This Week's Top 3 Must Reads on the Future of Work
Terri Horton, EdD, MBA, MA, SHRM-CP, PHR
Work Futurist: Consultant | Learning & Development | Generative AI | Talent Management | People & Culture | Board Advisor | Author | Speaker | Lecturer
These are my top three article picks for the week of January 16th on the future of work, AI, the Metaverse, leadership and employee experience. This week's selection includes insights on trends that will shape the future of work in 2023, how visual collaboration can support remote team cohesion and innovation and balancing speed and risks with AI recruiting platforms. I hope the articles inspire and ignite your imagination about the future of work and provide insights and strategies you can leverage to help your organization thrive and make work more human.
This article made the top of this week's list because it reinforces the critical importance of continuing to move forward in 2023 with the creation of an organizational culture that prioritizes purpose, impact, and employee experience in the backdrop of what the author describes as "an environment raging with inflation, a looming recession, layoffs and a new wave of economic anxiety." The author, a lecturer on entrepreneurship and innovation at Harvard University, suggests that 2023 will be a pivotal year for the future of work as employers and employees come to terms with a workforce forever altered by the pandemic and its economic fallout. The five workplace trends discussed in the article that employers must understand to succeed in the year ahead and beyond are: 1) Gig work going mainstream, 2) A culture shift in the workplace, 3) A greater focus on equity and diversity, 4) Companies differentiating themselves by operationalizing their human-centered values, and 5) Reimagined job benefits. The challenge for leaders in 2023 will be to dive deep beyond the surface of current strategies and perspectives into solving for and creating new possibilities for each trend. Deploying the same strategies that worked in surviving the years of 2020-2022 will not be enough to pull most organizations into a future that welcomes these trends.
By 2024, visual collaboration applications will become the center of 30% of meeting experiences, according to Gartner. In my view, this will positively impact the quality of both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration among remote workers. The article discusses how visual collaboration can help boost productivity, engagement, and alignment among teams. The article states that since 2020, the number of meetings workers attend has increased by 13.5%, with 70% of those meetings keeping people from focusing and completing their tasks, and that visual collaboration is a solution to this problem. In short, visual collaboration is simplifying and streamlining organizational teamwork digitally through scalable canvases, promoting inclusivity, innovation, agility, and creativity in every workflow. One of the most significant advantages of visual collaboration is that it leverages the neurodiversity within teams, acknowledging that not everyone collaborates in the same way. Prioritizing team alignment, increasing engagement, and tapping into your organization's diverse talent pool are all possible through an investment in visual collaboration software. This quote from the article emphasizes the power of visual collaboration, "teams can use this single source of truth to stay aligned, guide decisions, and innovate continuously. Everyone is, quite literally, on the same page." Visual collaboration will become increasingly more important as remote work continues to move into the metaverse. To learn more about how work is moving into the metaverse, check out my LinkedIn Learning course, “HR Leadership in the Metaverse”.
Seventy percent of companies now rely on automated tools to assess and recruit job candidates. The tools are used for scoring, conducting background checks, and matching job skills. This can happen in minutes and cut the time to hire to 35 to 40 days on average. Chatbots with names like iCims, Phenom, and SmartRecruiters now enable a candidate to submit a résumé and book an interview on the spot. Artificial intelligence tools like Jobvite, Modern Hire, VidCruiter, and HireVue assess and score a person's word choice, micro gestures, and overall answers in recorded video interviews. Software tools like Predictive Index, Harver, and Plum prompt candidates to do interactive job scenarios, take online tests, and then scores them and sends the best job candidates to do interviews. However, the accelerated hiring process comes with risks. There is still concern that AI may contribute to biased hiring. According to the article, "critics contend it perpetuates a status quo because it uses unconsciously prejudiced selection patterns, such as language and demography, and is programmed on biased and inadequate data sets." As the future of work continues to unfold rapidly in 2023 and HR ramps up and continues to deploy artificial intelligence systems across the employee lifecycle, it is critically urgent for human resource professionals to be both AI and data fluent enough to understand how these systems work and to hedge against the potential of diminishing DIEB initiatives.
There is a lot of work ahead in 2023 as work continues to be reimaged. The possibilities are limitless. Be resilient, be relevant, be bold and let's thrive in the unfolding of the future of work together! Want more insights? Sign up for my newsletter.
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Want to learn more about how the metaverse is shaping the future of work? Check out my LinkedIn Learning course, “HR Leadership in the Metaverse”
Want to learn more about how to prepare leaders and teams to thrive as the rapid unfolding of the future of work continues? Take a look at my signature corporate training and workshops, and schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation.
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Are you ready to thrive on your terms this year? Be sure to purchase your copy of my book, Force Majeure: A Futurist's Guide to Boldly Thriving on Your Terms in the Future of Work. It is a must read for 2023!
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