Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

The Future of Jobs in the Age of Adaptability

Around 20 years ago, leaders started to ask me if nascent AI-based technologies would eliminate the need for human workers. My response then was the same as it is now: not quickly and not totally.

Nevertheless, human jobs are transforming at a rapid rate. According to a 2023 McKinsey report, in the period from 2019 to 2022, the labor market in the U.S. alone experienced 8.6 million occupational shifts. This is a 50% increase from the prior three-year period, and by 2030, an additional 12 million shifts are projected. McKinsey also estimated that 30% of all hours worked by humans today could be automated by 2030.

It might be simpler if the march toward an AI-driven future meant that all human workers would eventually lounge their lives away on cruise ships – depending on technology for their very existence as in the 2008 Pixar movie WALL-E. In reality, though, humans will continue to work as we always have. The work will just look different.

The exact manner in which human jobs are evolving is driven by organizational concerns around profit and productivity. As we shared in our 2024 Age of Adaptability trends report, companies seeking to boost flagging human productivity must focus on finding the right blend of people and technology. We can do this with a thoughtful approach to job redesign and how human work can best be distributed and evaluated in the near future.

Job Redesign

I briefly talked about job redesign in the first article in this series. Job redesign is the process of rearranging or replacing tasks to better align work with real-time conditions inside and outside the organization.

While leaders may be focusing a lot of attention on job redesign now, the need for it is not unprecedented. For example, the bookkeeper job, once essential for every organization no matter how small, was redesigned in the 1980s to reflect the widespread adoption of accounting software. Back then, if you were a bookkeeper who wanted to remain gainfully employed, you had to determine how to add value beyond the software’s capabilities.

To be fair, job redesign is a more complex proposition today because the onslaught of AI-based technologies in our workplaces is impacting a larger number of jobs. But the transition shouldn’t be overwhelming, as the progression to more complete AI integration is occurring more slowly than most people think. Despite the excitement around generative AI, for instance, practical use cases are still limited. Industry analysts at Gartner even predict that in the next few years, we are likely to fall into a “trough of disillusionment” regarding what AI-based partners can do and what they can’t.

Many organizations have already learned the hard way that strategic job redesign does not involve blunt force – or bringing in a new piece of automation or an AI-based software program and letting go of all of the human employees related to that function. The most effective job redesign initiatives assign smart technology components to handle straightforward, repetitive tasks while human employees remain to provide essential oversight.

Firms like Accenture have already quantified how this shakes out. According to a recent analysis on the impact of generative AI, a current human customer service role can be broken into 13 distinct tasks. Of those 13 component tasks, four must still be fully performed by humans, four could be fully automated, and five involve human and machine partnership. Although Accenture didn’t say this, I’ll point out that the five partnered tasks require substantially more human skill than the four transactional tasks technology is replacing.

For the rest of this article, check out the ManpowerGroup Global Insights blog.

The Future of Skills in the Age of Adaptability

In ManpowerGroup’s 2024 Age of Adaptability trend report, we shared how current demographic shifts are exacerbating labor shortages. Specifically, by 2030, members of Generation Z (born 1996-2012) will compose 58% of the workforce and a majority of the large baby boom generation will have retired.

The resulting knowledge deficit means it’s paramount to forecast the future of skills and use this understanding to fill gaps as efficiently as possible. However, for all of the talk about skills-based organizations – which deconstruct traditional roles, break them down into component parts, and then hire people to handle each part – the progress toward this shift in protocol isn’t as rapid as some would prefer. Between now and 2030, the evolution to a true skills focus will be gradual, and not as simple as merely declaring yourself a skills-based organization.

In this piece, we’ll explore how in the near future, the composition and acquisition of an in-demand, workforce-wide skills portfolio can move organizations toward the goal of a skills-based organization.

Skill Composition

The future of skills is complex and rapidly evolving. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs Report, 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted within five years.

But what skills will be most essential in a world of global, distributed, and automated work, where more surprises are likely around the corner? WEF’s 2023 research found that the hottest skills from an organizational perspective include cognitive and analytical thinking, creative thinking, self-efficacy (resilience, flexibility, and learning agility), curiosity, empathy, social influence, and quality control.

It’s notable that technical AI and big data skills ranked of lower importance than all of these. Why is this the case when AI-related skills are the third highest priority in company training strategies from now until 2027 (nine percent), and the top training priority for companies with more than 50,000 employees?

