The global COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed how we work and how we feel about re-entering the workplace, as numbers go down and lockdowns are eased. Remote working may have been an adjustment for most at first, it slowly became a preference to employees worldwide. According to Cisco’s Workforce of the Future survey, conducted with 10,000 respondents across 12 markets in Europe, the Middle East, and Russia, employees want to keep a hold of the many positives that have emerged from this new normal.
Many of the changes that have come from the pandemic will
become a permanent part of employee experiences in 2021. This is due to the
fact that in 2020, several factors upended the traditional approach to life at
the workplace. As the economy prepares to re-open, the new normal of work,
business travel, and office space will be refined and rediscovered across
almost every industry worldwide.
Youth as the focal point
Although there are currently five generations in the
workforce, including traditionalists, baby boomers, and generation X, the youth
is taking over. – Millennials and Generation Z are becoming the largest
generational cohort in the labour force. As such, they have different needs and
values than older workers.
Hiring managers will have to understand these hires and
customize the workplace and tasks to keep them engaged and productive. These
young employees are digital natives, and they require continuous mental
stimulation, flexibility, and work-life balance. To nurture their growth and
encourage efficiency, recruiters can allow flexible working schedules, learning
platforms, and accommodate collaborative tools.
The demand for flexible working conditions
According to research conducted by Slack, 72% of employees
said they wanted a hybrid remote-office model. Instead of fully implementing a
work-from-home environment, many companies are utilising a hybrid approach
where employees will only come into the office for a couple of days in the week
and spend the remaining days working remotely.
Microsoft’s hybrid workplace environment will allow most
roles to remain remote less than half of the time with manager approval, while
62% of Google employees want to return to their offices but not every day.
Digital advancement
Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadell, described the impact of
Covid-19 on the adoption and advancement of technology at work, saying “we’ve
seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months”.
The findings from two separate studies by McKinsey and KPMG
indicate that at least 80% of leaders accelerated the implementation of
technology in the workplace due to COVID-19. White larger skill gaps, more
training is required for employees to support the digital transformation needs
that come with rapid change.
Many of these technologies are contact-tracing,
collaborative tools, AI-driven software, and more, all of which have been
widely adopted to support the mental health of employees, increase productivity
and allow for flexibility and safety.
Levi Strauss’ digital transformation was facilitated by the
use of AI and data, launching a virtual concierge service, appointment
scheduling, and a brand-new loyalty programme.
Automation to support employees and not replace
Forrester claims that the fears over automation eliminating
jobs is misplaced and that automation in 2021 will focus more on supporting
current employees.
For example, grocery store robots will promote social distancing by doing inventory checks for employees to prevent too many people on the floor, and Forrester expects a tripling of robots of that sort in 2021. “By the end of 2021, one in four information workers will be supported in their daily work by software bots, robotic process automation, or AI, taking rote, repetitive tasks off their plates and yielding higher EX,” the market research company predicts. “Rather than focusing on substitution, focus more of your automation efforts on helping your staff be more effective.”
Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?
https://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/work.jpeg7301200Laura Dragnehttps://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/logo_greatpeopleinside_01.pngLaura Dragne2021-01-22 12:15:302024-09-04 09:23:32How Is Work Going to Look Like in 2021?
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) ranks among the greatest philosophers of all time. Judged solely in terms of his philosophical influence and knowledge, only Plato is his peer: Aristotle’s works shaped centuries of philosophy from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance, and even today continue to be studied with keen interest. A prodigious researcher and writer, Aristotle left a great body of work, perhaps numbering as many as two-hundred treatises, from which approximately thirty-one survive.
The obvious place to begin a consideration of epistêmê and technê in Aristotle’s writings is in Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics. Here Aristotle makes a very clear distinction between the two intellectual virtues, a distinction which is not always observed elsewhere in his work. He begins with the rational soul (to te logon echon) which is divided into the calculating part (to logistikon) and the scientific part (to epistêmonikon). With the calculating part we consider (theôroumen) things which could be otherwise whereas with the scientific part we consider things which could not be otherwise. When he adds that calculation and deliberation are the same, he indicates why calculation is about what could be otherwise; no one deliberates about what cannot be otherwise. Things which could be otherwise are, for example, the contingencies of everyday life; things which could not be otherwise are, e.g., the necessary truths of mathematics. With this distinction between a reality which is unpredictable and a reality which is necessary, Aristotle has laid the foundation for the strong distinction between technê and epistêmê. Then the account turns to action (praxis), where we find the kind of thought that deals with what is capable of change. The efficient cause of actions is choice (prohairesis). The cause of choice is desire (orexis) and reasoning toward an end (logos ho heneka tinos). Thought (dianoia) by itself moves nothing, only thought that is practical (praktikê) and for the sake of an end.
The experience of the 2020 pandemic deals a powerful lesson: A crucial
ability a leader should bring to the table is the capability to figure out what kind of thinking is needed to
deal with a provided challenge. Bring the incorrect kind of thinking to an
issue and you’ll be left fruitlessly evaluating scientific data when what’s
desperately required is a values-informed judgment call.
Mistakes like this happen all the time, because different kinds of human effort
need various kinds of understanding. He outlined distinct types of knowledge
required to solve problems in 3 realms.
The reason that Aristotle bothered to detail these 3 types of understanding
is that they require various styles of thinking– the people toiling in each of
these worlds tend towards practices of mind that serve them well, and
distinguish them from the others. Aristotle’s point was that, if you have a phronetic
problem to solve, don’t send out an epistemic thinker.
Imagine you being a leader of a big business that has obstacles cropping up
frequently in all three of these worlds. You also have epistemic difficulties;
anything you approach as an optimization issue (like your marketing mix or your
production scheduling) presumes there is one absolutely ideal answer out there.
As a leader presiding over such a multifaceted company, it’s a big part of your
job to make sure the right kinds of believing are being pushed into making
those various kinds of decisions.
That’s all the more true for the largest management obstacles in the
modern-day world, those that are scoped so broadly and are so complex that all
these types of thinking are required by one problem, in one element or another.
Imagine, for example, of a corporation dealing with a liquidity crisis. Its
leaders need to marshal epistemic know-how to discover the optimal resolution
of loan covenants, issuance constraints, and intricate monetary instruments–
and the phronetic judgment of where short-term cuts will do least damage in the
long run.
