The practice of working five days a week from 9 to 17 is ending. Some companies will develop more creative and flexible ways of getting employees to do their jobs in the future of work.
Some examples?
Zoom, which many companies and employees have relied on throughout the epidemic, now allows more than 6.000 employees to choose whether they want to work in the office or remotely. Bolt, a San Francisco-based e-commerce company employing nearly 600 people, has launched a permanent four-day work week for its staff. Slack, a workplace communication platform, is transforming its office primarily into a meeting place for meetings and projects. Amazon e Salesforce they are giving team employees the ability to work for goals, not schedules.
These are just some of the examples of approaches to the Omicron variant, or to the "large resignations", Or to the Yolo Economy. In summary? To the renewed desire that people have to build a healthier relationship between life and work.
The consequences to be avoided in the future of work
As with any major change, organizations that don't take a cautious approach to enforce their rules could inadvertently exacerbate employee inequality. For example, if a company requires workers to choose two days in which they will work from the office, it is possible that some people will never have the opportunity to collaborate. It may also be difficult for employees to work more or less days together. The "new world", in other words, would be (even) worse than the "old". The future of work would be worse than the past.
So? How is it resolved?
First practical case: Zoom
We need work practices that allow the exchange of information without requiring people to participate in grueling video conferences and meetings. Activity tracking tools such as MasterTask e GitLab they can help create spaces for brainstorming and discussion without unnecessary stress.
The work agreement of Zoom Inc., announced last week, gives employees the ability to work however they want. Employees can change their options at any time if they change their mind - a method inspired by the inputs of workers, consumers and colleagues. Most of them said they wanted freedom and options.
Kelly Steckelberg, the company's CFO, wrote that many employees (including her) moved during the pandemic, and that the company would not force them to return. Some individuals have moved to be closer to their family or to a place where a family can live better, so Zoom wants to make sure employees retain the flexibility that supported them at a difficult time.
In light of this, however, for the future of work Zoom plans to implement new training for managers. It's to make sure the workplace is fair, regardless of who goes back to the office and who chooses to work remotely.
Managers will often choose office catering rather than restaurant lunch, because they can include remote employees via Zoom in a conference room when organizing a group lunch, for example. To make the workplace more inclusive, Zoom will also use its technology, such as its "smart gallery" feature that separates on-screen attendees into individual panes.
Again (this has its own significance), Zoom currently has no plans to adjust employee salaries, as it does did Meta, mother of Facebook, based on their geographic location.
Second practical case: Bolt
Bolt described his new strategy as a "jolt." The company's goal, according to Bolt, was to make a big change in the way its people work. So early in the year, when it came time to achieve two major goals - improving employee productivity and reducing burnout - the company adopted a permanent four-day work week.
To help employees focus on their work, Asana it is used by Bolt to encourage "writing rather than speaking" with the help of project management software. The tool allows teams to divide projects into sub-tasks, give assignments and track progress or add notes as needed.
"This was a huge paradigm shift in the way we operate," he said Jennifer Christie, Bolt's chief people officer. "So you work with your supervisor to focus on the things that have the most impact and eliminate everything else."
"People want to be able to do their jobs in a way that feels natural to them," Christie added. "That's where the talent will come from."
Third practical case: Kickstarter
Dannel Jurado, a Kickstarter member, reports that when the company moved full-time remotely last year and got rid of its Brooklyn office, not all employees were happy. I can understand this, especially since the office had a theater and a roof garden near a river.
"We talked about it to the death," added Jurado. "But it's one of those things where no agreement is ever reached."
The only thing everyone agreed was a four-day week.
The future of work in (extreme) synthesis
Whatever the bosses decide, they will almost certainly face a stark reality born of the epidemic: workers will need changes to stay.
A four-day work week, even if only in the (however large) IT sector, is the next starting point: I don't consider it a possibility, but a certainty. It is not a question of "if", but of "when", and that "when" could be quite close.
