The Future of Work: Flexible working shouldn’t be a debate
Anita Lettink is an international keynote speaker, advisor, and author. After a global career in HR and payroll consulting and outsourcing, she started her own business to help CHROs and their teams understand how work is changing and what they can do to prepare their employees and companies to thrive.
In this Q&A style blog, we’ve invited Lettink to discuss workplace developments in an era of New Work. Along the way, she shares her expertise on future of work topics and provides advice for companies looking forward.
New work is a broad topic, but what do you see as the main components of the future of work?
It’s a good question because it’s a vague and abstract concept. I really like to talk with people about the long-term view but then translate it into practical things. Understanding this, when I look at this upcoming decade, I see three major future of work topics: demographics, skills (or lack thereof), and automation.
Considering these topics, what do you think are some of the biggest hurdles for workers and employers in this upcoming era of work?
In terms of demographics, this decade would be where Baby Boomers retire and younger generations join the workforce. However, the influx of younger people will be smaller than the outflow of pensioners, meaning that the available workforce shrinks, leading to labor shortages. But that’s why remote work is so interesting — if you can hire people outside of their location, suddenly, the world becomes your talent pool as opposed to just your geographic area.
Regarding skills, we’re in a massive digital transformation that requires varying skills to fulfill new roles. Most companies haven’t been very forward-looking to help employees prepare for the growing expectations in upcoming years. Instead of supporting education and training for current employees, companies will often look to fill new roles in the outside talent pool, which is very tight. So, in the end, you have a mountain of open vacancies and not enough people to fill the job.
Automation is also an interesting topic because for a long time we’ve been told that robots are out to take our jobs. But since there’s a labor shortage, the remaining employees are overworked and burnt out because the same jobs need to be done, but there are fewer people to actually do them. Automation works very well with manual and repetitive activities. Imagine if the robots could free up an extra 10–20% of mundane tasks, that would free up time for people to do valuable work. So automation isn’t a threat, but an opportunity.
Circling back to the topic of flexible working, do you think that hybrid and remote work is the future of work, or are they already the standard for applicable workplaces?
Hybrid work is not a topic for the future of work because it existed before the pandemic. We had all the tools, technologies, and procedures, but many companies didn’t apply them.
But there shouldn’t be a debate on whether remote work is good or bad because flexible working offers benefits and risks for both the employer and the employee. What really needs to happen is a discussion of the activities that make up work. For example, companies shouldn’t force people back into the office 9–5, where people sit in online meetings or read emails. That isn’t productive. Rather, they should go through the activities that need to be done at the office and make full use of the time people are there, like adding a lunch or social event.
I think the pandemic has shown that employees are absolutely responsible, and companies thrive from this model as well. So it’s not an either-or debate because it’s an open conversation. You can have the best of both worlds. Employees get the work done and make the employer happy.
Originally published at https://collato.com.