Coming back to the Covid-19 worldwide pandemic and the challenges it has
actually presented to leaders at all levels– in worldwide firms, nationwide and
city governments, and organizations big and little. To be sure, almost all of
the world was blindsided by this catastrophe and early bad moves were
inescapable, especially provided misinformation at the outset. Still, it has
actually now been 10 months considering that patient zero. How can the
destruction still be running so widespread– and have segued, untreated, from
fatal illness to financial disaster?
Perhaps is that lots of leaders stumbled in the basic action of identifying
the nature of the obstacle they dealt with and determining the various type of
believing that needed to be offered on it at different points.
In the early weeks of 2020, Covid-19 presented itself as a scientific issue,
securely in the epistemic world. It immediately raised the type of questions to
which outright right answers can be found, offered enough data and processing
power: What type of infection is it? Where did it come from? How does
transmission of it occur? What are the attributes of the worst-affected people?
What therapies do most to assist? Which instant framing of the problem caused
leaders– and individuals they influence– to put huge weight on the assistance
of epistemic thinkers: namely, researchers. (If one expression ought to go down
in history as the mantra of 2020, it is “follow the science.”)
In the U.K., for example, this translated to making decisions based on a model
produced by scientists at Imperial College. At the regular conferences of the
Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies there was one federal government
authorities in participation, and early on, he tried to inject some useful and
political factors to consider into the considerations.
However, the reality was that, while clinical discovery was an absolutely
required element of the action, it wasn’t enough, since what was happening at
the exact same time was an escalation of the situation as a social crisis.
Extremely rapidly, requires occurred for hard thinking about compromises– the
kind of political deliberation that considers numerous dimensions and is
notified by different point of views (Aristotle’s phronetic thinking). As a
result, leaders were sluggish to begin resolving these societal obstacles.
What should an excellent leader do in such a crisis? We think that the right
method with the Covid-19 pandemic would have been to draw on all the
appropriate, epistemic knowledge of epidemiologists, virologists, pathologists,
pharmacologists, and more– however to guarantee that the scope of the issue was
understood as broader than their focus. If leaders had from the outset framed
the pandemic as a crisis that would demand the highest level of political and
ethical judgment, and not just scientific data and discovery, then
decision-makers at all levels would not have discovered themselves so
paralyzed– concerning, for example, mask mandates, restrictions on big
gatherings, organization closures and re-openings, and nursing house policies–
when screening results shown so challenging to collect, assemble, and compare.
This are all very broad strokes, but certainly some leaders balanced completing top priorities and managed the catastrophes of 2020 better than others. The point of this article is not to point fingers but merely to utilise the extremely prominent example of Covid-19 to highlight an essential and under-appreciated duty of leadership.
Part of the task as a leader is to frame the issues you want individuals to use their energies to resolving. That framing starts with comprehending the nature of an issue, and interacting the method which it must be approached. Calling for everybody to weigh in with their viewpoints on a problem that is truly a matter of information analysis is a recipe for disaster. And insisting on “following the science” when the science can not take you almost far enough is a method to immobilize and annoy people beyond step.
This ability to measure a circumstance and the type of knowledge it calls for is a skill you can develop with purposeful practice, but the essential primary step is just to value that those various type of knowledge exist, which it’s your obligation to recognise which ones are required when. Aristotle’s efforts regardless of, a lot of leaders haven’t thought much about levels of understanding and what issues they can resolve.
Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?
https://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/aristotle-knowledge.jpg8531280Laura Dragnehttps://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/logo_greatpeopleinside_01.pngLaura Dragne2020-10-08 15:46:242024-09-04 09:23:33Aristotle's Knowledge & How Leaders Can Apply It
When Netflix announced this summer that it was elevating Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos to co-CEO, sharing the title with founder Reed Hastings, the move cut against conventional wisdom. Salesforce.com, SAP, and Oracle all had abandoned co-CEO structures within the last year, leading The Wall Street Journal to ask: “Co-CEOs Are Out of Style. Why Is Netflix Resurrecting the Management Model?”
In the hierarchies of corporate America, there’s nothing ambiguous about the position of “chief executive officer.” Whoever holds the CEO title sits at the tip-top of the org chart; it’s right there in the capital C. But what happens when that designation—and the power it implies—is shared?
That’s the unusual experiment that several companies have undertaken in the past few months, splitting the role of CEO between two executives. In September, WeWork’s parent named two interim CEOs, Sebastian Gunningham and Artie Minson, to replace founder and spiritual guru Adam Neumann, who stepped down as the embattled shared-office giant postponed its IPO. (The pair will be replaced in February by a single new CEO, Sandeep Mathrani.) Software giant SAP in October named Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein co-CEOs—the third time the German company has opted for the dual-leader arrangement. And in January, luggage startup Away wound up with two CEOs after former chief Steph Korey returned to cohead the company just weeks after reports of toxic work behaviour prompted her to step down. She’s now splitting the position with Stuart Haselden, the former Lululemon executive whom Away had initially tapped as Korey’s lone replacement.
The truth is the archetype of the omnipotent CEO — the lone commander
atop the corporate pyramid — is increasingly a relic of 20th century
management thinking. There are some notable exceptions: Founders like Jeff
Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg still command and control. But in
our research with the American Psychological Association, we’ve found that
for most mere mortals, it’s simply too hard to go it alone. The modern business
landscape is too fast-moving and the demands on a CEO have become too
innumerable for a single person to set an organization’s strategic direction
and oversee a multitude of internal decisions, all while acting as its public
face to stakeholders.
Tellingly, while executive teams have doubled in size over the last three decades as different corporate functions have gained importance (human resources) or have come into existence (digital strategy and data security), the top job has largely remained a solitary grind. As entrepreneur Joe Procopio has observed, “The math on giving 110% usually breaks down to giving 10% across 11 different priorities.”
At the same time, the expectations of modern leadership have evolved. Organisations are more agile, less hierarchical, and must adapt quickly to the sudden dislocations we have today. Generational shifts in the workforce and society bring rising social consciousness of inequalities and a mandate for including others with different experiences into decision-making. These exigencies have made non-traditional soft skills essential additives to leadership.
There are four basic rules on how to 2 CEOs should cooperate when they both are running the company.
1. Pick the right partner. Co-CEOs are in a very real
sense professionally married. The foundational qualities of such an enduring
personal relationship also apply in a shared C-suite: a common vision, clear
communication, and most important, deep trust. This sustains the
partnership when, inevitably, there is a disagreement. Each must remember
the other’s talents and make decisions knowing it’s still one P&L both must
own. You cannot go into this arrangement without believing in the
character of the other and vice-versa.
