There’s been a lot of media around the 'future of work' recently and our musings have often run in parallel to those trending in the ether.  While this is a ‘larger than this blog’ topic, here’s an overview of some of the discussions we’ve been having recently.

The individual

One of things we’ve observed is a move away from generally grouping people in order to create solutions.  Instead we are starting to see the recognition of the individual — with their own needs and wants.  The empathy stage of Design Thinking is a great example of getting a greater insight into the user/customer at this individual level.  This of course makes doing business even more complex, from designing products to marketing them, from attracting the right talent to leading and developing them.  And when it comes to creating a collaborative workplace, identifying the ‘WIIFM’ at this level of individualism is challenging.

So how do you create something that suits everyone?  Frankly, you don’t.  What’s more, you don’t actually need to if you grow a workforce that seeks out and creates their own solutions.

Encouraging your leadership team to understand their individual team members is a great way to start.  This information can then be used to direct staff to solutions that appeal to a variety of needs, styles and desired outcomes.  But alone, this could lead to the creation of a workforce that becomes complacent and reliant on being fed the answers.

Reflection and feedback

It pays to look at current education practices.  Business should be moving towards the development of a workforce that knows how to learn, set goals, reflect on progress and grow for themselves — just as students age 5 and above are now being taught.  This model of reflecting and giving/receiving feedback means that students are becoming fluent in the identification of how they want to experience their future as well as what they want to do.  They are able to find or create solutions for themselves and seek out feedback from those they feel can give them what they need.  By surrounding themselves with the right people and the right things, they are able to achieve their desired future state more quickly.

So the challenge as we see it is:  how do you create a workforce that understands what they individually want when they haven’t come from this new wave of education?

Aging population and skill shortage

The more traditionally educated workforce (ie: all of us) first need to relate to a clear reason for changing the status quo.  Why would someone work harder when they currently have a choice of when and where they work?  Amongst the many challenges New Zealand businesses face, we have an aging population and ongoing skill shortage to worry about - we can’t afford to sit back and hope that things will change without strong intervention.

This of course, needs a commitment to change the cultural norms of the organisation to include more opportunities for learning.  Creating a culture that is free of the fear of failure (and can actually view ‘failure’ as an opportunity for valuable learning); unclipping employees’ wings, and removing layers of unnecessary bureaucracy are among some of the strategies you could deploy to encourage more individual ownership.  Uncovering ways to collaborate across and through the organisation; allowing for greater engagement in challenging work; and ensuring everyone has the opportunity to embed their learning and receive relevant and timely feedback will further your efforts.

Employee Value Proposition

We now have a workforce where all generations are wanting more from their work life.  While some have less options than others, there is still the opportunity for everyone to decide which employer they work for so finding the right EVP (Employee Value Proposition) is critical to standing out from the crowd.  With an increased tendency to engage short-term workers or those with specialist skills for bursts to support a direction or change within the business, it would be a good ROI for us to support those who need to keep their skills relevant and recent so as to retain them longer term.

Our team operates at the intersection of change, culture and capability at both an organisational and individual level for all these reasons.  The musings we allow ourselves continue to build on our core philosophies of building sustainably capable organisations and creating performance for organisations through individuals.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this and more – be part of our LinkedIn community to add to the discussion or get in touch and we’ll arrange for a coffee!