HR Directors explore their new reality - The Future of Work

In March 2020, Malin Grundström, Senior Consultant and Manager at Alumni, created an exclusive peer support network for HR Directors in Sweden. Here she shares some of the common issues around new ways of working that the network has explored as the global pandemic carved a path of disruption through 2020 and beyond.

The launch of this exclusive HR Directors network was a direct response to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. At Alumni we felt it met an acute and urgent need among our contacts for a platform to discuss, exchange ideas and lend support. HR Directors were facing similar challenges despite their disparate global locations. We have come to realise that the need for regular, ongoing dialogue between us as peers continues even as the severity of the pandemic subsides. Our discussions continue to provide a valuable sounding-board for HR directors with comparable issues, despite their different sector specifics.

Below are some points that have stood out in our discussions and that we see most organisations will have to address in order to be successful and ahead of the curve in the new future of work.

Digital Shift

The pandemic has accelerated the pace of change in terms of digitisation and automation. Many businesses, and particularly retail, have been forced to shift their operating model from bricks and mortar to ecommerce. Manufacturing and production have also had to become more agile and accelerate their digital transformation and healthcare providers are significantly digitising as well. No-one can be in doubt that the loss of high street shops has led to major retail redundancies in many countries, but new roles have also been created to balance these, for example in customer service and data management.

HR Directors are looking to how they can meet the new skill requirements of digital roles through not only new hires but by the arguably more ethical route of upskilling and reskilling their existing teams.

Customer as Key

The fast pace and increased choice available to consumers globally has led to a huge pressure on customer service centres. Whilst some of this demand has been mitigated with automation, chat bots and the like, there has never been a time where customer service has been so key to brand reputation and differentiation. Consumers demand high-quality goods and services, delivered faster and cheaper.

HR directors are aware of how damaging poor service can be when highlighted through online reviews or social media and are looking at what talent and innovation looks like when service quality is equal to product offering as a success factor.

Supporting the Workforce

High on the HR professional’s agenda is how best they can support their human capital. The pandemic meant that we started to care more deeply about the health and welfare of our colleagues. What we might have simply regarded as a casual inquiry before the onset of COVID-19, has shifted to be a genuine interest in our team members’ wellbeing. The sense of facing a common enemy has created stronger emotional bonds between co-workers. There is a major challenge for leaders to improve their soft skills in an environment where they may only be interacting digitally. Spotting possible anxiety and other personal issues and having non-work-related conversations is far trickier when only using a screen. How do leaders build time into their schedules to truly connect at a personal level with their staff when this may have been through chance social encounters in an office environment? Clearly it will be more important than ever for leaders to find a way of fostering a closer dialogue with their employees, be it offline or online. Virtual coffee catch-ups is going some way to address this, but in all likelihood it will have to go further than this and involve more frequent one-on-one check-ins. Making this change will have the added benefit of helping leaders better adapt to the shift away from control-based work relationships towards ones reliant on trust in an era of remote working. A more frequent and open dialogue would surely help build this much needed confidence and security in all of our work relationships as we progress.

Transformation of Teams

The network report how their organisations are seeing a shift in structure and responsibilities for teams in their workplaces. Spurred on by the need for more agile business responses with lower costs, organisations across many sectors are creating initiatives around employee driven innovation. The experience for many in this network has been that self-sufficient teams with more autonomy and less middle management are proliferating. Monitoring their efficacy, measuring the value of their contribution, and delivering the correct level of support requires a departure from the traditional processes and formal structures of business hierarchy.

Workspace Compaction

Prior to the pandemic, the level of trust was low in that individuals would complete their work effectively when remote working. COVID-19 changed that; remote working remains prevalent and to some extent is likely to continue into the future. The benefits of flexible working have for the most part now been proved. This new model of work will inevitably lead to workspace compaction and the space and cost-saving benefits associated with it.

This HR network has talked about the step-change in work environments. Will workplaces have to adjust to be more like home environments? Will employees benefit from less dedicated personal space but more flexible areas to work quietly, or meet and collaborate? How will offices look in the future? The network members are particularly concerned about how creativity can be fostered in teams that are geographically separated for much of their time. On the other hand, working days have anecdotally been extended as travel and meeting times are all reduced. In theory, we can all be more productive as long as we remain sufficiently motivated and have the right workspace.

Geographical Fluidity

The network reflected on the fact that remote working has created less reliance on physical geography when it came to attracting and hiring talent, but that geographically disparate teams created their own set of issues. How do occupational health responsibilities alter according to where the company is domiciled or where the employee is based? Who is responsible for work-related injury when an employee is working from home? To what extent is it socially defensible to make redundancies in a developing country when the knock-on financial effect to dependent family might be catastrophic?

I hope these insights serve to help you navigate the future of work in your organisation. Feel free to reach out to me for further discussion and I would be glad to share further thoughts and the lessons learned by our clients with you.