Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

A Futurist's View of the Post-Pandemic Workforce

Given that I wrote a book about the rapid transformation of work as we knew it back in 2018, people often ask me what has surprised me about how human capital is evolving today. As a Workforce Institute Board Member, I’d like to share my topline thoughts, some of which have been derived as the result of quantitative research, and others which came about through engagement with organizations and futurist groups such as the Association of Professional Futurists (APF), the Future Today Institute, the Grey Swan Guild, and the foresight certification program I recently completed with the University of Houston.

The Acceleration of What We Saw Coming

Pandemic or no pandemic, several workforce-related trends were inevitable, including the rise of the gig economy, the contract workforce, internal talent marketplaces, and talent assembly – in which teams are constructed from different types of workers to solve specific problems in hot areas of the business.

We also surmised that organizations would begin to look closely at how human capital quantitatively drives businessvalue; the use of Big Data, analytics, and executive dashboards to determine what is and isn’t working in talent acquisition, learning, scheduling, and performance; the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to combat unconscious bias and measure productivity; and the focus on data quality, integration, and governance.

The shift in the flow of work due to new players like Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon entering the online collaboration market was expected, as was theincreasing popularity of curated learning content by in-house subject matter experts, personalized course recommendations, and targeted certifications and microcredentialing. Given the technology available today, there is no reason individuals shouldn’t upskill and reskill using all the resources at their disposal, and at their own pace and convenience.

What Has Surprised Me

There have been a few head scratchers along the way. The first involves digital transformation. It is a bit disappointing how, during the pandemic, some organizations have simply slapped in-office processes up online. That was fine for the first six months of the crisis, but now it’s time to move on. One size doesn’t fit all. We must permanently adapt certain processes to be antifragile and an effective mix of high tech, high touch.

Also, with respect to digital transformation, it surprises me that no one is talking about what we’ll do when we are entirely dependent on technology and it breaks, what happens when it gets seriously hacked, what happens when we have bandwidth challenges and access inequity, what happens when there are too many systems and usability and adoption falter, and what data and privacy concerns will arise with increased employee monitoring. In my opinion, these are issues that every company should be closely tracking.

While the labor shortages occurring as a result of demographic shifts like baby boomer retirement and smaller generational cohorts like X and Z were anticipated, organizational attitudes toward post-pandemic employee retention are not. Many companies are currently issuing decrees about exactly when people should return to the office and how and when they should work. After a successful 18-month trial of much greater flexibility, this is not going to fly with top (and increasingly rare) talent, and I fear a “great resignation” is about to take place.

Finally, I’m perplexed that more leaders aren’t acknowledging that they were caught completely off guard by the pandemic and are now engaging in strategic foresight to be adequately prepared for what’s certain to be future disruptions.

While we can’t predict the future, we have a responsibility to look around corners as best we can and plan for a variety of potential scenarios. I look forward to continuing to be part of this process!

This post was originally published on the Workforce Institute blog.

Career Durability: Ensure You Have a Job As Long As You Want One

You might remember that last fall, I helped DeVry University with a survey about workplace sentiment during the COVID-19 pandemic. At a time when employees should be feeling recognized and celebrated, nearly one in four employed Americans said they believed that American workers are not valued. And, more than a third of survey respondents claimed that based on their employer’s actions since the start of the pandemic, they feel disposable.

Were these feelings valid? Could employers actually take or leave employees, not caring if they were successful or unsuccessful, contributing or not contributing, employed with the company or leaving to go somewhere else?

The workforce is changing in major ways. The pandemic sped up a movement from strict scheduling to flexible “work on your own time” engagements. Prior to COVID-19, we were already seeing smart machines and automation as part of daily work, and the tremendous growth of the gig economy.

Taken together, these trends show that the old ways of sustaining a career no longer work. In past decades, you could go to college or a trade school, get a degree, and use the skills associated with that degree to work for one – or maybe a few – organizations over the course of your working life.

That is no longer the case. Jobs – and the skills required for those jobs – are changing rapidly.

In these times, nothing is certain except change, and this is unnerving. In fact, Ceridian’s 2021 Pulse of Talent report, which surveyed more than 5,000 people across five regions, found that 66% of individuals are taking job security into account more now than before the pandemic.