2. Set expectations. Critics of dual CEOs argue that shared
accountability amounts to no accountability at all — if two are in charge, no
one is. But properly managed, the opposite is true. The idea of joint
accountability means setting performance standards that put each partner in the
position of having to live up to the other. Ideally, this creates a
healthy competition. Would-be CEOs are typically high-performing individuals,
so clear lanes help each partner drive improvements in the other. Indeed, a
2011 paper published in Financial Review found that co-CEOs’ mutual
monitoring can generate enough accountability to substitute for board
supervision.
3. Define roles and responsibilities. The organization
must understand who is in charge of which aspects of the company and where
decision-making authority lies. We have a highly decentralized
workforce — the two of us live in different cities — yet our managers intersect
with us with a clear understanding of what types of decisions we are each
responsible for. This is liberating in that it takes some daily
responsibilities off each CEO’s plate. It also frees up time for skill-building
around one’s dedicated areas, yielding more focused mentorship. And one leader
can come into another’s problem from a fresh outside perspective. Clearly
delineating areas of responsibility also mitigates another common criticism — that
co-CEOs are a bottleneck. In fact, the structure often facilitates a quicker
response because one individual has authority to make a decision from a greater
depth of experience and knowledge.
4. Distribute authority but not responsibility. While each partner has individual duties, both must fundamentally remain a leadership unit, one in which successes and setbacks alike are owned together. These successes and setbacks should be reflected in short- and long-term compensation. They must be prepared to be rewarded or penalized as a unit and accept the consequences. With the right chemistry and trust, it incentivizes both healthy competition and having each other’s back. Another benefit of this conjoined career planning is that it can both temporary or long term. Some companies may see a co-CEO arrangement as a grooming opportunity for a junior leader.
Let’s be honest: The modern CEO is often overwhelmed by unrealistic demands. Netflix’s move to co-CEOs says less about the limitations of individual leaders than about a system that sets them up to fail. We believe business pyramids are stifling innovation, when a division of authority can unleash it. In unprecedented times like these, more companies should rethink their structures and embrace co-CEOs, putting their leaders in positions to succeed.
Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?
https://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CEO-a-two-person-job.jpg6001200Laura Dragnehttps://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/logo_greatpeopleinside_01.pngLaura Dragne2020-09-18 15:23:132024-09-04 09:23:33Has the CEO Position Evolved to a Two-Person Job?
When trying to balance your work and family commitments, it helps to have a boss
who is understanding and supportive: someone who doesn’t raise an eyebrow when
you sign off early to attend a school event or take a personal day to accompany
one of your parents to a doctor’s appointment.
But what if your manager isn’t sympathetic to your familial responsibilities? Or worse, your boss is outright dismissive or even hostile toward your obligations? This is particularly challenging during the pandemic when many people’s work and home lives have collided. How should you handle a boss who refuses to acknowledge the other demands on your time? How can you find room for flexibility? What should you say about your family commitments? And who should you turn to for moral and professional support?
Career coaches at Work It Daily have discovered certain patterns. At this moment, employee frustration is at an all-time high. Workers are feeling fed up with their employers and wondering if the grass could be greener elsewhere.
While pay and opportunity for growth remain the top two reasons people claim they want to find a new job, the research done by Work It Daily shows that what ultimately pushes a person to seek a new job is feeling disrespected by their boss. Think of it this way: most professionals enjoy a job search about as much as they enjoy having an invasive dental operation. In order to put in the extra time and energy to switch jobs, the pain has to be really bad. When job seekers have gone the Work It Daily coaches they have complained about their manager’s lack of respect. If you don’t have the respect you want, it’s because you allowed your boss to treat you a certain way. From your first interaction with your boss until now, you have set the tone for how you’re perceived in the role. The good news is, you can change this. But to do so, you have to recognise the signs that your manager doesn’t respect you.
Know your rights
First things first, “know your rights” and understand what you’re entitled to in terms of paid leave and care options, says Thompson. Do some research into your company’s policies and whether there are alternative work arrangements on offer. Long before the pandemic hit, an increasing number of organisations instituted flexible work plans for employees, and many states have flex-work policies in place for their government workers.
Find out, too, if your situation qualifies you for the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act. The law requires some employers to provide paid leave to workers who must care for someone subject to quarantine or a child whose day care or school is closed. Washington recommends talking to your company’s HR person, if you have one, to learn what options and accommodations are available to you. “Knowledge is power,” she says.
Exhibit empathy
Next, summon compassion. It’s not easy to be a boss, especially right now.
Many managers are under pressure. “They’re stressed, anxious, and struggling to
do more with less,” says Washington. Consider the situation from their
perspective.
Thompson says your empathy should be both “genuine and strategic.” Ask your manager about their pain points. Find out where their worries lie. Be sincere — show you care about them as a human being — and be tactical. Ask about their “objectives and the metrics they need to hit,” she says. “You’ll get important information about what they’re concerned about” which will help you sharpen your focus in terms of the work you prioritise.
Develop more than one plan
Once you “understand what’s top of mind” for your manager, you can frame
your plans for getting your job done in a way helps them achieve their goals
and objectives, says Thompson. Focus on results. When you’re a caregiver,
your schedule can often be unpredictable so it’s important to make a plan as
well as several contingency ones. Address your manager’s “insecurities about
you not pulling your weight” by demonstrating that you’re “making arrangements
to get your work done.” You want your manager to come away from your
conversations thinking, “They’ve got this.”
Don’t be shy about reminding your manager of your track record for delivering on expectations, adds Washington. “Your past performance is the strongest indicator of your future performance,” she says. Hopefully, your manager will come to see “that what’s most important is not how the job gets done, but that it gets done.”
Articulate boundaries
If your boss is a face time tyrant, it can be tough to establish boundaries,
but it’s still important to do. We all need time in our day that’s off-limits
for work, says Washington. “If 6 pm is when you have dinner and put the kids
down,” so be it. “Have those boundaries — and let your boss know that you will
be unavailable then.”
But if your manager continues to be disrespectful of your family time, you need to have a conversation. Frame the discussion around you — how you prefer to structure your workday and how and when you perform best. Explain that you need your non-work hours to regroup and take care of your family commitments. Without that time away from work, you will not be able to fully devote yourself to your job.