Leaders may be realizing that it’s not the hard AI and automation skills themselves that are most critical, but the ability to have an effective partner orientation toward working with smart machines. In other words, honing our human “soft” skills is the best way to differentiate our capabilities from AI’s capabilities and provide competent and ethical oversight to the technological “employees” in our workplaces.

In a 2024 LinkedIn Pulse article, systems engineer Arif Sheikh agreed with this take, suggesting that as AI-based technologies automate a greater number of tasks, the value of traditional human skills might at first seem to diminish. But this perspective overlooks the foundational role such skills play in personal development, social interaction, and professional experience.

Sheikh suggested that individuals who learn to navigate social interactions without social media before relying on these platforms will have better outcomes. “This highlights the importance of direct, human connection – a nuance that AI, for all its sophistication, cannot fully replicate,” he said.

In any case, it’s likely that by 2030, the most marketable employees will be those whose skillsets are a blend of job-specific competencies and those that make it possible to work successfully with machines and other humans in a variety of contexts. This means that in terms of training dollars, we might want to put the horse before the cart.

We should also note that within the next ten years, a majority of jobs will have a green component, which may require the development of new skills such as carbon footprinting, sustainability consulting, and climate data analysis across a large swath of industries and functions.

For the rest of this piece, please visit the Manpower Group Global Insights blog.

 

The Future of AI in the Age of Adaptability

For the next several months, I'm going to be featuring a "Future of..." series I'm working on with ManpowerGroup as part of its new Global Insights team.

Within the next five years, we anticipate that the democratization of AI-based technology will lead to greater accessibility across the organization and that employees at all levels will be empowered to integrate AI into relevant job tasks as they see fit. 

As we discussed in “The Age of Adaptability” report, businesses anticipate a 23% churn in jobs over the next five years between the creation of new roles and the reduction of others. But, because more cross-industry examples will emerge detailing how best to deploy AI, organizations won’t be as mystified by its presence and impact on the workforce. AI will increasingly be seen as a force for good!

One might imagine that a futurist has extreme ideas about the future of AI. And while it’s true that I believe AI-based technologies will be true partners in work moving forward and will play a role in the development of the metaverse and immersive work environments that Manpower recently researched, I don’t think the AI of science fiction is likely to come to fruition anytime soon. We are still far from achieving what’s called artificial general intelligence, which is a form of AI that thinks and creates on its own, essentially surpassing human abilities in all types of work.

Since AI-based technologies are not in a position to take over all human jobs as is still feared, this piece will focus on the technologies that are available now – namely generative AI applications and talent intelligence applications – and the role they can realistically play in the workforce in the coming years.

Generative AI Has Legs, But It’s Not the End

Generative AI is capable of generating text, images, or other media by learning the patterns and structure of input training data and then generating new data that has similar characteristics. A workforce-related example involves the development of sophisticated digital assistants that can use an existing arsenal of HR information to respond more accurately to online employee queries, even if they weren’t trained on those exact questions.

The technology has been introduced to the market at a very rapid pace. ChatGPT was released in November of 2022, and then shortly thereafter, OpenAI released a large language model called GPT-4 that was a measurable improvement over the original ChatGPT. Microsoft, Google, and other big technology players are quickly getting in on the action. 

But generative AI is not necessarily the massive breakthrough people think it is. Its release is more the result of a logical linear progression, as we’ve had smart chatbots for quite some time now. Although there has been significant media interest in ChatGPT, it’s not substantially different from what came before. In its current state, generative AI still requires a great deal of human oversight and regulation, and the majority of organizations are just figuring out how to use it effectively for various business purposes. So, if you haven’t cracked the code yet, you shouldn’t lose sleep over it. You’re not behind.

For the rest of this piece, head over to the ManpowerGroup's Global Insights blog.

Talent Intelligence Platforms Use Deep Learning to Close Skills Gaps

The HR community is enthralled by the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) can provide tangible benefits in the quest to effectively source and hire in a tight labor market. But how does this work in practice? 
 
It starts by understanding a branch of AI called deep learning. Deep-learning algorithms, which are inspired by the actions of the human brain, continuously analyze data with a given logical structure. This structure encompasses multiple layers of algorithms called neural networks. 
 