Career durability is a ticket to long-term security

To avoid feeling – and indeed being – disposable, today’s employees need to be the leaders of their own careers. They must build what we call career durability.

Career durability involves acquiring the skills, mindset, and knowledge to be an engaged and productive member of the workforce – continuously. On LinkedIn, I explained career durability as including these five areas:

• Hard skills: skills that allow you to complete tasks in a specific job.
• Soft skills: skills for collaborating effectively with others.
• Applied technology skills: skills that allow you to leverage available technology to do your job better.
• Institutional knowledge: job or industry expertise gained through experience.
• Growth mindset: being willing to improve, learn, and reconsider existing ways of doing things.

For more where this came from, read the full article at the Ceridian Dayforce Wallet blog.

Could the Pandemic Be a Springboard to Sustainability?

Large companies and organizations have been making good on their recent commitment to corporate citizenship by dedicating resources to help the globe overcome some of its most pressing challenges. Sustainability has been among these key areas of focus, leading to environmentally friendly corporate initiatives from Apple’s commitment to closed-loop supply chains to the development of Patagonia’s next-generation responsible business venture capital arm.

While it’s crucial for these organizations to make top-down commitments to sustainability, business units, groups and even individual teams within them can take their own steps in playing a key role in sustainability in the new normal.  

1. Commit your team to your corporate purpose.

At the corporate level, a clear statement of purpose from executive leadership has become a critical tool in supporting sustainability. The same concept can be borrowed by unit and team managers to empower their employees to find ways to take action.

The process of defining purpose makes it clear that businesses exist to serve society and not the other way around, and the link to sustainability becomes clear,” University of Pittsburgh School of Business professor CB Bhattacharya wrote in a May 2020 article for the World Economic Forum.  

In the pandemic era, Bhattacharya recommends that companies bring their purpose to life by pursuing concrete sustainability goals and focusing on a few material areas. Unit managers can follow up on that commitment in their daily work by asking themselves questions such as: What new sustainability developments will affect demand for our products and the supply of our raw materials? What type of sustainability do stakeholders expect from our part of the business?' By adding a sustainability variable to the business unit decision-making equation, middle management can help make good on big corporate promises. 

One way to do this is to evaluate your immediate team’s carbon footprint. Although you might have policies in place already, application may need some ground-level execution. You can start by examining how your electricity, gas emissions output, and water intake were measured in the past, and consider re-measuring with a new reduction target in mind.

Encourage your senior leaders to reiterate your corporate purpose, sustainability objectives and reduction targets to all constituents, but especially the employees who will be implementing them "on the ground." 

2. Empower your employees.

Getting employees buy in to sustainability measures is critical. Motivate your employees—and build enthusiasm for your efforts—by explaining why sustainable business practices benefit everyone. Tell them how they can make a difference by incorporating these new processes and tools into daily operations.

Empowering your team requires stepped up communication. It's something the leadership team at major home health product manufacturer Sunstar learned first-hand during COVID-19. 

“The pandemic developed with unprecedented speed, and the amount of information created confusion,” says Julia Linz, senior director of HR at Sunstar. “We tried to provide regular and clear communication to our employees—especially when conveying tough messages.”

Sunstar set up a dedicated online channel to share best practices on sustainable business practices, remote work, and other timely topics, to post updates on health authority regulations, and to provide a space for confidential questions. Company leaders have also learned to seek multiple perspectives on managing the crisis from local market leaders and departmental managers.

Encourage employees or teammates to brainstorm and implement new ideas that serve customers in a more environmentally friendly manner or generally make the office a greener space. A few examples employees can take ownership over include embracing electronic file sharing to reduce paper and ink cartridge use, using reusable coffee mugs and water bottles, or even bringing plants into their workspaces to recycle stale air. They may seem like minor contributions, but if enough employees across the globe deploy them together, the benefits can add up.  

Fracture, a medium-sized company in the Inc. 5000, allows customers to upload digital photos, have them printed on durable glass, and shipped in an eco-friendly, ready-to-mount package. According to CEO Abhi Lokesh, the organization’s employees are researching ways to offset the company’s carbon footprint from raw material shipments and receivables. “Fracture is also working with We Are Neutral, a partner helping us neutralize carbon emissions through offsetting and reduction initiatives like tree planting,” he says.

