It’s an understatement to say that the recent global pandemic caught several managers, executives and business owners off-guard. Plenty of otherwise well-prepared businesspeople felt stunned in the presence of the global disruption. And its knock-on effects are still catching people off-guard, especially as they relate to work.
Employees’ relationship to work and work has changed drastically in the last three years. And it will continue to change drastically in the future as new technologies, methodologies, trends, and global events arise to influence the situation.
If you want to drive your business forward, you must understand the future of work. Below, let’s review a few things your business needs to know, citing research from Nikolas Badminton (Chief Futurist at futurist.com) and other future-forward thinkers to guide the way.
The Past Is the Past – There’s No Going Back
It’s tempting to consider current and future changes to work as “passing phases” on the road back to “normal.” But it’s wise to disabuse yourself of that notion. When macro trends alter the global workplace culture, as they did during the pandemic, things seldom regress back to “normal.” (In fact, “normal” is just a notion we use to describe the dominant hegemonic principles steering our current culture – but that’s another essay entirely).
Let it go. Stop trying to claw your way back to how things were. Look toward the future with curiosity, optimism, and fearlessness.
Emerging Technologies Will Continue to Catalyze Change
In his book Facing Our Futures, Nikolas Badminton has this fantastic concept of looking for “pockets of the future in the present.” He advocates for listening to the philosophers, poets, musicians, and counter-culture thinkers that dream big.
You can also find pockets of the future in emerging technologies –tools and applications that indicate where we might be headed in 50 or 100 years. Take AI and big data as examples. These technologies have helped businesses cull insights from reams of untapped data, making instantaneous sense of them through predictive analytics and deep learning. In turn, these insights inflect how an average person does their job. Salesperson no longer operates on gut instinct, going door to door with a smile and briefcase; they choreograph digital touchpoints based on the latest insights about buyer preferences.
Understanding how technology is morphing work – and exploring how it might possibly morph work in the future –will be an invaluable asset to your organization.
Global, Local, and Immediate Trends Each Exert Their Influence
The future of work isn’t a static or homogenous thing. You can’t point to a single way that things “will be.” Instead, it will be (as it has been in the past) a constantly morphing, heterogenous collection of values and trends.
And, crucially, it will draw influence from everywhere. Sweeping global trends like global economic conditions and resources will shape our work. Local trends like national workplace cultures will continue to exert influence (think of the difference in workplace cultures between Japan and France). And immediate micro-trends in your organization will also dictate work culture. Understanding this confluence of trends will help you prepare for the future.
The Future Will Be Flexible
Until now, we’ve settled for a broad sketch of how things “might be.” But here’s one concrete prediction about the future of work: it will be flexible.
“The pandemic has revolutionized how we consider the future of work,” writes Badminton.“The power has shifted to the employee and towards new ways of working in person and remotely. Hybrid work culture has become the norm and will pay dividends.” If organizations can embrace, harness, and leverage this newfound flexibility, they stand to profit. They position themselves to greet the future of work with open arms.
