The future of work will move away from industrial-era work models.
DreamstimeAbout the author: Amy Loomis is research director for market-research firm IDC’s worldwide Future of Work service.
“How do we make our employees collaborate?” “How can sellers learn to sell through a screen?” “How do I know if they are working?” “When will we return to the office?”
At the outset of the pandemic, my IDC colleagues and I heard these and related concerns from executives whose employees found themselves working remotely from bedrooms, basements, and kitchen tables. At the same time, our regular executive surveys made it clear that productivity for remote workers was a top leadership concern.
Fast forward a few months and IDC surveys found that increased productivity was one of the top benefits of remote work. And by February of 2021, 49% of business and IT leaders reported that remote and hybrid work models will be an embedded part of accepted work practices for many industries. Yet the question remains, “What does a sustained period of remote and hybrid work mean for traditional industrial-era work models?” Those models are defined by management setting everything about work: locations, hours, tasks and their organization into processes, and the teams that do them.
“How do we know if they are working?”
Like it or not, our accelerated adoption of “digital-first” ways of living, from shopping to dating to learning, has called into question long-held beliefs about the purpose of in-person engagement. The pandemic became the tipping point that proved work could be done as, if not more, effectively outside an office setting—at least for those whose work permitted it. But beyond the ability to perform transactional tasks more efficiently, we’ve come to recognize digital-first ways of working also pose challenges to traditional industrial-era work models.
Remote work offers a greater sense of entitlement to privacy and the technical means to control what colleagues can or cannot see of a work environment. Employers must choose between tools that monitor minute employee behaviors to validate task work and building a broader culture of trust that focuses on deploying technologies that make access to work resources more ubiquitous, fluid, and secure.
The digital democratization of work comes in the form of checkerboard screens of co-workers neatly arrayed without regard to role, race, gender, or height. That democratization is on display in technology investments in digital transformation: cloud computing, virtualization, unified communication and collaboration, automation, artificial intelligence, advanced A/V devices and more. Some workers have found their schedules adjusted to offer greater autonomy to manage their personal and professional obligations. The pandemic has challenged the assumption that oversight of workers required them to be physically present to do meaningful work and, in the process, reify company culture.
“When will we return to the office?”
IDC’s most recent Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending survey asked global leaders where they would primarily work once their organization had reached a steady state of business equilibrium. Globally, 53% reported their workforce would primarily work in a physical office facility. In the United States, that percentage was 47%, with 18% primarily working remotely, 18% primarily working in a nonoffice facility and 17% primarily working in the field. This data suggests many leaders (at least currently) prefer on-site engagement as the primary way of working. This despite headlines that herald the “Great Resignation” of workers no longer willing to work for companies who demand de facto in-person work.
Broad deployment of technologies that support remote and hybrid work have shifted the discussion from whether productive work can be done from anywhere, on any device, to what the purpose of in-person work really is. Now that data has repeatedly proved that productivity is not dependent on location, what will bring workers to find value in working on site at office facilities? The answer depends not only on the risk-reward calculus of personal safety, but also the value of face-to-face engagement in effectively accomplishing short- and long-term business goals.
Organizations are still wrestling with the mix of technological and organizational support for hybrid work models. IDC’s Future of Work survey found that for 40% of line of business and IT leaders the biggest organizational challenge in supporting remote workers was enabling teams to work effectively together. From conversations with industry leaders it’s clear that organizations are struggling to determine when in-person work is a critical business requirement, and how much leeway employees can be given to decide where and how they get their work done.
“Why are we going into the office?”
For those who are essential workers and must be present to work the decision is easy. But the situation is more complex for those who can credibly make the case that they can just if not more effectively get work done remotely. Leaders and workers are realizing that productivity is not the only goal. Organizations need to be able to create community. They need to demonstrate equity—not only for those who are remote but for those who are in the office every day and often feel isolated because of the status of their job roles. As the pandemic has continued and evolved, we’ve seen broader adoption of agile approaches to work that focus less on an inventory of completed tasks and more on accomplishing goals: from business outcomes to improvements in health, learning, and others.
The shift to more outcome-driven approaches to management moves the conversation beyond where employees work and how they will be productive. Instead, business models designed around hybrid work and supported by digital-first technologies open the opportunity to define how we continue to adapt to new ways of working. These include the ways we drive revenue growth and profit but also how we build work culture, maintain work momentum, innovate, train managers to lead and leaders to inspire—whether we are screen to screen or shoulder to shoulder. No doubt there is a strong temptation to go back to the work models of the industrial era. The challenge will be to define new work models for a digital era that go beyond productivity to build community. In this era, it’s sorely needed.
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