Take care of yourself
Working for someone who doesn’t respect your life outside of work can be
exhausting so make sure you’re taking time for yourself. Be purposeful about
giving yourself “a forced mental break,” says Thompson. Make time to read,
cook, dance, run, meditate — or any other activity that you enjoy or helps you
relax. “Schedule joy,” she says.
And even if exercise isn’t usually your thing, Thompson suggests finding time for it every day, especially during this difficult period. “Don’t underestimate the power of 20-30 minutes of daily physical activity,” she says. At a time when your boss is being difficult and “nothing feels in your control,” getting your endorphins pumping should be a priority.
Don’t let a lack of respect from your boss hold you back from achieving your goals. Learn how to interact better so you can get what you need to succeed!
Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?
https://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/working-schedule-not-respected.jpg5361024Laura Dragnehttps://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/logo_greatpeopleinside_01.pngLaura Dragne2020-09-09 14:47:032024-09-04 09:23:33What to Do When Your Boss Doesn't Respect Your Working Schedule
Our education system is responsible for preparing young people to build successful lives. They should be ready for the wide range of possibilities ahead of them, including working for others, entrepreneurship, and contributing to their communities. All of these options require a depth of knowledge in their chosen discipline, as well as creative problem-solving skills, leadership abilities, experience working on effective teams, and adaptability in an ever-changing environment. It’s no coincidence that these are the same capabilities that employers say they want in college graduates.
These skills are the cornerstones of entrepreneurship education, which explicitly prepares students to identify and address challenges and opportunities. Therefore, along with teaching traditional subjects, such as science, grammar, and history, that provide foundational knowledge, it’s imperative that we teach students to be entrepreneurial.
Entrepreneurship education prepares students to identify and address challenges and opportunities. There are many who believe that entrepreneurship is an inborn trait that can’t be taught. This is simply not true. As with all skills, from math to music, learning to be entrepreneurial builds upon inborn traits. For example, learning to read and write taps in a baby’s natural ability to babble. Each baby learns to harness those noises to form words, connect words to compose sentences, and combine sentences to craft stories.
Entrepreneurship can be taught using a similar scaffolding of skills, building upon our natural ability to imagine:
Imagination is envisioning things that don’t exist.
Creativity is applying imagination to address a challenge.
Innovation is applying creativity to generate unique solutions.
Entrepreneurship is applying innovations, scaling the ideas by inspiring others’ imagination.
Using this framework, educators at all levels can help young people engage with the world around them and envision what might be different; experiment with creative solutions to the problems they encounter; hone their ability to reframe problems in order to come up with unique ideas; and then work persistently to scale their ideas by inspiring others to support their effort.
Also, if there is no space to allot entrepreneurship as a separate paper, then it can be merged with subjects like economics, history, technical n, comparative studies, business education or psychology. Integrating entrepreneurship in these main stream subjects will allow students to understand the same and take up later in life.
Learning entrepreneurship from school level will allow students also instil the following traits at a young stage:
Patience
Business is not a one-day phenomenon. It happens over time, grows over decades or more. The entrepreneur needs to hold on their patience and be with the business all throughout. Learning entrepreneurship from school, will allow one to get accustomed to the long time span that one requires to invest to establish a business.
Flexibility & Adaptability
Running business is not a smooth flow of events. It has good times, bad phases and so on. How to survive at the best and worst of business can also be learnt from an early stage, if entrepreneurship is introduced in school.
Desire to Achieve
As school is too nascent a stage, students might change their decision of being an entrepreneur and opt for some other profession. But, it’s the ‘hunger to achieve’, the take away from entrepreneurial classes that will help them earn success in any other profession.
Entrepreneurship education does not just benefit those entering the fields of science, technology, and business. Students of art, music, and humanities can develop their imagination and learn how to apply creative thinking skills to real-world problems.
Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?
https://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/entrepreneurship.jpg183275Laura Dragnehttps://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/logo_greatpeopleinside_01.pngLaura Dragne2020-08-13 12:49:462024-09-04 09:24:11Should Entrepreneurship Be Taught in Schools?
Harassment at work is prevalent and can be tough to combat. Being informed and prepared can help employees dealing with harassment recognise their rights and take action when needed. In some work environments, harassment may seem easy to brush off as playful camaraderie or “playing the game”, but it is no less serious than more direct, explicit bullying. Negative actions are often prompted by a harasser’s feelings of fear, disrespect or entitlement, but no matter the reasons, the only way to end workplace harassment is to properly address it.
U.S.
law requires employers to create a workplace free from discrimination and
harassment. But as offices go virtual, what happens when staff confront a
torrent of hate and abuse online? Given that over 44% of Americans say they’ve
experienced online harassment, chances are, if you’re an employer, you have
people on staff who’ve been impacted. For those with public facing jobs
(journalists, policymakers, academics, etc.), online abuse may well be part of
day-to-day working life.
Although anyone can be subjected to online abuse, women, BIPOC, and members of the LGBTQ+ community are disproportionately targeted for their identities and experience more severe forms of harassment. As more and more organisations proclaim their commitment to providing equitable and inclusive work environments, they can no longer afford to ignore the very real consequences of online abuse.
And yet the professional impact, within and across industries, is significantly understudied.
The
creative and media sectors are among the few industries for which we have
research. A 2017 PEN America survey of writers and journalists found that over
a third of respondents who had experienced online abuse reported an impact on
their professional lives, with 64% taking a break from social media, 37%
avoiding certain topics in their writing, and 15% ceasing to publish
altogether. A 2019 study from the Committee to Protect Journalists, which
focused specifically on female and gender non-conforming journalists in the
U.S., found that 90% cited online harassment as the single biggest threat they
faced.
In other words, in the media sector, online abuse is damaging the professional prospects and chilling the speech of those already underrepresented in the industry. It is precisely the voices that most urgently need to be heard in debates around race, gender, and the rights of marginalised groups that are at the greatest risk of being silenced.
Employers need to do better. When staff are attacked online in a way that intersects with their professional life, organisations have a responsibility to take the abuse seriously, and help address it. Some employers may feel they don’t know where to start, but in fact there are many steps you can take to support your teams in preparing for, responding to, and mitigating the damage of online abuse.