Deep-learning algorithms can’t predict the future or give answers that a human would agree with 100%. Yet they are still valuable. If you’ve ever used a modern search engine and been amazed by the results or if you’ve ever watched the perfect show recommended by your streaming network of choice, you have experienced the power of deep learning. 
 
The main challenge of deep learning is data — specifically, the massive amount required. The talent space alone needs billions of data points about people, career trajectories, skills, and experiences. 
 
But while AI’s reach was once limited by computing power and the availability of data, that’s no longer the case. Today, global neural nets can identify more than a million skills across the world’s 8 billion people. 
 
Then, using this data, AI engineers can develop deep-learning algorithms to determine the best answers to a defined class of questions. In the case of deep talent, such questions might include: Who is the best fit for this specific job requirement? What job is this individual most likely to hold next in their career? 
 
Understanding deep learning’s ability to harness a massive amount of data is only the first step, however. Next, we must explore how deep learning can help us identify skills and transform how we hire people. 
 
The Power of Skills Adjacency 
 
Skills adjacency refers to the inference that a person good at skill A often excels at skill B, and it helps us complete our picture of a human’s true potential and the transferable skills they possess. 
 
In my recent book, “Deep Talent,” my co-authors and I tell the story of Nico Iannotti, a top sales engineer in Europe. Nico wasn’t always involved with either sales or technology. He was, however, previously involved with customer service as a sommelier and waiter. As he put it, skills are interchangeable assets that individuals can leverage in a variety of industry roles and life situations. 
 
“Many of the skills I acquired prior to my corporate career have been very helpful in my role as a client-relationship manager and solution engineer,” he told us. “What is the link between pairing wines and selling software? Both are customer-facing roles, and both provide solutions to a customer’s problem. In both cases, you are building relationships, demonstrating empathy, and selling an emotional experience based on a specific budget. It’s just a change of context, not a completely different skillset.” 

For the rest of the piece, head over to the UKG Workforce Institute.

Don't Be Intimidated by Job Redesign

The need for job redesign is on most HR leaders’ radars in 2024. But in most organizations, it still seems to be more of a talking point than a reality. However, given that Dayforce’s 14^th Annual Pulse of Talent survey found that 37% of respondents said there is a different role with their current employer that better matches their skillset, the process seems ripe with opportunity.

Job redesign is the process of rearranging or replacing tasks to better align work with evolving conditions both inside and outside the organization. And it’s really nothing new. For example, the telegraphist or telegraph operator was one of the first tech-related jobs of the 19^th century. The telegraphist used the most modern equipment available at the time to send and receive Morse code via radio and telephone.

In the 1970s, the telegraph was mostly replaced by telex, a communications network to send text-based messages. So, if you were a telegraphist and you wanted to remain gainfully employed, you had to adapt and learn telex. In other words, the telegraphist job was redesigned with a lot of the same skills and responsibilities – minus the telegraph.

Job redesign may feel more complex and overwhelming today because the pace of technology is faster and has a broader impact in terms of affected occupations. In particular, the arrival of generative AI has leaders wondering exactly how to execute job redesign to incorporate the benefits of this technology.

Before we get into how to make the process more turnkey, let’s address what job redesign is NOT. For example, job redesign is not bringing in a new piece of automation and letting go of all the human employees previously involved in the job targeted by the automation. When integration of automation is done well, the technology takes over more straightforward, repetitive tasks while human employees provide the necessary strategic input, creativity, judgment, and oversight. And that’s where job redesign comes in.

Three practical steps for job redesign
In most knowledge-driven and in many frontline worker occupations, shifting business requirements and emerging technologies mean that employees need new skillsets. Therefore, the process of job redesign involves understanding the individual tasks that encompass the work being done, and then matching or training for skills necessary for those tasks.

Step one: Engage in task analysis

Target a small category of jobs to start, and then assemble a diverse group of stakeholders from across the organization. Make sure this group includes people across levels, and not just leadership, so you have representation from those who are close to the work.

Document the critical tasks currently associated with each job, and note where there are redundancies, areas where technology could be efficiently deployed, and places where you can build a job to become more flexible in structure and environment. You can also rank your tasks according to importance, how often they are performed, how long they take, and the skills required or how people learn how to do each task.