For the rest of the article, check out AMEX Business.

If You Could Go Back to the Office, Would You?

If you could return to your pre-pandemic work arrangement right now, would you do it?

I conducted an informal email survey last month to hear how 9-to-5 professionals would answer that question. What were their reasons for wanting a more traditional in-office or an alternative working-from-home (WFH) arrangement?

I deduced some central themes from the about 100 responses I received. For one thing, people's decisions about whether or not they'd go back were nuanced. Of the approximately 75 percent of my respondents who said they would NOT go back, nearly all gave a qualifier such as "I'd be happier and more productive working from home permanently IF my kids weren't out of school."

 I also heard many of the same pros and cons time and time again.

Pros of Working From Home

Some of the recurring pros reflected that working from home gave individuals control over the typical, day-to-day stress of being in an office. Many find that working from home is a better fit for their comfort zones.

Freedom 

About half of respondents who said they would not go back to the office mentioned freedom specifically. These individuals relish the independence and flexibility that come with working from home.

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“It’s much less distracting and I don't have the wasted time of a commute twice a day,” says Jesse Silkoff, co-founder and president of MyRoofingPal. "It has also allowed my wife and I to have more time together since we can meet up for a coffee break. And, I’ve saved a ton of money having easy access to my own refrigerator, preferred coffee and the casual clothes I want to wear."

Interestingly, one-third of respondents who would not go back to the old way were positive about having a work environment full of kids and pets. When DevSkiller co-founder Tom Winter was working at the office, he was so exhausted when he came home, he didn’t have the energy to play with his children.

“Remote work has allowed me to enjoy family meals and park visits,” he says.

Pet safety company Huan's founder Gilad Rom feels he has a better quality of life with his dog Puppy Pie keeping him company as he works.

“He reminds me to take breaks, he reduces my stress and our bond is much stronger,” Rom says.

No More Sunday Blues

Jason VanDevere, CEO of Goal Crazy Planners, shared that many people who work Monday through Friday often feel mildly depressed on Sunday nights in anticipation of the work week ahead.

“When I was working in the office, it was the typical job and I was in an endless cycle of feeling excited for Friday and dreading the ensuing Monday two days later,” he says. “Working from home, I mostly maintain the same 9-to-5 routine. For some reason, though, I'm less negatively impacted by the prospect of getting back to work on Monday morning.”

Better for Introverts

Most self-proclaimed introverts agreed that overall, WFH better supports their natural tendencies. The extroverts who manage and work with introverts have also noticed the positive impact WFH has had on them.

“Before the pandemic, I would go to my clients’ offices to conduct in-person workshops,” says Dave Collins, CEO of corporate education firm Oak & Reeds. “Now, my company has pivoted to virtual-only training, and I’ve found that this format gives the quieter, more introspective workshop participants more of an opportunity. In a live group setting, I might have really had to push them, but the virtual privacy gives introverts a bit of cover when sharing their experiences.”

For more where this came from, check out the full piece at AMEX Business.

Are You Managing Data Responsibly?

New AI-driven health tracking technologies are being used by organizations to curtail the spread of the coronavirus by monitoring and recording patrons’ and employees’ temperatures and locations to determine whether they may be a high-risk of spreading the disease. With many data-related privacy and ethical questions about this approach still unresolved, businesses looking to reopen in the new normal will have to grapple with whether or not to deploy these technologies and, if they do, how they should go about it.

Technology

At a June 2020 virtual conference about the COVID-influenced economy, futurist Benjamin Pring of IT services consultancy Cognizant spoke about the inevitable rise of surveillance technology by governments and businesses. Much like the aftermath of 9/11, the new security systems implemented during COVID-19 will most likely be here to stay, he said.

One example of the technology he was talking about comes from French "3D semantic camera" company Outsight, who has developed autonomous laser technology that uses factors like bare faces (i.e. without masks), higher-than-average body temperature and proximity to other people to identify “high spread risk” individuals within large crowds. Companies, like real estate management or security firms, can use this technology to streamline safety enforcement in an effort to keep transmission rates low.