Acknowledging the Harm
To create an environment where employees feel safe and supported enough to come forward when they are being abused online, leadership needs to let staff know that they take the issue seriously and expect managers and colleagues to do the same. Targets often suffer in isolation, partly because there’s still a great deal of stigma and shame associated with harassment, online or off. Many people who are disproportionately attacked online have also been marginalized in other spaces, so they may have legitimate concerns about being dismissed, mocked, or punished. A commitment to supporting staff who are being abused online can be formalized by amending existing policies and protocols around sexual harassment and social media use, communicated via all-staff emails and meetings, and reinforced by the ways in which managers and HR react to individual cases.
Online Protocols Setup & Training
When staff are being harassed online, they often have no idea where to turn or what to do. Arm them with the knowledge that there are concrete steps they can take to proactively protect themselves and respond. Having clear protocols can make staff feel safer and more empowered. To ensure staff are actually aware of these initiatives, employers can fold policies and protocols into onboarding and employee handbooks, post them on intranets and Slack channels, and encourage managers, HR, IT, and social media staff to reinforce them — and offer training.
Guarantee Resources
These should include: cybersecurity services that protect against hacking, impersonation, doxing, and identity theft, including password managers, such as Password or LastPass, and data scrubbers, such as DeleteMe or PrivacyDuck; mental health care or counseling; legal counseling; and guidance, such as PEN America’s Online Harassment Field Manual.
Support Groups
Online abuse is intended to be profoundly isolating, which is why giving staff a safe space to vent, share experiences, and exchange strategies is vitally important. Encourage staff to band together and create a peer support group. Just make sure they have adequate time and access to leadership to apply their hard-earned knowledge to help improve policies, protocols, and resources.
Escalate Certain Situations
From social media to email and messaging apps, most digital platforms have mechanisms to report online abuse. But sometimes these mechanisms fail. As an individual, it can be difficult to get a platform’s attention, but organisations often have direct contacts at tech companies. If a staff member has reported abuse that clearly violates terms of service and is nevertheless unable to get it removed, escalating the issue directly to tech company contacts can make all the difference.
We are facing an unprecedented moment in professional life. The hyper-digital world we’ve been plunged into is already exacerbating harassment and hate online. At the same time, the Black Lives Matter movement has put much-needed pressure on for-profit and nonprofit organisations to redouble their commitment to creating more diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplaces. Online abuse is a major stumbling block to these efforts. If organisations are serious about supporting staff who identify as women, nonbinary, or BIPOC, it’s high time to have their backs in the face of online attacks.
Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?
https://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/harassment.jpg9491417Laura Dragnehttps://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/logo_greatpeopleinside_01.pngLaura Dragne2020-08-06 13:46:482024-09-04 09:24:11Employee Harassment Online - How to Combat It
The coronavirus has changed the workplace in ways that will permanently transform the future of most organisations. Many leaders have been forced to craft new and improved strategies for successfully running an office remotely, building environments that help — not hurt – our immune systems, and developing guidelines to enforce safety measures like social distancing. Perhaps the most common change designed to address all of these areas is rethinking the employee work schedule, whether it is to support changes in work-life balance, to minimise social contact, or to meet wavering business demands. The traditional nine-to-five workday is no longer the gold standard.
Responsibility for gathering relevant information, identifying alternative schedule options, and implementing the new schedule is often given to the Human Resources (HR) manager. Since information on the subject is surprisingly scarce, this responsibility can be quite a challenge. It’s not something you do every day. Few people have the expertise to design a schedule for a group that works more than five days a week or more than one shift a day. Once you realize that schedule design is not the only step in changing schedules, nor the most difficult, you easily can be overwhelmed.
Despite the difficulty, this is a great opportunity for HR managers to orchestrate a significant change in the organisation. As an HR manager, you are uniquely qualified to do this. You tend to have a broader perspective than line functions such as production or maintenance. You have more experience in communicating with employees. Your on-going role as a company steward has trained you to protect organizational interests while addressing employee concerns.
Organisations change the work schedules of their non-exempt employees for a variety of reasons:
Change the hours/days of operation to match the demand for their products or services.
Fix problems such as high absenteeism, hiring/retention issues, or excessive overtime.
Improve efficiency (e.g., lean manufacturing) or lower the operating costs.
Respond to employee requests for change or complaints about the current schedule.
The Process of Change
In today’s tight labour market, organisations simply can’t afford to lose employees. Changing work schedules is an easy way to alienate the workforce and increase turnover. To ensure widespread support for the change, you need to have a plan for involving the key stakeholders and keeping them informed throughout the entire change process.
That sounds simple enough, but it’s actually the most difficult part of changing schedules. People are resistant to any kind of change. When it comes to work schedules, even a minor change can make a significant difference in employees’ lives. For example, changing the time that the work starts by 15 minutes may seem trivial, but it can have serious repercussions for people who commute in a carpool or use public transportation, parents with day-care requirements, and individuals with hundreds of other personal commitments built around their work schedules.
Availability of Resources
How many employees are needed to satisfy the coverage requirements? How many hours will they have to work each week? In addition to the base coverage, you need to consider absences such as vacations, illness, training, etc. Additional staff and / or overtime may be needed to cover these situations. Even though you think you have sufficient personnel, if a number of employees want to take a vacation at the same time, this could leave you short-handed. If someone takes a leave of absence due to health problems, pregnancy, or family care, you may not be able to replace them. The use of temporary employees may help, assuming you can find someone with the necessary skills.
Schedule Conflicts
Schedule constraints include legal considerations (e.g., state laws requiring overtime to be paid after 8 hours of work) and union agreements (e.g., limits on the number of consecutive days worked). There are also company policies to consider. For example, your company may require that all employees rotate so they spend an equal amount of time on every shift.
These are referred to as “constraints” because they limit the number of possible schedules. If you need an 8-hour fixed shift schedule with a maximum of 5 days worked in a row, you’ll be hard-pressed to come up with a schedule that gives you a lot of weekends off or long breaks. Without the constraint on the number of consecutive days worked, you would have a lot more options to choose from. Without the fixed shift constraint, you would also have more choices. If there are too many constraints, it may be necessary to add more workers, increase overtime, or sacrifice some coverage.
Changing employee work schedules is not a simple task. There is a lot more involved than simply finding a work pattern that matches the new hours of operation or accommodates a preferred shift length. The six major considerations are the change process, coverage requirements, available resources, schedule constraints, employee preferences, and company policies. Skipping any one of these can result in implementation delays, unhappy employees, damage to your relationship with workers, poor business results, and higher costs. However, with proper planning, preparation, and communication, it is possible to produce a win-win result for employees and the organisation.
