Do you ever wish you had a crystal ball that could accurately predict the future of work?
Wouldn’t that be great, you could be ahead of the curve, ready and able to take every opportunity and avoid every pitfall that comes your way!!
I recently listened to a podcast that I thought was useful by Jeff Schwartz who is a Futurist, it was made in 2020 so I’m a little late to the party, but there were, I thought, some thought provoking hypothesis that are still relevant today in early 2023.
He asserts that, due to the Pandemic crisis, business leaders have had to create new maps for their businesses, improvising and re-imagining the future of work.
The top highlights for me were:
Technology developments have challenged leaders to implement not only practices but cultures that make use of these advancements.
So building adaptability, rapid decision-making and de-centralised structures will equip organisations to meet these challenges. And most importantly we must create cultures that welcome and encourage these practices.
The focus of Leaders should be on creating value, leading workforce ecosystems and co-creating with teams.
Leaders should now be thinking not only about saving costs but about creating value and meaning. We need to be player-coaches, working alongside our team, engaged in creating an eco-system that meshes technology and people seamlessly.
Individuals need to adopt a growth mind-set, becoming great team players and build foundational capabilities.
The key to success for the leader, will be hiring and developing people that adopt a growth mind-set vs a fixed mind-set. This will lead to the embracing of change. In addition, we all individually need to become great team players, to achieve and replicate success. As we live and work longer, career re-invention will become the norm. This means that we should develop ourselves and our teams in ‘enduring capabilities’ such as problem solving, framing questions, flexibility, leading and managing teams, social intelligence and empathy.
As an experienced recruitment professional and business owner, I can understand that this view of the future will have an impact on the employee lifecycle within our businesses, particularly recruitment. I can see the day when the technical skills are secondary to the inherent abilities that an individual possesses, these ‘enduring capabilities’ that will position ourselves and our businesses for success. It means that the recruitment industry will also have to re-imagine how it adds value in this new work landscape.