Step two: Create new job titles and descriptions

Next, based on your analysis, group related tasks into new job buckets. With smart technology now helping in new ways with some tasks, there may be room to remove or combine previous jobs. This may involve creating new “super jobs” that cross departmental lines. For example, the new job of people analytics manager might be technically housed in HR but include tasks traditionally housed in IT such as selecting appropriate technology applications, ensuring data quality, and communicating data-related insights to leaders and other constituents.

You can also use this exercise as an opportunity to standardize jobs titles and descriptions across the organization.

For the rest of the piece, head over to the Dayforce blog.

Giving Second Chance Hiring a Chance

Every year, more than 600,000 men and women are released from prison in the United States and nearly one-third will return to prison within three years, according to an article by Crystal Yang in the American Economic Review.

However, employers can take steps to turn that percentage around and mitigate ongoing labor shortages in the process.

Pete Keller, founder of United Legion One Nation (ULON), a nonprofit dedicated to helping the formerly incarcerated become productive members of the community, said that if these individuals can secure gainful employment within the first 30-90 days of their release from prison, we can reduce recidivism from 45% to 17%.

After serving four stints in the penitentiary, Keller recalled being released back into society stripped of everything he needed to rebuild his life. “Being labeled as a felon meant that no one wanted to give me a chance or even extend a helping hand,” he said.

Second Chance hiring refers to the act of employing individuals – including the formerly incarcerated – whose life choices and situations have disadvantaged them in obtaining stable employment.

American food company Dave’s Killer Bread embraced Second Chance hiring after founder Dave Dahl was welcomed back into his family’s bakery following a 15-year prison sentence.

“We have now dedicated ourselves to advancing Second Chance employment, or hiring the best person for the job, regardless of criminal history. We’ve seen first-hand the transformative power of a job and the positive ripple effects on the broader community,” said Dan Letchinger, business unit senior vice president.

Letchinger said that Second Chance hires demonstrate dedication and loyalty every day when they come to the bakery and are passionate about the opportunity to learn and grow.  He cited an “attitude of gratitude” as one of the drivers of this population’s strong work ethic.

“We have found that the performance of employees with criminal backgrounds is often at the same levels or higher than their teammates. And in many cases, these individuals are actually promoted at a faster rate,” Letchinger said.

Despite the benefits, Second Chance hiring is still relatively uncommon. This is mostly because many organizations have a policy of terminating qualified talent solely based on arrest or conviction records. Some states such as Illinois have “Ban the Box” laws, which prohibit private employers with 15 or more employees from asking about criminal history until after an interview or a conditional offer.

Unfortunately, Keller shared, once background checks are conducted, employers often terminate employment due to the disclosure of prior convictions.

“This creates a cycle of disappointment and uncertainty for these individuals who were hopeful for a fresh start in their professional lives,” he said.

Employers do not need to wait for new legislation to be passed to protect and support formerly incarcerated individuals.  And given that labor shortages in most occupations are likely to persist through the coming decades, Second Chance hiring can be an important tool to deepen available talent pools. These guidelines may be useful when considering it.

Understand your mission. Keller reminded employers that Second Chance hiring is not a charitable endeavor, but rather a deliberate plan to enhance staff retention and enjoy the benefits of hiring individuals who are motivated to work despite facing numerous obstacles.

Consult nonprofit organizations. Groups like Jobs for the Future, Refoundry, and ULON can provide essential resources to clarify and execute an effective initiative. “They’re dedicated to educating employers to help them develop a better understanding of the whys and hows of implementing Second Chance Employment hiring practices,” said Letchinger.

Provide unbiased training. A comprehensive, proactive approach that includes all layers of management and staff will ensure that your organization is truly an equal opportunity employer and that diversity, equity, and inclusion becomes embedded in your culture, said Keller.

Have a candid conversation. Letchinger said that when trying to look past candidate backgrounds, it’s worth speaking to the individual about their personal path and being alert to signs that suggest an individual is ready to change.

This piece was originally published in the WSJ Workplace Report.

Building Culture with a Distributed Workforce

As we close out 2023, the post-pandemic return-to-office question seems to have resolved. Most organizations have embraced a hybrid model, mandating that non-frontline employees work onsite between one and three days per week. However, this structure doesn’t necessarily equate to a positive work culture that employees are reluctant to leave.

