You may have already heard about new work, new pay, and the future of work. You are wondering what hides behind those concepts. Unless you have already transitioned into new work and accumulated some experience, the concept sounds vague. However, with a little bit of introduction into the idea, the concept will become less of a scarecrow. It will transform into an inspiration for investing in a change that will benefit your company.
The Future of Work: Changes You Can Expect and Overcome
Many of today’s companies have already rearranged or are reshaping their structure to the new work concept based on:
- Designing and adopting a digital transformation roadmap.
- A global outlook to work.
- Working in remote teams or at-home offices.
- Embracing technological change.
- Disposing of traditional organizational structures.
- Flexible teamwork, innovative pay, and project management.
If you read the reports by McKinsey and Deloitte about the future of work, you will notice that a huge share of it relates to artificial intelligence, automation, and robotics. But even if we are not there yet in full force, the massive technological change that’s taking place is a precursor of the new work. This means relying more on technology during your daily job, both for managers and employees.
Apart from revealing a change in how management works, new work is a shift in how the staff works, too.
Collaboration with Machines and Robots
Some call it the fourth industrial revolution. Others call it the age of automation and robotics. A third group calls this change of work — the era of artificial intelligence.
If you are not directly involved in the backend of developing and using AI algorithms, you may not be aware that AI tools are massively used in marketing, language processing, and office automation.
Regardless of how much you know about AI, robotics, and automation, it’s time to recognize their role in the future of work.
Chatbots dominate online retail. Many simple office tasks are automated. Moreover, as AI gets more sophisticated, you can assign more complex tasks to robots and machines.
Drone delivery and robotic law enforcement are a part of the current social scene. Heavy industrial machinery and healthcare depend on AI in novel ways.
These trends not only will dissolve some simplistic, manual, or repetitive jobs but also create opportunities to take on a new career path or innovate your company to follow the pace of times.
In a nutshell, new work requires you to adjust to finding more technical solutions for your business and relying on virtual experts to get many new problems solved.
What Does the Future of Work Hold for Employees?
The shift envisaged in the two reports points out a massive trend towards learning new skills. New skills will be necessary for the future of work. On the way to “some jobs being lost, and some being created”, employees need to adjust their skill set, think innovatively, and become more entrepreneurial. The need to adapt has never been more observable than in the 2020 coronavirus crisis. The crisis required finding a new work from home job for so many people or taking their regular job into a home office.
But this crisis is only one personification of how work changes. As the word new always indicates some change, changes you can expect usually revolve around crises that can be financial in their outcome. Therefore, for employees, this means:
- Being more flexible in job projects.
- Ditching full-time traditional employment in favor of part-time work or freelancing.
- Dedication to continuous learning.
- Staying informed about the position of job skills on the market.
- Moving away from a lifelong career mindset.
If we could sum up the above characteristics of the new work for employees, their place is in the gig economy. The gig economy disadvantages have been criticized as uncertain and challenging for staff, which, in a way, it absolutely is, due to lack of promise or long-term security.
From New Work to a New and More Accessible Pay
However, the old work concept has also proven to be obsolete in the times that we live in. It didn’t work perfectly, as well.
So, if you keep in mind the above pointers for what new work means for you as an employee, you have a better opportunity to got through crisis unscathed. In fact, freelancing may be one of the most lucrative paths you can walk on at the moment. This is mostly because you get greater access to interesting, motivating, and better paid new jobs.
To learn more about making your first steps into the freelance world, watch the video below:
Reaping the Benefits of New Work for Managers
While staff members are individually responsible for major work shifts, managers have greater worries on their back – their company and their clients.
People and company resources are inextricably linked to clients. Therefore, when one element in the ecosystem fails, it usually pulls down other resources as well.
If you feel that you are staying behind the future of work, rest assured that it is never too late to make a comeback and put your company on solid ground again.
It took an imminent bankruptcy and cancellation on many fronts for the company behind Flash Hub, Bright Solutions, to make rapid strides into new work. The company was always innovative but this challenge took us by a surprise. Nevertheless, we managed and grew even more.
Take the global work outlook and get used to creating your company’s new work ecosystem via technologies.
Learn more about how to dig yourself out of a dangerous company crisis by watching the Ted Talks video below:
What are some other practical steps you can take to avoid a major crisis before it happens?
Move from Managing to Leading
While it’s not so easy to let go of the control of an endeavor you depend on, new work demands that you assign more responsibility to your team members.
That doesn’t mean giving more work to them. Instead, it means choosing inspired people who are accountable for their work and, above all, people who know their stuff.
There are ways to evaluate who are the top skilled people for your business, even if you are seeing their profile for the first time on a freelance platform. The new work hiring system involves more trust and transparency than what you’re traditionally used to.
To protect your company from an undeserved blind trust, you need to lay the groundwork for a more horizontal structure and the processes you will use in the future of work. This often assumes using flash teams that are ready to quickly respond to changing project requirements.
Looking for a hassle-free team growing solution? Let us help you find tried and tested expert freelancers!
Work with Agile Scrum
One such way to simplify processes in your company and make them more flexible is agile scrum. Borrowed from software development, the agile scrum method is now widely used in digital companies because it provides:
- Working in stages with fewer major risks
- Gradual resource management
- A more flexible framework for projects
Agile scrum is an expected occurrence and even a necessity in new work when technology is changing rapidly, new trends are just behind the corner, and a project that you have agreed upon may lose its meaning in a few months’ time.
How to Measure Resources and Goals in the Future Work
You have to know where you are to know where you want to get to. Unless you introduce maths and numbers into your resource management, you won’t have objective success indicators. This is not big news for company managers. Yet, in the changing work concept, goals and objectives take a new meaning.
The change ensues from the increasing employee accountability and the company’s inclination for smart and transparent resource management via means of technology. Consequently, you need to set up a system that presents individual and team efforts in numbers.
This will not only help you save and manage resources without major setbacks but also keep you at ease. You will stay away from any major loopholes in your management style.
If you want to find out more about setting a clear and simple goal measuring system for your company, reach out and let us know how we can help.
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