Changing your organisation’s work schedules may be one of the most important tasks you undertake in your career. Not only is the schedule vital to the performance of your company, but it is also an integral part of your employees’ lives. The time and effort you invest will increase the chances of achieving a positive outcome for everyone affected by the new schedule.
This pandemic has revealed that some jobs, such as healthcare, are truly essential, and employees in that sector have to work difficult hours. At the same time, the post-pandemic period may be a time for organizations and society to reconsider the definition of essential. For instance, moving forward, is it really necessary for workers to be available at all hours, year-round, to provide nonessential services at retail and fast food places?
The key will be finding a balance between short-term business needs and the long-term benefits that new scheduling strategies bring to both employees and the organisation.
To summarise, rather than being mechanistic, organisations can take a more organic approach and allow employees to play a bigger role in determining when they want to work. We have already seen considerable discussion lately about where (e.g., from home) and how (e.g., using video conferencing technology) people will work in a post-pandemic world, but additional thought should also be given to when everyone works. Managers are encouraged to thoughtfully consider the schedules that are right for them as they return to their places of work.
Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?
https://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/rethinking-the-work-schedule.jpg5761024Laura Dragnehttps://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/logo_greatpeopleinside_01.pngLaura Dragne2020-07-23 12:05:162024-09-04 09:24:11Rethinking the Work Schedule
The Covid-19 crisis and its fallout — including recession, layoffs, and uneven economic pain — as well as recent protests over police brutality and demands for racial justice have presented many of us with challenges that we’ve not encountered before. The high-stakes and unfamiliar nature of these situations have left many people feeling fearful of missteps. No one can reduce mistakes to zero, but you can learn to harness your drive to prevent them and channel it into better decision making. Use these tips to become a more effective worrier.
As they say, everyone makes mistakes. In many situations, you can correct your error or just forget about it and move on. Making a mistake at work, however, is more serious. It can have a dire effect on your employer. It may, for example, endanger a relationship with a client, cause a legal problem, or put people’s health or safety at risk. Repercussions will ultimately trickle down to you. Simply correcting your error and moving on may not be an option. When you make a mistake at work, your career may depend on what you do next.
The current culture that is perpetuated glorifies fearlessness. The traditional image of a leader is one who is smart, tough, and unafraid. But fear, like any emotion, has an evolutionary purpose and upside. Your concern about making mistakes is there to remind you that we’re in a challenging situation. A cautious leader has value. This is especially true in times like these. So don’t get caught up in ruminating: “I shouldn’t be so fearful.”
Use emotional agility skills
Fear
of mistakes can paralyse people. Emotional agility skills are an antidote to
this paralysis. This process starts with labelling your thoughts and feelings,
such as “I feel anxious I’m not going to be able to control my customers enough
to keep my staff safe.” Stating your fears out loud helps diffuse them. It’s
like turning the light on in a dark room. Next comes accepting reality. For
example, “I understand that people will not always behave in ideal ways.” List
off every truth you need to accept. Then comes acting your values. Let’s say one
of your highest values is conscientiousness. How might that value apply in this
situation? For example, it might involve making sure your employees all have
masks that fit them well or feel comfortable airing any grievances they have.
Identify your five most important values related to decision-making in a
crisis. Then ask yourself how each of those is relevant to the important
choices you face.
Repeat
this process for each of your fears. It will help you tolerate the fact that we
sometimes need to act when the best course of action isn’t clear and avoid the
common anxiety trap whereby people try to reduce uncertainty to zero.
Apologise, but keep it simple
Genuinely
say the words, “I’m sorry, I made a mistake,” and offer how you plan
to correct it. Resist the urge to offer excuses or to start apologising
repeatedly. On the other hand, don’t overdo it trying to make it up. Stay
professional and business-minded, recognising how valuable company time is.
An
apology conveys several major things: regret of the mistake, responsibility for
it, and respect for the company and people in it. An apology also offers the
opportunity for the other people to let go of their anger. The moment the
apology is genuinely made is the moment that you can work to rebuild.
You can’t change the past but you can find a solution for the here and now. One apology to the right person or people along with a possible solution will come across much more positively than a bunch of unnecessary filler words and statements to the entire office.
Accept the consequences in stride
The
management and the HR team can decide that you need another form of
reprimanding. Or they can take you up on your offer on how you’ll correct the
mistake. Whatever the case, accept the consequences and carry out your tasks
without complaining.
This
reinforces your apology and will likely generate additional respect. Whether
it’s staying after work for a few days in order to remedy the work, reaching
out to the wronged person, or going about your normal work tasks, do it and do
it well. Don’t just say you’re sorry, show them through your actions. Be a
better worker.
Broaden your thinking
When
we’re scared of making a mistake, our thinking can narrow around that
particular scenario. Imagine you’re out walking at night. You’re worried about
tripping, so you keep looking down at your feet. Next thing you know you’ve
walked into a lamp post. Or, imagine the person who is scared of flying. They
drive everywhere, even though driving is objectively more dangerous. When you
open the aperture, it can help you see your greatest fears in the broader
context of all the other threats out there. This can help you get a better
perspective on what you fear the most.
It
might seem illogical that you could reduce your fear of making a mistake by
thinking about other negative outcomes. But this strategy can help kick you
into problem-solving mode and lessen the mental grip a particular fear has on
you. A leader might be so highly focused on minimising or optimising for one
particular thing, they don’t realise that other people care most about
something else. Find out what other people’s priorities are.
Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?
https://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/fear-of-mistakes-at-work.png5761024Laura Dragnehttps://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/logo_greatpeopleinside_01.pngLaura Dragne2020-07-02 12:14:022024-09-04 09:24:11The Fear of Making Mistakes at Work
2020 is the year that work went remote. In a matter of days, entire workforces were sent home and told to set up shop. Employees with no prior experience working from home were asked to navigate digital communication platforms, online meeting tools, and a deluge of email.
When you couple the inherent challenge of communicating
remotely with uncertain and turbulent times, creating a cohesive and successful
remote team can feel like an uphill battle.
Maintaining strong, productive relationships with clients
and co-workers can be challenging when you never see the person you’re working
with. Yet, it is common to have ongoing work relationships – sometimes lasting
years — with people you’ve never met in person.
