The Future of Work: A Round-Up and Final Thoughts
9 To 5 No Longer: The Future of Work
The pandemic gave almost everyone the opportunity to work from home. Since then, a lot of companies have stopped imposing the 9-5 setup.
Employees are thankful as they now have more time to themselves and their family. Mostly because they don’t have to spend all their waking hours at work. From leaders to employees, everyone is taking their time while still being able to finish work on a daily basis.
This allows the employee to become the priority and reflects in the overall employee experience. That said, here are three factors that contribute to having the best employee experience, according to Jacob Morgan.
Culture/People
A great company culture, whether physical or virtual, makes an employee happy. However, there are two facets of the company culture. If it is bad, an employee would be thankful if it doesn’t translate as much from a distance. If it is good, an employee would expect it to continue despite not getting to experience it physically every day.
Technology
Since everyone is working remotely, providing them with the best technology can make their work-from-home setup enjoyable. Knowing that your superiors is only a chat away also helps beef up communications. This is made even better with apps like Asana and Slack.
Physical Space
Offices no longer exist, and if they do, they have transformed into satellite offices for those who need the space. They are no longer required to come in and render onsite hours, since the pandemic is still in full swing.
Businesses are no longer prioritizing themselves. Instead, they are prioritizing their employees, as they are the lifeblood of the company.
In the new future of work, employees are working hand-in-hand with their employers to further the company in the midst of a global crisis.
Cultural Alignment towards Company Progress
One of the biggest challenges of companies these days is how to align culture in a virtual setting. This includes aligning goals, building successful strategies, and checking if everyone is still on the same page when it comes to objectives.
Companies fail to align culture when they do not consider addressing cultural issues within the organization. When aligning culture and strategy-building is not prioritized, that is also a failure on the company’s part.
To be able to determine how to align culture in the company, let us figure out what the four types of culture are in an organization.
Clan culture
This is the type of culture that is hyper-focused on the employees. It promotes a family-like environment, an open-door policy for leaders and employees alike, and everyone is encouraged to collaborate with one another.
Adhocracy culture
The company is focused on innovation, where everyone is encouraged to bring ideas to the table. This kind of culture thrives on motivating their employees by hearing and considering all their ideas, whether big or small.
Market culture
This is a results-driven culture. Employees are not the priority in this type of culture; profit is. The pressure is real when a company has this type of culture, since employees are driven to bring profit and maintain sustainability within the company.
Hierarchy culture
The line between superiors and regular employees is clear in this cultural set-up. Employees do not have an open line to their leaders, because of the organizational structure that discourages them from speaking directly to the higher-ups.
To be able to align culture within the company, leaders have to encourage organizational values such as risk management, performance recognition, transparency, accountability, and trust, among others.
Open collaboration is also encouraged, since employees will feel special once they are beckoned to bring their ideas to the table and talk freely with their leaders. Strategizing in one room will make employees feel that they are valued.
Employee satisfaction will skyrocket, which in turn will build a strong culture in the company.
When leaders and employees are brought together, it creates a culture that is practically unbreakable.
Creating Value in the Ecosystem Economy
The ecosystem economy consists of partners, suppliers, and key people who are not entirely part of the company. It is a network of people and businesses a company needs to keep it running.
Creating value within an ecosystem economy means that one has to build a network of partnerships that is based on collaboration. It has to be integrated and fluid, which allows a company to survive and thrive in a cutthroat world. Gone are the days when companies would need to contact several third-party options to find which one best suit their requirements.
Having software and several integrated platforms to accommodate everyone is also important to having a successful business ecosystem. When everyone’s needs are being met, the ecosystem grows stronger.
If the ecosystem your company belongs to has a thorough understanding of the supply-chain risk, every business will be effectively managed. The pandemic will not be the only crisis a company will face, so managing the supply chain will help everyone ease through it with minor casualties.
Securing the ecosystem and constantly finding new ways of connecting with one another will help all who are within it. Since the ecosystem practically exists in cyberspace, securing it with the best security measures will take care of it.
In a successful ecosystem economy, everyone has access to information, no matter where they are, who they are, and what time it is in their part of the world. Partnership is the key in the ecosystem economy, furthering business relations with one another despite the distance and the organizational chart.