According to the forthcoming Dayforce 2024 Pulse of Talent research, nearly 70% of employees are either looking for a new job or would leave their current organizations if the right opportunity came along. Thirty-eight percent said they had issues achieving their performance goals in the last year, with the main reason being too large of a workload. Only eight percent said their employer is giving them everything they need to be productive.

It's clear that despite having more flexibility than ever before, employees are not as satisfied as they could be. And this does not bode well for a business climate that will continue to be plagued by labor and skills shortages.

Understanding how to build a strong culture in a distributed work environment, a task that few attempted before the pandemic, has now become an organizational imperative. The following five strategies infused with the right employee experience technology may prove useful as you navigate this new terrain.

Conduct ongoing employee needs assessments.

The move to permanent distributed work requires a culture shift in all organizations, but instead of viewing this as an insurmountable task, leaders should look at it as a valuable opportunity to understand the unique requirements of all your employees and address concerns impacting specific groups.

For example, caregivers may report that office commutes are a hardship, while employees who are underrepresented minorities may experience greater bias and more microaggressions in an in-person office environment. Leaders should know about these issues before they result in quiet or actual quitting.

Employee pulse taking doesn’t have to be a ton of work. You can automate an employee experience platform to survey your employees on a regular cadence and determine what they need and want as well as general workplace sentiment.

You can also leverage an employee experience platform to create a real-time, two-way path to more in-depth dialogue and feedback with senior leaders and HR representatives. Once upon a time, the flow of information from the top to the bottom of the organization might have been more of a trickle, and c-suite communication may have lacked transparency, vision, and purpose. When an organization is empowered by employee experience technology, this no longer has to be the case.

Reimagine office space as a destination.

Since employees are in the office less frequently and often have a choice whether to be there on a given day, leaders must make attendance worth their while. Facilities like onsite daycare, a gym, and open, casual lounges to support informal interaction are great-to-haves, but if your budget doesn’t allow for such things, offering a space employees want to visit could be as simple as providing extra time with leaders via scheduled and unscheduled office events. It’s also okay to spend a little money on offsite gatherings as the rapport-building that takes place at these is often priceless.

Finally, if your online employee experience is immersive enough, it will complement the -person experience beautifully. Used to market and generate excitement about upcoming events at the office and bring your employees’ great work to life, these platforms can add depth and creativity to your in-person culture and be a fun destination in their own right.

Watch out for proximity bias.

A Prezi survey found that over 66% of hybrid workers feel that workplaces favor employees who are together in a physical office. Additionally, according to my own research, a majority of employees feel they are not as effective when communicating via videoconference. Leaders can remedy this issue by restructuring meetings, revamping performance expectations to focus on output, and ensuring there is a fair mix of in-person and online platforms to network and show off one’s skills.

An employee experience platform can also assist with combatting proximity bias. Select technology that can highlight individual employee profiles on the manager’s home page so everyone on the team – remote and non-remote – is front and center. Managers can also be offered the option to easily develop and send targeted employee communication that calls attention to each direct report’s personal and professional development.

Offer assistance specific to distributed work challenges.

Always-on employees require easy access to systems that allow them to complete work wherever they are, and “hoteling” at the office should be a seamless, non-chaotic experience. Match your in-office policy with more flexible benefits for taking time off when needed, and coordinate team office time so your employees reap the full benefits of in-person collaboration and aren’t simply sitting in an empty cubicle farm alone.

A distributed work environment in a constantly changing business climate also requires your HR information delivery to be comprehensive and on point. Consider an employee experience platform with mobile and device agnostic capabilities, which can customize content for particular teams and roles, and help employees find what they need through intelligent search.

An AI-enabled platform has the additional benefit of screening incoming HR issues and quickly routing them to the correct person, which is essential when leaders cannot guarantee that an employee who walks down the hall to HR will be able to speak to a live human.

When your people are running at a million miles an hour and spread out all over the country or world, it is unfortunately easy to lose sight of what makes your organization a special place to work. While a distributed work environment requires leaders to put more conscious effort into culture, ultimately this renewed focus is probably for the best!

This article was originally published on Ceridian.com.

 

Are Small Businesses Offering the Right Benefits?

In the post-pandemic era, employee benefits have taken on a new dimension of importance. However, due to rising expectations for benefits that were introduced during COVID-19, there is often a gap between what employees want versus what small business owners are prepared to provide.

