Navigating towards the Future of Work
Download a PDF of this articleLike many organisations, we’ve been dedicating a significant amount of effort and energy into navigating the disruption of the COVID-19 crisis and understanding its likely impact on the future of work – both internally within our own team and in partnership with our clients.
Overwhelmingly, the public debate throughout lockdown has focused on how the office will need to change in the nearterm as organisations implement social distancing guidelines; the degree to which people are working from home; and at what point will people return to the office.
But does that reflect the true scale of the challenge?
In reality, what we’re seeing and hearing from our clients is that the issue is not as simple as reconfiguring their corporate office to make it COVID-secure or letting their people work from home. It’s a much more complex set of issues which are unprecedented in the modern working world. The future of work challenge is not just a real estates and facilities issue, its scope spans an entire ecosystem that encompasses leadership behaviours, organisational culture, ways of working and the employee value proposition.
It’s also a challenge where both the current and the future-state are difficult to define, ever-changing and often ambiguous. There’s no such thing as a route map to the future of work, nor is there time to create one. Organisations need to provide a clear vision of the destination they want to get to and be confident in navigating their own path.
