Future of Work: Don’t get left behind

Long story short, what changed was the way we value things. Be it on a personal level, on a business level, or at the very sweet point of intersection of the two.

Within a growing tech startup, things always change and take new twists and turns. We’ve been rather accustomed to the idea of change being the only constant but inevitably I started thinking more and more about the future of work for tech companies.

Remote work and virtual meetings are likely to continue even after the pandemic, no surprise there. According to NorthOne, 58.6% of the total U.S workforce are remote workers. That’s the rather simple aspect of the future of work if you ask me. But I think the real game-changer is what comes at a structural level.

How to not sink the ship as a company in the age of Future of Work

The only constant is change.

1.Shift the mindsets to embrace change

In other words, agility is key.

(If you ask me it was key up to this point also, but now it’s definitely undeniable.)

Agility comes from the organizational processes that support dynamic change and rapid response to end environmental stimuli. The companies have the power to set the rhythm. This rhythm has the power to drive a shift in the employee mindset so that people will not only perceive change as normal but actually as something to be quite excited about. And that is healthy for all parties involved.

2.Narrow the skill gaps

The real challenge is to redefine the company and the employees by transforming the workplace into data professionals.

For the next 5-10 years, the challenge every company will have to deal with in order to bring everyone on the same page with understanding and performing the data refinement process is the workplace skill gap.

If before these skills belonged only to data architects, data scientists, or business analysts, looking forward, these aspects will need to be replicated in all sorts of company development.

3.Redefine the values according to the new age of work‍

Among tech aspects of the future of work, companies are facing a new push in the sense of values and value-oriented investments. McKinsey states how there is a visible growth towards creating a strong alignment among a company’s purpose; environmental, social, and governance issues; and how money is made.

That implies a redefinition of the investment ‘sweet spot’ that’s right at the intersection of the company’s purpose, culture and value ‘as its economic core’.

How to avoid losing value for each project

No one really escapes the changes brought about by the Future of work. From executives, Human Resources, Project and Product Management, developers, marketers, and so on, we all need to make a habit out of identifying skill gaps and narrowing them down.

Future of Work has a direct effect on the ones in leading positions and the people who build it every single day.

As leaders, take care of your talent, strengthen the employee value proposition, reimagine the talent model beyond just attracting and retaining new people. By reskilling current workers, creating room for talent, professional and personal growth, chances are the company will become more dynamic and more inviting for talent to come and build the vision together.

If there is:

Transparency | Clarity | Direction | Autonomy

the management teams can allocate the resources in such ways that they create value aligned with what’s desired at the company level. By trusting your PM team, you create time for the executives to bring value by reallocating the capital across the projects in the new needed ways (given the constant changes Future of Work comes with).

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What Future of Work aspects to get used to

The thing is digitalization, automation, robots, artificial intelligence, and digital transformation (DX) are all part of Industry 4.0 taking the lead part in the ‘future of work’ reality.

It’s not me saying that by 2025, the time spent on working tasks by humans and machines will be equal, it’s the World Economic Forum. WEF also reports that through technology integration 43% of businesses are planning to reduce their workforce. That only makes more room for new jobs to sustain the evolution of the future of work.

The paradigm shift that embraces changes will allow the future generation to respond creatively and authentically to the question of ‘what do you want to become when you grow up?’.

That’s also because literally 85 per cent of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t even been invented yet,

a report published by Dell Technologies, and authored by the Institute For The Future (IFTF) states.

From what we know now, they might be computer personality designers, augmented reality architects, quantified self analysts, commercial drone engineers, 3D printing innovators, IoT engineers, and who knows what else.

What skills do you need to not fail in the age of constant change

If the workplace changes, people change too. And to not waste time on which one was first, the egg or the chicken, let’s explore what’s there to sharpen to avoid failure in the Future of Work era.

These unpopular skills today will soon become must-haves in the resumes of tomorrow:

1. Essentialism, or how to get the right things done
2. Grit, or the passion/perseverance for very long-term goals
3. Learning Agility, as in constantly adapting the knowledge base to stay relevant in new environments
4. Data Science/Data Analytics
5. Decision-making - or better said, data-driven decision making
6. Complex problem-solving
7. Design thinking

Being able to adapt quickly, communicate clearly, and create uniquely will be the prerequisites for bringing value in the Future of Work era. Be aware of their importance and don’t get left behind.

Sources and further reads: Kepner-Tregoe, McKinsey & Company, European Parliament, Cheatsheet, i-scoop