And as the Washington Post reported in April 2020, if you enter the City Farmers Market in Atlanta or one of the Wynn Resorts hotels in Las Vegas, you can expect to be discreetly informed if you register as feverish — and may even be asked to leave.

Even in public places that operate on a smaller scale, business owners and managers are deploying thermal “healthcams.” Organizations like pharmacies, banks and restaurants are using solutions like Vivotek, which checks the number of people entering and exiting a facility. The smart camera and analytics system monitors lines and points of entry with more frequent social interaction. Other businesses are using social distancing wristbands that ring when two people stand less than six feet apart. Fitted with Bluetooth, the band tracks the wearer’s physical connection points in case the establishment later needs to track an infection.

Privacy

The biggest concern with this type of surveillance involves informed consent — the responsibility of the organization to make the appropriate efforts to communicate to those being tracked what data is being collected and how it is being processed. Some customers may be uncomfortable with automated systems routinely follow individuals through public places and record their data, and the bigger the crowd, the less likely it is that every customer will understand how they’re being monitored, and the implications of the surveillance.

For the rest of the article, head over to the AMEX Business site.

 

This Veteran's Day, Broader Your Diversity and Inclusion Strategy

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, as of June 2019, 200,000 service members transition from military to civilian life annually. In the last several years, the federal government has taken many steps to support them — including the Joining Forces Initiative in 2011, which called for companies to hire and train 1.5 million military veterans and their spouses, and the the Forever GI Bill passed in 2017, which ensures that student veterans can take advantage of the educational benefits they’ve earned at any point throughout their lives.

However, the transition to civilian employment may not always be an easy or successful process.

Per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate among veterans has more than doubled year over year to almost 7 percent this year. And according to Gallup’s 2019 annual survey on employee engagement, a majority of all employees including veterans have jobs in which they are not engaged.

The lack of job security and satisfaction is a profound concern. In an October 2020 piece for Military Times, Leo James reported that more than 6,000 veterans take their lives every year.

In light of the escalating stress and financial pressure associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, this Veteran’s Day we need to do more than simply thank our former service members. Leaders can make their veteran employees feel included and valued by leveraging these specific strategies.

1. Address their military experience.

DeVry University’s Green Zone Elite training program offered several tips to increase leaders’ veteran sensitivity, and this one is at the top of the list.

Leaders should encourage veteran employees to discuss their military service in the context of the job.

“Take the time to understand and respect the transferable skills veterans bring to the table by virtue of their Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) and leadership skills informed by their rank,” DeVry recommends in a press release.

“In the workforce, I quickly advanced with the project management and leadership skills I learned during my time in the Navy,” said DeVry University alum Dan Fettig, a former enlisted sailor and current Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer and the T-TAURI Engagement & Capabilities Implementation Manager at Lockheed Martin Space.

“As I navigated my career, I have found there’s an opportunity for employers and fellow team members to learn more about how the military trains veterans with transferable skills and better understand how and why veterans operate the way we do," Fettig says.

2. Provide veterans with structure.

Although this is more difficult to do in pandemic times, we must remember that veteran employees are accustomed to a set workday, timely meetings and predetermined performance objectives. It may be necessary, especially when a veteran employee is new to the organization, for a manager to outline exactly what their days will look like and the precise expectations upon which they will be evaluated.

3. Emphasize teamwork.

Most veterans have a finely-honed sense of camaraderie and are motivated by a shared purpose and strong relationships. Veterans should connect with their teams early and often, even if engagement is entirely remote.

If a leader has a choice between an individualized or team approach to a project, it’s more psychologically beneficial for many veterans to work alongside others.

Leaders can also boost veteran morale by helping them help others.

“Through our Veterans Employee Resource Group, we run campaigns to have our veterans refer other veterans,” Mike Thiel, a U.S. Navy veteran and talent acquisition manager at Micron Technology, said in an October 2020 Tech Republic conversation about helping military veterans transition into civilian jobs with the help of artificial intelligence.

“To give these opportunities to veterans who are very scared of transitioning, to be able to provide something for them, is huge,” Thiel said.

4. Use a retrospective lens.

According to DeVry, military veterans are accustomed to “After Action Reviews” that assess successes and opportunities for improvement.

