Sophie Johnson navigating on day 4 of the RS Tera Worlds during the RS Games at the WPNSA | Photo ©: Pegs Field.Navigating the future of the workplace is essential for organizations that want to survive and adapt to the changes that the world of work is continually going through. Even more so after the pandemic.
We must modify our way of thinking and stop conceiving work as an activity that can only be carried out in physical places to start thinking of it as a virtual space where the team can meet and perform tasks digitally.
But it doesn't all end there. Organizations must think about how these transformations impact the way talent is managed, results are measured and operational strategies are coordinated.
Here are 5 ideas to sail with the good wind towards the future of the workspace:
1. Prioritize digital platforms and resources instead of physical spaces
Physical workspaces are no longer important, but knowing how to capitalize on the strength of collaborators asynchronously.
Working digitally requires offering the same advantages of face-to-face work (access to equipment, information, and communication platforms) although decentralizing them from the physical space.
2. Humanize the organizational culture and the treatment of collaborators:
Proactively taking advantage of remote digital talent requires a profound cultural change and demands management skills linked more than ever to human needs.
Therefore, an important part of this change requires recognizing the work that each worker has in the organization, as well as taking into account their aspirations for professional and personal growth to help them develop them.
3. Rebuild the workplace and use predictive platforms
Digitizing work allowed us to dismantle the workplace and rebuild it smarter and more efficiently.
Automating or eliminating tasks instead of simply transferring them to a new system allows you to question what work needs to be done and what other work is no longer necessary.
Intelligent automation brings accuracy, speed, and pattern recognition to business processes.
As a result, employees simplify, automate and ditch their old tasks, freeing up their capabilities and allowing them to focus more on knowing what their customers need or may need in the future.
4. Managing KPIs Efficiently
The challenge for most companies is transitioning from fixed work results that provide limited value to dynamic work results with higher levels of potential value.
Compiling management indices helps Talent teams provide strategic guidance that allows employees and companies to move towards effective work management, but the correct data must be measured.
Although some KPIs are simple and specific according to the role of a function, others are more general and complex, such as the productivity and performance index, which refers to the time in which a collaborator develops a certain task.
5. Leveraging a Liquid Workforce
A company's workforce is no longer monolithic, meaning not all employees work for a single organization.
The change in the relationship between employees and the workplace has also made the way some internal tasks are approached more complex and has made it possible to designate tasks to expert partners, independent or “liquid” service providers.
According to the article Workforce Ecosystems: A New Strategic Approach to the Future of Work by Elizabeth J. Altman, 87% of organizations currently consider external workers as part of their workforce.
Based on this new form of organization, a new labor ecosystem is being built that extends planning, talent acquisition, performance management, and compensation policies to these external collaborators.
Locating this emerging workforce in physical spaces is not only impractical but unfeasible.
