Preparing for the future of work and the workplace

(This article originally appeared in Ambition, AMBA’s thought leadership publication – in print and online – and has been republished on this website with the permission of AMBA.)

The pandemic has led to the acceleration of digital transformation as organisations have been forced to adapt to remote working – but will this have an impact on the long-term future of work? Anino Emuwa finds out.

Even with lockdown orders being progressively lifted, social distancing is expected to continue until a vaccine or a cure is found. This gives rise to uncertainty as to when normal activity can resume, but it is helpful to look at the future of work from the perspective of how work places will evolve including the work that people will do.

Digital transformation is one of the technology pillars of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) articulated by the World Economic forum in 2016, which together with other new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Block Chain, Robotics, Augmented Reality, that is transforming our lives.

In addition to the surge in demand for public health care systems, the immediate impact of Covid-19 has led to massive demand for video conferencing, digital collaboration tools, e-commerce activities, electronic payments and delivery services as millions of people work from home. At the same time, many industries have been hard hit including airlines, hotels, restaurants, but also the retail industry, entertainment industry, sports, which ground to a halt and are not expected to return to pre-pandemic levels any time soon. Other industries that have suffered include crude oil, construction, real estate, travel and transportation. The knock on effect has been a significant loss in jobs and employees being put on furlough.

In the education sector, governments are prioritising the return to normal school for children whereas the situation for higher education is somewhat different. Several universities have announced different modes of learning.

For example, Cambridge University has announced that lecture style teaching will be online for the next academic year with only seminars and small groups being taught in person. There are already signs that management education is gravitating towards increasingly flexible, modular programs with some MBA programs already converted to online only delivery.

In terms of work places, organisations have conducted hiring processes remotely during this period with new employees being interviewed and taken on board virtually. New staff members are starting jobs from home having never met their bosses, colleagues or their organisation’s offices in person. Post lockdown, many organisations will continue to have some staff working from home. Leading these changes are tech companies like Google and Twitter which have announced staff may work at home as long as they like. With time, it will be interesting to see how other service companies will also adopt to extended working from home arrangements.

Faced with this new reality of employees partially working or even fully working remotely, some organisations are reassessing their needs for office space. Conversely, as work blends into home, real estate specialists are reporting increased enquiries for residential property outside the city and a reduction in demand for city apartments.

The workforce has to adjust to new ways of working, whether social distancing in the work place or WFH, at least in the short term. But the need for reskilling and upskilling of the labor markets to reflect the demand of new technologies will continue. In addition, with AI and automation taking over the routine tasks and requirements for innovation mindset, skills such as adaptability, cognitive flexibility and creativity, will be in demand whilst for leaders, empathy and EI will be highly valued as ability to lead remote teams.

There are also changing organisational values related to the roles of capitalism. The drive to stakeholder capitalism as opposed to shareholder capitalism, which was a theme at the World Economic Forum in January this year, is set to intensify. We can expect organisations to take ESG more seriously, whilst the impact economy will grow, and social enterprises will attract more interest and investment.

Calls for diversity and inclusion are intensifying with reports like McKinsey’s Diversity wins: How inclusion matters, released in May, once again showed that where there is diverse leadership, teams are associated with significantly better performance outcomes. Experts argue that as we enter into an even more complex operating environment, diversity in leadership is even more essential for decision making and to help navigate the new normal.

With dampened economic demand and uncertainty putting millions of jobs at risk, it is even more imperative for job seekers to prepare themselves with the skill sets for the future and prepare for a change in the ways we work.

Dr. Anino Emuwa is the Founder and Managing Director of Avandis Consulting, an international management consultancy firm based in France and Nigeria which provides financial advisory services to entrepreneurs and business leaders.