When thinking about the future of anything the only certainty is uncertainty. In that vein the Future of Work has been and always will be oriented around change and change management.
The disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic proved this as a truism.
The sudden, forced pivot to remote work in March 2020 left many organizations on their own to learn how to engage with a distributed workforce, significantly accelerating existing trends.
From here we can only guess as to what the future holds. We don’t know what disruptive world events or new technologies might reshape the landscape again. Just as nobody predicted the pandemic.
So, while we don’t know the next transformations of work life, we can put in place systems and processes that are inherently Future Proof adapting with our organization and supporting change versus hindering it.
The Future is Here, for Now…
Remote work has its limitations. However, at least for the foreseeable future, expecting everyone to come into an office five days a week could put a strain on your teams and hinder your ability to keep top talent. According to an IWG workspace survey 3 out of 4 workers globally now consider flexible working to be “the new normal.
While there are certainly advantages to the hybrid approach including:
- Reduced commute times
- Lower overhead
- Better work life balance
- Increases in productivity
- Lower attrition rates
There are also significant disadvantages that, if not addressed, could cause significant and unintended problems for both employees and organizations.
Areas that could stress organizations include:
Increased Electronic Communication – A loss of face-to-face interaction with more emphasis on email and chat reduces the quality of information exchange. This is exacerbated as employees see an increase in the amount of digital communication they receive through an increasing number of tools. Sierra Research shows that on average, companies are using seven different tools for messaging, communication, file sharing, and scheduling.
A recent study confirmed this potential digital overload:
- 84% of respondents said their company has added 2 or more new communication platforms since they began to work from home.
- 56% said that 4 or more hours are added to their workweek from the new digital messaging tools alone.
- 50% of respondents say they receive more than 20 additional emails each week than they did before the transition to remote work.
Culture and connectivity – With more limited interactions employees have fewer opportunities to bond over their shared visions for the company or shared passions outside of work.
Shared experience and team building exercises are made more difficult when we are apart. Employees need a new tool for experience that connects and engages them holistically across different aspects of their organization.
Evolving Benefit Plans – Covid-19 led many companies to reconsider which types of benefits were most useful to their employees in this ‘new normal’. These changes include the expansion of benefits that support employee health and well-being needs in remote and hybrid workplaces, with increased attention to parental leave and family caregiving duties. These benefits, however, saw large fall off in usage as HR teams had more limited access to engage employees directly with regard to the changes. Sierra Research shows that the average number of HR systems of record increased from 8 to 11 this year.
This clutter exacerbates issues encountered during complex moments in an employee journey (onboarding, offboarding, or a leave of absence), which require coordinated support and services across multiple departments.
When departments deliver services separately through different portals, systems, and processes, they are only solving a piece of the puzzle. The resulting experience is time consuming, fragmented, and inconsistent.
The Future Proof Workplace
The question this leaves us with is how do we address the needs we face currently, but also start to build a more resilient platform for managing change going forward?
Streamline Everything
Employees want a single place to find information and solve problems. When workers were asked how businesses might fix the core issues above a majority of respondents stated that the primary focus should be on streamlining communication processes and tools.
What they are looking for is a tool that seamlessly drives workflows across different departments and systems through a single, easy to use, mobile first experience that obscures complexity. Combine every process that an employee encounters in a journey (automated workflows that can combine forms automation, video interviews, e-learning, communication, and benefits discovery) into a simple, guided step by step process.
By bringing together every tool and resource in a centralized management platform you eliminate the need for employees to learn how to use the ERP and other systems for service-related issues, thereby making employees more productive and engaged.
Foster Collaboration & Bonding
When you’re remote, leadership has to make dedicated time to promote teammate communication and bonding. Having a system in place that can easily connect and engage teams around different events, challenges, or other activities is paramount.
The system needs to be intelligent, predictive, and provide “nudges” to help employees move through different journeys regardless of their focus, making employees feel as if their organization has an understanding of needs throughout the entire employee journey.
Simplify Discovery
One of the biggest onboarding issues in business is teaching employees where everything is and adding new resources always begs the question how to distribute it to our teams.
HR and IT departments need something to help standardize their applications and bring them together.
Giving your employees a single homebase to access all of their benefits, wellness tools, and other resources streamlines the process of discovery for employees and gives HR teams the tools to distribute, track, challenge, and reward users for their usage.
Just as Amazon.com, Google, and Facebook deliver a single, integrated, productive, tailored experience to consumers, we need a similar “user-centric” architecture for employees as well.
Are you Ready for the Future of Work?
The fact is, we don’t really know what work will look like in, say, 2035. But we know it will be different, just as work in 2020 looked very different from work in 2005 and infinitely different from work in 1995.
We can, however, extrapolate some trends, which will include an increase in hybrid work, increased automation of routine tasks, and the growing use of digital technology to assist with, manage, and coordinate our work.
The future of work will call for HR and IT to work together to streamline their applications and hide unnecessary complexity from their teams. These systems will better support corporate wellness programs, rewards or challenges, and engagement.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was one platform to integrate this all together enabling internal HR and IT to evolve without changing the employee experience, as companies build more integrated service organizations to meet employee needs.
Bridge the gap between heterogeneous systems, disparate functional service centers, and the ultimate employee needs!
To find out how our platform can help future proof your organization and give you a head start preparing for the future of work, contact Refresh today.