Shifting the Workforce Equation: Employees are the New Customers

Innovation accelerates in crisis. How should the employee experience evolve?

by Marcus Piña

The construct of the workforce continues to evolve and transform. That’s a given. From the notion of working in offices, moving into cubes, out into open floor plans, and then back into offices again, we’re a restless and curious lot. We migrate to and move on from staid designs about how and where we should work. We see technology, also ever-evolving, as an unstoppable force in shaping what we mean by “workforce”. And this couldn’t be more true or relevant than right now when COVID-19 is upending almost every existing paradigm and forcing us all to re-evaluate.

In retail and service industries — from the shop floor to vast warehouses, to cars, trucks, and vans, and into our homes — the idea of the workplace is a physicality that shifts and adapts. It is being reimagined in real-time as the workforce transcends walled boundaries and becomes distributed across locales, embracing technologies to deliver on new experiences.

With the onset of the same and next day delivery and pickup, digital retail is forcing many retailers to shift their strategies. Traditionally, brick and mortar destinations provided the container for…