Many forces are converging today in unprecedented ways to reshape the nature of work. To understand and adapt to these forces, leaders need to start thinking seriously about three important areas of concern: the future of workers (who are questioning the role that work plays in their lives and demanding more from the organizations they work for); the future of working (which is evolving rapidly thanks to hybrid and flexible work arrangements, digitalization, and automation); and the future of work itself (which always involves in response to macro forces and societal shifts). The authors refer to these three areas as the who, the what, and the why of work. Each has its own particular set of challenges. Leaders need to confront and address these challenges, and the authors of this article provide suggestions for how they can best do that.
Hybrid, remote, and flexible working are here to stay. In spite of attempts to compel staff to return to the office, levels of remote working remain four to five times higher than before the pandemic. These new practices fundamentally alter how people work, where they work, and when they work, but their consequences are not yet fully understood.
Leaders feel themselves under pressure to announce “standardized” policies, as a way of providing some reassuring certainty in the midst of uncomfortable ambiguity. But in the current unsettled macro context, a sense of certainty about how we should work can only be illusory and transient. Meanwhile digitalization is rapidly reshaping the ways people and machines interact, affecting the tasks we do, the roles we fulfill, and the organizational arrangements that guide and support us. By the mid 2030s, up to 30% of jobs may be at risk of automation, and today’s rapid developments in AI have brought the future into the present much faster than most predicted.
Some leaders are responding with renewed statements of purpose, defining how they will serve societal needs alongside shareholders’ increasingly diverse expectations. But these attempts to take the long view are fraught with short-term ambiguities, as moves toward redefining the role of business in society trigger backlash. This is to be expected as we work through cultural shifts and start to develop a new understanding of “what good business looks like,” and hence what good work comprises.
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