We often think of “virtual work” as working with someone
located outside an office, or in another city or country. This type of work is
on the rise: a 2017 Gallup report found 43% of American employees work
remotely; in another survey, 48% of respondents reported that a majority of
their virtual teamwork involved members from other cultures.
However, virtual work also encompasses how we are turning to
technology to conduct business with nearby colleagues, sometimes within the
same building or campus. At a large consumer-products firm where we’ve been
conducting research, an HR director recounted the changes she witnessed in
employees located in two buildings a few miles apart. “Ten years ago, we would
regularly drive between buildings to meet each other, but today, we almost
never do; meetings are conducted by videoconference and everything else is
handled on e-mail and IM.”
Research consistently indicates that virtual work skills –
such as the ability to proactively manage media-based interactions, to
establish communication norms, to build social rapport with colleagues, and to
demonstrate cooperation – enhance trust within teams and increase performance.
Our surveys indicate that only about 30% of companies train employees in
virtual work skills, but when they do, the training is more likely to focus on
software skills and company policies than on social and interpersonal skills.
Our findings are similar to those of a 2006 survey of HR leaders on training of
virtual teams, suggesting that while technology and virtual work itself has
advanced dramatically in recent years, our preparation to work virtually has
not.
Recent reviews of the last 30 years of virtual work research
shows that the most effective workers engage in a set of strategies and behaviours
that we call “virtual intelligence.” Some people tend to be naturally more
adept at working virtually than others; yet, everyone can increase their
virtual intelligence. Two specific skill sets contributing to virtual
intelligence are 1) establishing “rules of engagement” for virtual
interactions, and 2) building and maintaining trust. These skill sets are
relevant to all individuals who conduct virtual work, including co-workers in
the same office who interact virtually.
Communication Is Key
While employees struggle to find their places in a new
virtual team, how can we ensure the forced—or in some cases, desired—distance
doesn’t lead to a culture of silence and silos? How can you put your people
first and ensure distance doesn’t come between relationships and results?
Communication technology. Once you know you’ll be working
virtually with someone on a regular basis, initiate a short conversation about
their available technology, and agree on the best means of communication (e.g.,
“We’ll e-mail for simple, non-urgent matters, but get on Skype when there is
something complex that might require us to share screens. Texting is fine if we
need to get in touch urgently, but shouldn’t be used day-to-day.”)
Best times to connect. You might ask your virtual co-worker,
“What times of day are typically better to call or text? Are there particular
days of the week (or month) that I should avoid?” Establishing this rule early
in a virtual work relationship both establishes respect for each other’s time,
and saves time, by avoiding fruitless contact attempts.
How best to share information. If you’re collaborating on
documents or other electronic files, establish a process to ensure you don’t
inadvertently delete updates or create conflicting versions. File-sharing
services such as Dropbox can help monitor revisions to jointly-owned documents
(often called “version control”), but it is still wise to establish a simple
protocol to avoid lost or duplicated work.
As the use of technology for all types of communication has
become ubiquitous, the need for virtual work skills is no longer limited to
telecommuters and global teams; it now extends to those of us whose work never
takes us out of the office. Making a concerted effort to develop these skills
by setting up rules of engagement and establishing trust early can feel
uncomfortable, especially for people new to the idea of virtual work. Most of
us are used to letting these dynamics evolve naturally in face-to-face
relationships, with little or no discussion. Yet, workers with higher virtual
intelligence know that these skills are unlikely to develop without explicit
attention, and that making a short-term investment in developing the virtual
relationship will yield long-term benefits.
Building and maintaining trust
Two types of trust matter in virtual work: relational trust
(trust that your colleague is looking out for your best interests), and
competence-based trust (trust that your colleague is both capable and
reliable).
In order to build relational trust you must bring a social element into the virtual work relationship. Some people do this by starting conversations with non-work-related questions, such as “How are things going where you are?” or “How was your weekend?” Avoid making questions too personal, and don’t overwhelm your colleague with extensive details of your life. Keep it simple and sincere, and the conversation will develop naturally over time. Let your enthusiasm and personality show in your virtual communications. Keep it professional, but try adding a little of your own ‘voice’ to give your virtual colleague a sense of who you are, just as they would have in a face-to-face meeting.
Competence-based trust is highly important as well and to create such a relationship sharing your relevant background and experiences, indicating how these will help you support the current project. For example, on a new product development project, you might say, “I’m really looking forward to contributing to the market analysis, as it focuses on a market that I researched last year on another project.” Take initiative in completing tasks whenever possible and communicate that you’re doing so with periodic update e-mails. Doing this shows commitment to the shared task. Respond to e-mail quickly and appropriately.
Many virtual work relationships fail due to inconsistent e-mail communication. Silence works quickly to destroy trust in a virtual colleague. We recommend replying to non-urgent e-mails within one business day (sooner if it’s urgent). If you need more time, send a quick acknowledgement of the e-mail, letting your colleague know when you will reply.
Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?
https://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/virtual-work-skills.jpg10801920Laura Dragnehttps://greatpeopleinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/logo_greatpeopleinside_01.pngLaura Dragne2020-06-25 11:28:032024-09-04 09:24:12Virtual Work Skills Have Become a Must
The term “gig economy” was coined by former ‘New Yorker’ editor Tina Brown back in 2009. It was used to describe how workers in the knowledge economy were increasingly pursuing “free-floating projects, consultancies, and part-time bits and pieces while they transacted in a digital marketplace.”
The wisdom of the time was that the gig economy would completely change white-collar jobs and call into question the very existence of professional service firms: Why would anyone hire a data analytics firm for a project when you could have unrestricted access to a bunch of experts, connected by a digital platform from all around the globe, who could work together for your company? Given the freshness of the idea, it certainly looked like things were headed that way: the Netflix million-dollar challenge back in 2009 for creating and developing the best recommendation algorithm was won by a team that didn’t belong to a company — or even geography.
In the 1960s, Jack Nilles, a physicist who turned into an engineer, built a long-range communications system at the U.S. Air Force’s Aerial Reconnaissance Laboratory. Later on in his career, at NASA, he helped design space probes that could send messages back to Earth. In the early 1970s, as the director for interdisciplinary research at the University of Southern California, he became fascinated by a more terrestrial problem: traffic congestion. Unrestricted growth in urban areas and cheap gas were creating incredible traffic jams; more and more people were commuting into the same city centres. In October 1973, the OPEC oil embargo began, and gas prices quadrupled. America’s car-based work culture seemed suddenly unsustainable.
