This Week's Top 3 Must Reads on The Future of Work

These are my top three article picks for the week of November 8th on the future of work, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and humanizing work. This week’s selection includes insights from the Forrester Predictions 2022 guide,  and articles about corporate surveillance, and managing seasonal remote workers. I hope the articles inspire and ignite your imagination about the future of work and provide insights and strategies that you can leverage to thrive and make work more human.

Forrester Predictions 2022: 2022 Will Go Down As The Year Executives Were Forced To Care About EX

Forrester released its 2022 Predictions Guide this week. I could not wait to dive into the US report. This article about the guide made the list because, of course, it’s Forrester. Setting the stage for how leaders of organizations should rationalize 2022, the first section is titled, Disruptive Forces Necessitate Bold Decisions. Of course, disruption and bold decisions are not novel ideas or positions. We have lived through disruption for years, just as organizations have done the same. Some have thrived through disruption. But, this time, it feels and hits differently. In fact, I wrote a LinkedIn article last month predicting that 2022 would be the year of audaciously bold reinventions. We are just beginning to come up for air from the impact of all that 2020 and 20221 delivered. However, this time we do this on the heels of a potential fifth wave of the pandemic, a supply chain crisis, and the Great Resignation. Moreover, according to the guide, “customers and employees are demanding more: seamless cross-channel experiences, convenience, reassurance, and commitment to environmental, social and governance values.” Hence, 2022 according to Forrester, will be the year that forces executives to care about EX. This sentence from the guide nails the essence of what will embody 2022. “In 2022, the new normal will be more new than it will be normal.” So it is without question that organizations that prioritize creativity, innovation, resilience, and leverage technology to understand both employees and customers will be the winners in 2022. Here are a few of my key takeaways from the guide.

• Tech executives will leap from digital to human-centered technology transformations that closely link customer and employee experience that drive gains in productivity and competitive advantage
• 10% of technology executives will prioritize investments in strategic partnership and innovation at three times the rate of competitors to expand innovative capacity boldly and radically. 
• More than 30% of first attempts at work from anywhere efforts will fail. Only 10% of companies will commit to a fully remote future. 60% of companies will shift to hybrid models. 30% of companies will insist on a fully in-office model and suffer the consequences of worker resistance.

 At the end of the day, it is beyond critical for leaders and organizations to understand and develop strategies to respond to the multiple forces that will shift and shape 2022. Disruption is also about seizing opportunities and creating the runway needed to thrive on the path forward. I end with a question. Is your organization poised to stay ahead of the future by humanizing worker and customer experiences in 2022?  

Employee surveillance is on the rise. Privacy campaigners are worried for us all

This article made the list because of the intersectionality of digital transformation, worker experience, and the ethical use of employee data. According to the article, a UK trade union is calling for measures to protect employees from “intrusive monitoring” at work and in their homes. The union was “concerned that the increase in organizations using surveillance technologies to monitor workers was going unchecked and without the consent of employees.”

We know that the pandemic accelerated everything, including monitoring tools used to track employee productivity, so more and more organizations are having to make decisions about how to engage with workers in this context. The issue is less about the systems and more about deployment and tactical usage. After all, tracking software can provide meaningful insights for leaders and workers to identify development opportunities, drive productivity, performance, engagement, and make work more meaningful. But as we continue to move through the unfolding of the future of work and more organizations rapidly implement surveillance technologies, leaders must bridge the transition with trust and a human-centered leadership approach to hedge against adverse impacts. According to the article, in the UK, the use of camera technology to surveil employees working from home doubled within the past six months. As you can imagine, the survey revealed that most employees did not like the idea of being surveilled by their employer, particularly at home. As such, the overwhelming majority of workers polled said that the use of webcams for surveillance should be either monitored or banned for use at work and home. The union stated that “Long hours culture, pay transparency, career progression, diversity and the rise of unethical tech are all issues on our agenda, and we are looking to support members in building a new union home to engage industry and influence change." Although the article and survey insights hail from the UK, the issue of employee surveillance has garnered a more significant part of the national conversation about how and where we work, the rights of workers, and the ethical and responsible collection and use of worker data.

As organizations continue to ramp up remote and hybrid work strategies, the need for transparency and ethical and responsible data policies and practices is critical to balancing digital transformation and humanizing worker experience. A lack of transparency, ethical and responsible data policies and practices can create a hostile environment, breed employee resentment, negatively impact employee wellbeing and be counterproductive to optimizing productivity and performance. Moreover, surveillance technologies create a window into the homes of workers, which may have unintended consequences related to inclusion and belonging. So HR must solve for this as well.  As the use of surveillance technologies aimed at driving worker productivity accelerate, leaders  must prioritize strategies and practices that are not counterintuitive to humanizing worker experience or that risk implications to talent acquisition, engagement and retention. Remember... the future of work is human.

Mattel changed a remote-job description after drawing backlash because it said the boss could make 'unplanned visits' to an employee's home

Ok, this article made this week’s list for all the wrong reasons. So, I will start with the good news. The good news is that Mattel pulled the job listing and the practice in question was never operationalized. The bad news is that it was approved and posted, to begin with, as it raises significant concerns around worker experience and privacy. A screenshot of the position listing can be found on Twitter. The job listing was for a customer service home agent position with its American Girl product line. According to the article, 250 customer service home agents were hired using this job description, although the listing was deactivated in October. In addition to standard qualifications for the role, it required a “closed-door work area with no distractions or background noise (pets, children, machinery, music or talking)," according to a tweet of the job listing. The listing added that the employee "must be focused on work and not responsible for the caretaking of others (children, elderly, pets, etc.)." Ok, understandable in the context of the role. I get it. However, it is the section of the listing that said, "There may be periodic unplanned visits from a supervisor during scheduled work shifts," that set social media platforms ablaze. Mattel later issued a statement to the New York Post that the posted job description “no longer” requires at-home visits. I am just going to leave it here. Humanize, humanize, humanize the experience of workers...all workers, even gig seasonal remote workers.

Be resilient, be relevant, be bold and let's thrive in the future of work together! Want more insights? Click on my logo below and sign up for my newsletter. Want to learn more about training to prepare your leaders for the future of work? Click on my logo below and schedule a complimemary 30-minute consultation. Have you purchased your copy of my new book titled, Force Majeure: A Futurist's Guide to Boldly Thriving on Your Terms in the Future of Work? If not, grab it today, it too, is a must read!