Ipsos’ Future of Work study recently surveyed more than 1,100 full-time and part-time American workers about their employer benefits. Nearly half (49%) of respondents reported that their organizations’ benefits made them more likely to stay at their current jobs.

Thirty-four percent of Ipsos’ respondents said their employers were now offering mental health and wellbeing services such as employee assistance program, discounts on therapy, and coverage for mental health care in a health insurance plan, while 28% mentioned paid parental leave as a core benefit.

While typical voluntary benefits like retirement contributions (54%) and paid time off (57%) continue to top the list of what employers are offering their workforces, newer services such as fertility (9%), adoption (9%), and gender transition (6%) support are gaining traction.

While it’s not fair to compare small businesses with larger organizations with more resources, many owners recognize that improving benefits is a critical exercise in attracting and keeping higher quality talent.

“The hiring marketplace is competitive for a small business, so we need to make it easy for people to say yes to us, and part of that equation is employee benefits,” said Robert Brill, owner of Brill Media.

Brill has consciously evolved his benefit offerings over time. They include the accrual of three weeks of vacation time and health insurance, as well as new parent leave, access to Teladoc for quick phone medical help, and extra days off for tenured employees.

Rather than decreasing benefits now that the pandemic crisis has mostly passed, Brill has increased his “as a thank you to the people who stayed with us,” he said.

Wendy Wang, owner of F&J Outdoor, also enhanced her employee benefits during the pandemic and has no plans to dial them back. “We increased the flexibility of our working hours and introduced remote work options to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our team,” Wang said. “We believe these changes have positively impacted our work culture and will continue to do so in the post-pandemic world.”

F&J Outdoor offers a range of benefits including health insurance, gym memberships, professional development courses, and tuition reimbursement. “We believe that a happy and healthy employee is a productive one, and these benefits reflect that belief,” she added.

For Muffetta Krueger, owner of Muffetta Household Staffing Agency, selecting benefits involved a thoughtful and thorough process. “We conducted surveys and held discussions to understand the specific needs and preferences of our employees,” she said. “Additionally, we sought professional advice to ensure that the chosen benefits align with both our budgetary constraints and the wellbeing of our workforce.”

Wang added that legal compliance adds another layer to benefit selection, saying that depending on the location and size of the business, there may be legal requirements to provide certain benefits to comply with labor laws.

How should small business owners go about ensuring that their benefits package meets the needs of their workforce and stays within their means? The following tips may prove helpful.

Start with the basics.

Research your competitors’ offerings to determine the benefits that are considered standard in the industry and for your size organization. For example, providing company-sponsored health insurance may be a given in some situations, while in others it’s at the employer’s discretion.

Choose extensions based on feedback.

Hold open dialogue sessions and leverage technology to survey your employees often. The results should provide major insights into the benefit trade-offs that your employees are willing to make. An ideal benefit supports the values of employees as well as the values of the organization.

Keep in mind that supplemental benefits you offer may vary depending on demographics, life stages, and individual circumstances – and are likely to change alongside market shifts and societal disruptions like a pandemic.

Monitor and adjust your strategy.

Krueger suggested that small business owners analyze claims data and participation rate in benefits programs to accurately gauge their effectiveness. Converse with your HR representative (if you have one) to get an important perspective on the evolving needs of your team and partner to continuously improve offerings. 

Keep enrollment simple.

If your employees don’t know certain benefits exist, they can’t take advantage of them. However, it’s not unusual for leaders to change existing benefit offerings or add valuable new ones without alerting their workforces. There’s Communicate about your benefits frequently and in all mediums so re enrollment instructions and dates don’t get lost in the shuffle. Make it easy to sign up and chart a clear path to help or questions about a given benefit.

Even for small businesses, the options are broader and more holistic than ever before – from professional development opportunities to self-scheduling tools and wellness programs.  Being willing to think flexibly about benefits will help close the gap between what employees are looking for and what you provide.

Perhaps Krueger said it best: A well-crafted benefits package is not just an expense; it's an investment in the success and longevity of your business through the satisfaction and productivity of your workforce.

This piece was originally published on AMEX Business.

Strategic Foresight in Practice in the HR Space

 In the summer of 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic raging, everyone across the globe waited to see what would happen next.

