense.com