That year, Nilles published a book, “The Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff,” in which he and his co-authors argued that the congestion problem was actually a communications problem. The PC hadn’t been invented yet, and there was no easy way to relocate work into the home. But Nilles imagined a system that could ease the traffic crisis: if companies built small satellite offices in city peripheries, then employees could commute to many different, closer locations, perhaps on foot or by bicycle. A system of human messengers and mainframe computers could keep these distributed operations synchronised, replicating the communication that goes on within a single, shared office building. Nilles coined the term “telework” to describe this possible arrangement.
However, nowadays remote work is the exception rather than the norm. Flexible work arrangements tend to be seen as a perk; a 2018 survey found that only around three per cent of American employees worked from home more than half of the time. And yet the technological infrastructure designed for telecommuting hasn’t gone away. It’s what enables employees to answer e-mails on the subway or draft pre-dawn memos in their kitchens. Jack Nilles dreamed of remote work replacing office work, but the plan backfired: using advanced telecommunications technologies, we now work from home while also commuting. We work everywhere.
As spring gives way to summer, and we enter the uncertain second phase of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s unclear when, or whether, knowledge workers will return to their offices. Citigroup recently told its employees to expect a slow transition out of lockdown, with many employees staying out of the office until next year. Jack Dorsey, the C.E.O. of Twitter, went even further, announcing in an e-mail that those whose jobs didn’t require a physical presence would be allowed to work from home indefinitely. In a press statement, Twitter’s head of H.R. said that the company would “never probably be the same,” adding, “I do think we won’t go back.”
According to Peter Miscovich, Managing Director, Strategy + Innovation, JLL Consulting in New York, by 2020 gig workers will comprise half the workforce, and as much as 80% by 2030. In the very near future, says Miscovich, enterprise “Liquid Workforce” platforms will be based upon the emerging “Hollywood Model” of working where agile and “liquid” knowledge workers will be intelligently organized via the Internet on a project basis much like Hollywood movies are made today. The future Liquid Workforce will be organized via crowdsourced “uber-like” cloud-based work platforms providing greater workforce and workplace efficiency.
At some point, the pandemic and its aftershocks will fade. It will once again be safe to ride commuter trains to office buildings. What then? Many companies seem amenable to the idea of lasting changes. In April, a survey of chief financial officers conducted by the research firm Gartner found that three-quarters planned to increase the number of employees working remotely on a permanent basis. From an economic perspective, companies have a lot to gain from remote work: office space is expensive, and talent is likely to be cheaper outside of the biggest cities. Many workers will welcome these changes: in a recent Gallup poll, nearly sixty per cent of respondents said that they would like to keep working remotely after restrictions on businesses and schools have been lifted. For them, the long-promised benefits of work-from-home—a flexible, commute-free life, with more family and leisure time—have finally arrived.
And yet remote work is complex, and is no cure-all. Some of the issues that have plagued it for decades are unlikely to be resolved, no matter how many innovations we introduce: there’s probably no way for workplaces to Zoom themselves to the same levels of closeness and cohesion generated in a shared office; mentorship, decision-making, and leadership may simply be harder from a distance. There is also something dystopian about a future in which white-collar workers luxuriate in isolation while everyone else commutes to the crowded places. For others, meanwhile, isolation is the opposite of luxury. There may be many people who will always prefer to work from work.
But Brown turned out to be only half right. There has been tremendous growth in the gig economy, but most of it can be attributed to unskilled work such as driving (Lyft and Uber), delivering (food, parcels, etc. through DoorDash, Postmates), and doing simple errands (TaskRabbit). A vibrant gig economy for knowledge workers — engineers, consultants, management executives — has not really materialised.
Culture
Gig workers in the knowledge economy will have to work with and for firms that have pronounced values, incentives, practices, and preferences. But they do not assimilate easily into these organizations (unless they join them) as they often work at arms-length with them and are seen by people in the organizations as outsiders — or even threats —impeding effective cooperation and creating the potential for conflict. In this context, gig workers often struggle to understand, let alone accept, the larger organizational processes, people, and politics of many of the people they have to work with. Performance assessment may also be problematic, especially if the gig worker is hired by a firm to do a job that the traditional metrics of most organizations still cannot properly capture.
When you start listing these problems, it becomes less of a mystery why the firms still prefer to hire knowledge workers as full-time employees or other firms with knowledge workers rather than contract directly with gig workers, despite the ability of tech to reduce many of the more obvious costs.
This may, at last, be about to change. But not from the advent of any new technology — it’s from the global pandemic that is forcing the global economy to its knees. The organizational factors that act as barriers for knowledge-based gig work are the same ones that in the past have inhibited remote work by full-time employees. If these issues can be resolved, whether a remote worker is full-time or gig-based is simply a matter of contractual documentation. Clearly, the experience of working during the pandemic provides useful insights on how to successfully contract knowledge work to external contractors. But we need to approach these lessons carefully.
Tasks Are Vital
Knowledge work is not uniform and, to the extent that you can even talk this way, a given “unit” of knowledge work is itself highly complex. A university, for example, educates students for degrees. A unit, therefore, could be the degree that a student comes out with. But a lot of very different tasks go into creating that unit. So what does “gigification” mean in this context?
Universities could certainly consider using gig workers for graders, teaching assistants, or for pre-recorded online lectures. But it is unlikely that the majority of milestone classes (face-to-face or virtual) that need to be delivered live at specific moments will be delivered by gig workers. Since any degree will inevitably involve both kinds of classes, university teaching will always be hybrid between the two, at least at the course level, possibly even at the class level.
The lesson is that all knowledge-based work can be unpacked into a set of different tasks. To figure out the future of the gig economy for knowledge workers, therefore, we need to analyse things at the task level rather than at the work level. We have found the simple process chart shown below to be extremely useful in figuring out which kinds of tasks are amenable to gigification. It involves asking these three basic questions about each knowledge-intensive task involved in delivering a product or service.
The Covid-19 epidemic could well prove to be a pivotal point in the gigification of knowledge work, and many firms will be attracted by the prospects of the direct and indirect cost savings that the gig economy model seems to offer. But given the complexities of knowledge work there’s also a risk of overreach and wasted investment. The simple task-based categorization we propose will help managers make smarter choices about how just what tasks should be contracted to gig workers.
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