The employment world was no different. In my role as a workforce futurist, I help organizations anticipate and prepare for near-future disruptions. As part of ongoing work with the US government, I produced a summer 2020 forecast for 2022-25. I asked: what impact would the pandemic have on employment two to five years forward?

Futurist professionals use a combination of methodologies to make our forecasts, including environmental scanning for emerging changes, trend analysis, and scenario planning. Although COVID-19 was in some ways an unprecedented event, similar crises had befallen the world before. Futurists examine published public and private sector research as well as media and expert commentary to try to extrapolate what those outcomes might mean for the current situation. The U.S. government was very interested in this expertise when faced with the first global pandemic in more than one hundred years.

In addition to the permanent installation of distributed work (which was fairly obvious even in 2020), I guessed that between 2022 and 2025, the world would be plagued by mass layoffs –due to potential economic instability resulting from the pandemic crisis.

Plus, I anticipated an escalating mental health crisis among workers after suffering the collective trauma of isolation during COVID-19.

Over the next few years, I kept my eye on whether the forecasted twindemic of layoffs and rising mental health issues was actually coming to fruition.

As of mid-2023, Zippia reported that 40% of all Americans had been laid off from a job at least once, and nearly one-third had been laid off within the last two years.

In the first ten months of 2023, the technology industry alone laid off a quarter million people. And, available unemployment solutions continued to underperform, resulting in the average unemployed citizen being out of work for 23 weeks, according to 2022 Statista research.

Most importantly, a 2023 study based on surveys in 29 nations published by Harvard Medical School in The Lancet Psychiatry journal found that in the post-pandemic era, one out of every two people in the world will develop a mental health disorder in their lifetime.

 

Organizations Answer the Call for Employee Health Support

 

Many global organizations did recognize the psychological impact the pandemic was having on employees and stepped-up efforts to help them. For example, at Pinterest, employees who lost childcare or were caring for an ill family member could receive financial compensation for up to four weeks. And JPMorgan Chase implemented a well-being app to query employees about their mental health and stress levels on a weekly basis.  By monitoring the app’s data, HR could provide struggling teams with customized support.

 

As the pandemic progressed, my research team noted a general increase in technology-based mental health offerings.

 

Two notable programs include the Spring Health mobile app – which prompts employees to take a guided mental health assessment and then matches them with a dedicated care navigator – and the Flourish DX app, which collects and reports employee mental health assessments to health and safety professionals as well as HR staff.

Similarly, there’s Lyra, a service that offers employees access to individualized care including self-guided programming, mental health coaching, and medication management. Lyra’s leaders claim that an astounding 88% of program users improve with care.

Given the frequency and severity with which layoffs and mergers are taking place – as the Zippia and Statistica data shows – it is clear that organizations need to continue to support their former employees.

And to a degree, thanks to stellar outplacement services firms like LHH, Right Management, and Mercer, this is happening. Mercer, for instance, claims that its outplacement services offerings help transitioning employees and displaced employees land a new job nearly 2.5X faster than the national average.

LHH’s outplacement services programs with Rexam were in part responsible for the business saving £22 million during an acquisition. And Right Management guided a global technology corporation employing over 400,000 people in more than 175 countries through an outplacement program that resulted in 81% of released candidates moving into a new role.

The trouble is, mental health and extensive job search support for laid off employees tends to be reserved for those at more senior levels. And economists say that more senior individuals are less vulnerable to the cascading effects of unemployment and can often afford to private services out of their own pocket.

The Far-Reaching Consequences of Unemployment

The long-term effects of unemployment on personal wellbeing are noted in several studies summarized by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

In short, unemployed individuals face reduced income, compromised physical health, strained relationships, poor academic performance for their children, and sometimes a permanent loss of self-esteem, self-worth, and intrinsic motivation.

This decrease in motivation subsequently creates a decrease in job seeking behavior, which means the problem then becomes a vicious cycle leading to prolonged periods of unemployment.

Unemployed individuals, especially those in lower to middle income brackets, are less likely to have the money and resources to spend on coaching and therapy that will help them get back on their feet.

A Futurist’s Forecast Leads to Tangible Action

Yes, forecasts are part of my job as a futurist, but the ideal is for my work to not just be theoretical.

I want to use my forecasts to actively generate solutions that can make the world of work better – so back in the summer of 2020, my consulting organization alongside academics at Northwestern University and the Feinberg School of Medicine put together a grant proposal with the National Institute of Mental Health, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The result was DRIVEN – an experiential platform designed to guide high-risk workers back to employment while supporting them through what is often a deeply worrying and traumatic time.

