Catalyst | Digital
D
Working
environments
for the future
Steve Mostyn
Technology will be used in a much richer way to communicate,
manage projects, talk to customers and develop strategy.
Steve Mostyn of Saïd Business School outlines some key
considerations for business.
We have all experienced a dramatic shift in how we work work over
the past few months. Away from the familiarity of workshops and flip
charts, I ran a Zoom session recently with a group of CEOs and asked a
simple question:
“What would you like to take back into the new world of work from our
current lockdown environments?”
The responses provide a glimpse into a new future, reminding me of
science fiction writer William Gibson, who observed that “the future is
already here but unevenly distributed.”
Some of the suggestions made include:
• losing the obsession with the traditional working day and
presenteeism – “we will think about outputs more than who
is around”
• banning in-person townhalls – “we’ve had better attendance
and more real, honest questions during our virtual sessions
than ever before”
• using technology to meet new people – “our team created a
‘virtual coffee’ feature, where you would meet a randomly
assigned colleague for 10 minutes with only one guideline – do
not talk about work!”.
The context to the discussion was that technology will be used in a much
richer way to communicate, manage projects, talk to customers and
develop strategy.
This paints a positive (green, rush-hour free) working future. However, an
ever-more challenging reality co-exists and it is already upon us: ruthless
cost cutting, redundancies and a Darwinian culling of business models
that simply don’t work. This puts huge pressure on leaders and executives
to think and act radically differently about designing work and how to
engage and hire talent.
How organisations
retain, develop
and recruit talent
will be subject to a
disruptive innovation
Multinational IT services and solutions company Fujitsu has announced
that it will halve its office space, making working from home the standard
whenever possible, while Twitter has said that staff can work from home
“forever” if they wish, as the company looks towards the future, post-
COVID-19.
Organisational design, from physical workspaces to how teams work,
will be the new focus of HR productivity and how organisations retain,
develop and recruit talent will also be subject to a disruptive innovation.
The CEO of Dropbox, Drew Houston, commented in Forbes: “We’ve gone
through a one-way door. I can’t think of a bigger shift in terms of our
working life, certainly not one that’s as sudden.”
To thrive as we exit this ‘one-way door’, the following three approaches
will help energise and engage.
1
2
3
Innovate in new talent strategies. Hiring and talent-development
processes will need to be radically redesigned. This redesign
will kill off deeply held assumptions around presenteeism.
The real productivity revolution will focus on team skills and
project outcomes.
Involve employees in co-designing your new workspace.
I know people who are delighted to work from home and others
desperate to return to exactly the same workplace. Both groups
need to understand and design what they will lose and gain.
Explore future trends. What do your changed customers (both
customers and employees) want now, six months and six years into
the future? Invite customers into this process.
Steve Mostyn is an associate fellow at Saïd Business School,
University of Oxford.