In fact, the organizational chart is very fluid, and your position does not dictate how you receive and give information within the ecosystem.
Customer-Driven Future for Business
Aside from employees, there is one focus that is higher in the business world: clients and customers.
Businesses are looking into providing the best experience for their customers, whether physical or virtual. The key is to make each customer feel special, as they are the major factor why a business is successful.
Customer Service
Customer-facing departments such as marketing, service, and sales are merging and collaborating; innovating the way they provide service to customers.
Email chains almost do not exist anymore, and apps such as Slack and Zoom have revolutionized the way people in the company meet. Communicating with customers is also made easy, with the use of apps like WhatsApp and Viber, which makes the customer feel like they have a personal line to the company.
Aside from that, the customer’s digital journey is also becoming more efficient and effective. Businesses are making their websites more customer-friendly, which means it is easier to navigate. They’ve also made their consumer support better, guiding clients through the digital experience.
Customer Support
Businesses have also made it a point to provide faster responses to client inquiries. Customers have been complaining about slow response times since time immemorial. Companies are changing that, providing faster responses to their clients to avoid complaints or worse, losing them entirely.
Company departments are integrating, and customer information is freely shared across these departments. This allows these departments to access data and provide a customized experience for their clients. Knowing what the customer purchases, or what services they avail of, their general location, their likes and dislikes when it comes to ads helps companies create a tailor-fit digital experience for them.
Businesses also make it a point to lessen chatbots and add more actual agents to answer customer queries, whenever and wherever. These actual agents are from every part of the world, in every time zone, providing actual answers to customers even in the dead of night.
As for internal processes, email chains, data silos, and office hours no longer exist, and if they do, they do not exist company-wide.
The digital universe is where everything is at, including, and most especially, the customer-driven experience.
Streamlining Business with Automation
Automation is basically streamlining processes in the workplace, which helps lessen repetitive work. This frees up employees to work on more complicated tasks within their departments.
As often mentioned in this article, the virtual setting allows for faster communication, since it is easier to create channels that are dedicated to each concern. Employees can reach the right people as well, as fast as they need it.
Documentation is a key factor in business automation. Processes, communication, reminders, memos, and such are kept and archived for future reference. Best practices are shared interdepartmentally, so that problems can easily be solved without having to contact the person who found the solution.
Automation is becoming the new imperative, allowing leaders and employees to work on workflows that make each person’s job easier.
Workflows are becoming more stable and more efficient, and employees and leaders alike are taking on the developer mindset.
The workspace itself is being reinvented to cater more to the employee experience and the customer experience. People are communicating more with each other, because now that the workplace is automated, they are free to do more human tasks, leaving the repetitive ones to the bots without sacrificing quality.
The Future of Work in a Nutshell
The primary concern of businesses in the virtual ecosystem is how to provide the best experience for their employees and customers. The loss of a physical office has presented companies with a challenge on communication and providing service to everyone because of the distance.
But now, almost everyone has overcome this particular challenge and are now flourishing and thriving in the virtual setting.
We hope you have enjoyed our Blog Series on The Future of Work. To stay up-to-date on our next blog series, or to check out our other articles and resources on how to take your business management to the next level, check out our blogs, or subscribe to our newsletter for a monthly update on the world of business and remote assistance.
Thank you, and have a wonderful day!
About Jaime Jay
Meet Jaime Jay – a man who wears many hats, and wears them all admirably. He's a master connector, an entrepreneur extraordinaire, and a published author who knows how to get things done.
Before he found his way to the business world, Jaime served his country as a brave paratrooper in the U.S. Army. But that's just the beginning of his many accomplishments.
He's the founder of the renowned Bottleneck Distant Assistant Services firm, and his book "Quit Repeating Yourself" has become a must-read for entrepreneurs everywhere.
When he's not busy building his empire, you can find him on his beloved Harley Davidson, cruising through the countryside and taking in the invigorating effects of Uitwaaien – a Dutch practice that involves facing the wind to boost health and relieve stress.
He enjoys spending his free time outside building stuff with his wife, Nikita the dog and their two kittens (for now at least) Tommy and Tater.
He is ‘over-the-moon’ happily married to his wonderful wife Sara, his amazing daughter, Jessica, who is serving our country as a United States Army soldier. Jaime and Sara are the proud grand parents of two beautiful little girls.
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