DRIVEN’s six-week program is app-based and combines evidence-based cognitive behavioral techniques (CBT) with traditional job search strategies. Although CBT has entered the public’s awareness thanks to self-serve mental health apps, these techniques have not been traditionally leveraged in the career development and coaching space despite employment’s obvious impact on emotional well-being.

The program includes a range of tools including videos, exercises, and live coaching – because we believe the structure and accountability provided by a human partner is critical to success and that’s what a lot of today’s mental health apps are missing.

Every time a newly unemployed worker engages with the program, they encounter diversity of age, race, and ethnicity because we want our participants to see themselves reflected in every video host, coach, video, image, and animation they come across in DRIVEN.

When we first received our grant, our hope was that the resulting program would be in development and efficacy testing via clinical trial for three years, and by the time it was ready, the world would need it more than ever.

Now, as we near the end of that tenure, we hope that DRIVEN serves as an example of how forecasting can be used to produce tools that genuinely have an immediate impact on the health of the global workforce.

At its core, strategic foresight is an exercise in imagination, and the good news is, anyone with expertise and experience in a given industry, organization, or company can use it to shape policy, plan effective interventions, and avoid risk. HR professionals next must take the courageous step of looking likely futures in the eye and developing strategies that may seem “ahead of their time” now but may prove essential later.

This post was originally published on UNLEASH.

 

Goodbye to My Current WSJ Column, The Workplace Report

All good things must come to an end.

My syndicated WSJ column, The Workplace Report, is coming to an end. The last 20 months have involved an unprecedented amount of change in the workforce and human resources spheres. I'm leaving it with five major predictions for the near future world of work, featuring Workplace Report highlights from the last year and a half of coverage.

The demand for skilled workers will reach a crisis point due to demographic shifts and falling fertility rates. According to Manpower Group’s 2023 Talent Shortage Survey, 77% of global employers say they are already struggling to find workers with the right mix of technical skills and human capabilities.

Talent intelligence, internal talent mobility, skills-based hiring, and the rise of short-term, rapidly assembled teams comprised of a mix of people with different geographies and employment arrangements – including contract workers and the first permanent WFH employees – will alleviate the squeeze.

Generative AI spreads its influence across industries. Generative artificial intelligence is a form of AI capable of generating text, images, or other media by learning the patterns and structure of input training data and then generating new data that has similar characteristics.

In the coming years, we will see expanded accessibility and impact via AI democratization, the integration of AI into a variety of work functions, and numerous use cases developed and publicized. People are unlikely to lose their jobs due to Gen AI alone, but rather to a human who knows how to work with Gen AI. And managers will need a whole new skillset to supervise human workers empowered by AI to make independent decisions.

Organizations are called to step up holistic employee care. In keeping with the longstanding view of employees as commodities, most organizations have been unaccustomed to concerning themselves with aspects of employee lives outside what they did between office walls.

However, as the definition of full-time employment becomes more fluid and mental health and burnout numbers remain higher than pre-pandemic, some (but not all) organizations will answer their employees’ calls for help (retaining  COVID-19-era benefits and adding new ones, managing layoffs effectively, etc.).

Employee experience will rise to the forefront as an essential part of engagement. Across the employee lifecycle, from talent acquisition to onboarding to learning and development, performance management, and offboarding, companies are making progress customizing their employee experiences to different groups depending on their unique journeys and requirements. Diversity, equity, and inclusion and allyship strategies will continue to be a priority for the most forward-thinking organizations.

The employee experience of the next several years is high tech and high touch and focuses on two overarching themes: purpose and flexibility. Also, the employee experience of 2030 will likely begin to include the metaverse, which will greatly impact organizational culture and work structures.

HR compliance is rising to a never-before-seen level of complexity. This has involved hundreds of new regulations associated with re-opening, distributed and remote work, vaccination, and labor relations, as well as those associated with human capital disclosures, pay transparency, and the increasing use of AI in organizations.

It is just a matter of time before lawmakers draft guardrails to use these technologies ethically and to safeguard sensitive data. As these regulations will vary by country, state, or locality, this will be increasingly difficult for HR and workforce professionals to keep up with.