3 ways the pandemic is accelerating the future of work

The pandemic has dramatically altered the way we think about and conduct business. While many of these disruptions will eventually fade as the pandemic goes away—we will travel once more, we will host in-person meetings again—many other changes may indeed become permanent, or at the very least, evolved into a new normal. 

In many ways, the pandemic has simply accelerated changes that were already taking place, such as remote work. The concept of teleworking or telecommuting has been around since 1979, but has never been widely adopted. Up until last year, only 3.4% of the American workforce reported working remotely full- or part-time. Today, 42% of Americans are working from home full time.

Not only the physical aspect of business has changed. The psychological stresses of lockdown restrictions are also greatly reshaping our attitudes toward work. There has been a heightened awareness of inequality in our society, and a strong focus on mental health. We’ve also become much more cognizant of our relationship to technology, the good side and bad—while technology has facilitated a much smoother transition into lockdown, it has also raised more problems around data privacy and cyberattacks. 

2020 is a critical moment for business leaders to contemplate how they will confront these challenges in the decades to come. Here are three pandemic-instigated trends that will be driving the future of work: 

Hybrid models of work 

As some of the country’s biggest companies have extended their work-from-home policies indefinitely, many are wondering if remote work will become the norm and not the exception. For many companies, the transition has been surprisingly smooth, with employees reporting improved productivity and focus. Several months in, however, the downsides to fully remote workplaces have begun to appear: lockdown fatigue has set in, collaboration has become more difficult, and training new workers has become a struggle. 

Businesses are now thinking long-term about a potential hybrid model to combine the best of both, with the structure and sociability of in-office work combined with the independence and flexibility of working from home. Americans agree: a recent study by USC Center for the Digital Future reports that 42% of employees want work-from-home policies to be permanent, with 60% of workers saying they would like to go to the office at least one to a few days a week.

Companies reconsidering a permanent move to a hybrid model of work will need to carefully consider several factors: 

First, how geographically distributed is the team? Some businesses may want to take advantage of the switch to remote work to expand their recruiting areas to attract top-tier talent in cities and states outside of the main headquarters. However, the more remotely located the team is, the more difficult it will be to arrange collaborative in-person work. To solve for this, companies like Kissflow have introduced a REMOTE+ model, which allows employees to work three weeks remotely, with teams agreeing to work together one week in-office per month.

Secondly, what sort of physical space is required to accommodate a hybrid model? With fewer employees in the office, many companies are considering downsizing or eliminating their office space to save on overhead costs. McKinsey reimagines the office of the future as having more space devoted for collaboration rooms instead of individual workspaces, as well as more flexible lease structures. Hotels are also stepping in to solve for this new need—CitizenM recently announced a corporate subscription designed for remote workers that need a work/sleep space in a major city with included meeting room use.

Lastly, how do you manage a hybrid model? For remote work to succeed, it is essential to have an effective performance review system. Productivity should be measured on output and meeting objectives, rather than initiatives and time spent on them. Managers and team leaders will need to be equipped with the skills and tools needed to maintain good team communication (both synchronous and asynchronous) and balance trust with accountability. 

Increased demand for purpose-led businesses that serve all stakeholders

Interest in the concept of purpose-driven businesses first spiked after 2008 as direct response to the recession, as many organizations began to reject the Friedman doctrine that the sole responsibility of a business was to maximize shareholder value. Just six months prior to the start of the pandemic, The Business Roundtable redefined the purpose of a corporation as one that commits to serving all its stakeholders and emphasized the need for businesses to build long-term value by investing in employees and communities. 

The statement would prove to be prescient in the aftermath of the pandemic, which has exposed the interconnectedness of the relationships between companies, employees, customers, suppliers, and communities. Business leaders that may have before focused solely on growth and financial performance are also now seeing the importance of protecting the wellbeing of their employees, as well as building resiliency and sustainability in their supply chains. 

The pandemic has also laid bare the fragility in our society, compounding existing problems such as racial injustice, inequality, and climate change. With the lockdowns giving people more time and space to reflect on their lives and careers, we may see a paradigm shift in our attitudes toward work, with greater numbers of professionals wanting and demanding to work at purpose-led organizations that let them live their values in an inclusive way. 

What will the purpose-led organization of the future look like? It is not simply about having a corporate social responsibility initiative, or being a social enterprise. Purpose-led organizations are those that emphasize empathetic leadership, diversity and inclusiveness, and the wellbeing of its employees. Above all, they live by an enduring set of values that seeks to serve all its stakeholders. Companies that can face the challenges of the pandemic with a strong set of core values and a commitment to serving its employees, customers, and communities will prove to be more resilient in the long term. 

Technology adoption and the shift from knowledge worker to innovation worker 

COVID-19 has accelerated technology adoption across a variety of industries and fields like no other catalyst before. Just as a point of reference, Zoom reported 300 million daily meeting participants in April 2020, up from 10 million in Dec 2019. Video calls aside, technology adoption has skyrocketed across a wide variety of industries, including healthcare, transportation, supply chain, and education, and many companies are now looking to invest in automation throughout their business operations, particularly in the areas of finance, human resources, and customer relationship management. 

Many experts believe that this pace of technology adoption will ultimately speed up the elimination of jobs. One study estimates that U.S. manufacturing lost approximately 400,000 jobs to automation from 1990 to 2007. New estimates predict that robots could replace as many as 2 million workers in manufacturing by 2025. Most of these jobs will be low-wage jobs, such as call center agents, warehouse workers, retail cashiers, bank tellers, and fast food workers. The big question remains: if we lose these jobs to technology automation, what will replace them?

We believe that the knowledge worker of today will evolve into the innovation worker of tomorrow. The future will depend on human skills that can never be replaced, such as creativity, critical thinking, empathy, and problem solving. Employees can no longer rely on solely on specific knowledge and systems skills for their jobs; instead they will need the ability to learn quickly and adapt their experience to new situations and technologies.

To transform an organization from being knowledge-driven to innovation-driven, business leaders cannot simply invest solely on tech solutions alone. Investments in new technology must be accompanied by a commitment to professional development and “upskilling” of existing employees, not only to ensure that the tech solution itself is used efficiently, but also to build an organizational mindset of continuous learning. Remember, it is far more cost-effective to provide current employees with the resources to learn new skills during work than it is to recruit new employees to fill knowledge gaps brought on by new technologies. 

Creative businesses will power the future 

According to the Brookings Institution, the creative economy was one of the most hard-hit in the pandemic, with the arts and cultural industries experiencing losses of 2.7 million jobs and $150 billion in sales of goods and services. However, creative businesses are also some of the most resilient for precisely the reasons we’ve discussed above—they are purpose-driven, disciplined, and adaptable, as well as grounded in core values and power by skills that will never be automated. As we emerge from the pandemic, we predict that creative businesses will be among those at the forefront driving the future of work.