This week I was lucky enough to attend the annual CIPD -in person!! What a treat it was to catch up with people face to face again, although I have to say even for a hardcore extrovert like me it was exhausting! The highlight of the two days for me was Lynda Gratton’s keynote on the future of work. I wanted to share some of the key take-aways with you.
First up, Lynda made the argument that many of the changes and trends we’re seeing in the world of work, which we might attribute to the pandemic, were actually already in place. It’s easy to blame the great resignation (is it great??) on Covid-19 and associated lockdowns etc but actually the pandemic has just accelerated the changes that were already happening. Lynda talked about these trends in the following ways (and if you’re familiar with her work this won’t be news to you):
1.Longevity – no surprises here given Lynda’s book ‘The 100 Year Life’ was published back in 2016. We’re living longer than ever before and this obviously impacts our working lives. It’s not unusual these days to hear about people changing careers in later life. But there’s nothing like a global pandemic to give you a dose of perspective and question whether or not you can really do what you do for the next decade or two.
2.Technology – in 60% of jobs one third of tasks can be automated, and by 2030 around 20-50 million digital job will have been created. Again this trend was already happening but estimates from Microsoft are that the pandemic accelerated this by at least a couple of years. I know from the clients we work with just how true this is – one of our clients implemented MS Teams in 2 weeks at the start of the pandemic when the original plan had been to roll it over 2-3 years.
3.Society – Lynda talked about the rise of households with more people working, dual careers, and side-hustles. Again a trend that was around BC (before covid) but has seen an increase during the pandemic. Many people had no choice but to look elsewhere for work, but on doing so found that the grass might have been greener. On the flipside though, Lynda also talked about the rising inequalities with respect to work; we’re now adding those who are unable to enjoy the autonomy of working in different places to the long list that was in place before the pandemic.
She then talked about the profound impact the pandemic has had on the world of work. In summary:
- We’ve witnessed a depletion in energy levels and a negative impact on wellbeing
- We’ve seen our networks constricted which has impacted innovation
- However she also argued that the ‘veil of ignorance’ had been lifted, in that senior leaders were able to get a real sense of what working life can be like for their teams
Lynda then went on to talk about hybrid. She made the case for moving the conversation on from hybrid to flexibility which is essentially what hybrid is. And she shared her brilliant model which argues hybrid is more than just where we work, but should also include when we work as well.
I would also add a third dimension to this model – the work we do. It is possible to create flexibility in the work we do if we adopt job-crafting. Flexibility at work gives us autonomy and all of the positive benefits that are associated: better experience, higher engagement, and improved performance.
We know getting hybrid, or flexibility right is not always straightforward or easy. One of the questions Lynda posed which I loved, was to think about what an office or workplace is for and what should happen there? She also emphasised that now more then ever we need to exercise empathy; flexibility by definition is not going to be a one size fits all approach. But we have an amazing opportunity to finally get this right for our people. As we have said many times before there is no playbook or best practice for what happens next, we are all learning and experimenting. I came away from Lynda’s keynote with optimism that finally we might be able to create a positive future of work today.
If you want to check out our other blogs on hybrid working take a look here:
How to design a hybrid working experience post-COVID restrictions
How to make people feel like they belong in a hybrid working environment
How to use neuroscience to design a hybrid experience to engage your people
How to design your hybrid working experience to deliver employee engagement