Once a project or assignment is completed, civilian leaders can follow suit by hosting a reflection meeting to discuss the progress and outcomes. Postmortem meetings are good practice for everyone, but they may be doubly useful to veterans who may feel insecure about the differences between military and civilian employment.

5. Educate your workforce about stereotypes.

Civilian employees may view veterans in a certain light and may expect them to only be qualified for specific jobs and/or have specific personality traits and attributes.

Leaders are well-served to create training programs—or at least self-serve online information—that educate their workforces about veteran myths versus realities. Anti-bias initiatives targeted to other forms of discrimination should also include former service members.

6. Be mindful of mental health challenges.

In his Military Times piece, Leo James reported that since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, funding for veterans' mental health care has increased fourfold from $2.5 billion to $10 billion a year. This is good news, but we must keep in mind that in the wake of the pandemic, everyone’s mental health needs will increase and veterans may be a particularly vulnerable population.

Leaders should check in frequently with veteran employees, ask about their general well-being, be on the lookout for warning signs of depression and anxiety (isolation, moodiness, changes in work performance, etc.) and provide helpful resources.

This Veterans Day, so many organizations have illustrated their commitment to former service members by hiring veterans in record numbers. Now, in conjunction with overall diversity and inclusion objectives, they must ensure their leaders are equipped to support this group in meaningful ways.

Please visit the original piece at American Express Business.

Managing Your Data in the New Normal

Amid social distancing, stringent lockdowns and a second surge of COVID-19 cases, business owners can no longer rely on splashy launch events, mom-and-pop friendliness or a dynamite location to build customer relationships. Today, every business is competing for eyeballs and purchases made on digital channels.

Data-based approaches can help you stand out more effectively.

To successfully stand out, you’ll need to understand data optimization basics, including gathering customer information, responding to real-time feedback and reducing inefficiencies that lose revenue and diminish trust.

Gathering Customer Information

Data optimization commonly refers to collecting all the information at your disposal and maximizing the speed and comprehensiveness with which business-critical information can be extracted and analyzed.

If you have a website, this could be the most sensible place to start data collection. You likely have a handle on how many people are visiting and what pages they’re viewing, but are you using an analytics tool to assess where they are coming from, the content they spend the most time reading, and which page prompts them to leave? Do you know where your most active visitors live, how old they are and what products or services they most frequently purchase? These questions form the foundation of your business, and therefore are critical to your data-optimization efforts.

Feedback forms or emails are essential, but in today’s climate you’ll likely want to be more proactive about seeking out qualitative information about how customers value your offerings and their experience with your organization.

You don’t have to invest in a pricey or unwieldy customer survey to do this. Instead, try pushing a few questions to targeted visitors based on the defining characteristics above. You can also use analytics features embedded in the big four social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter) to ascertain what people are saying and the general sentiment around your brand.

If your customer relationships are rich with engagement points, CRM software can be a wise investment. These tools help monitor your interaction with current and potential customers, leverage data analytics to track customer history and details and suggest data-driven strategies to grow relationships.

For more where this came from, check out the full article at AMEX Business.

Superjobs Are the Roles of the Future

As companies begin to spin back up, leaders are looking to refill the roles they may have had to cut to survive. But many new roles won’t look like the old ones —organizations can structure their workforces to most effectively distribute labor between employees and automation through newly defined roles called “superjobs.”

According to Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends report, superjobs include components of traditional jobs to maximize the strengths of both humans and automated services. When thoughtfully deployed within an organization, superjobs can offload routine work to automaton to free up employees to focus on more strategic, revenue-oriented tasks.

"Calling for both hard and soft skills and cutting across typical departmental silos, superjobs require the flexibility to combine tasks and merge responsibilities as needed," the Deloitte report says.

While Deloitte's research on superjobs mainly focused on large enterprises, the concept is applicable to small and midsize businesses as well. No matter the size of your organization, superjobs can streamline operations in functions like supply chain management, accounting and marketing — really, wherever software exists to supplement human efforts. Indeed, Deloitte's research found that 41 percent of respondents are using automation extensively or across multiple functions. (The survey "polled nearly 10,000 respondents in 119 countries.")

To get started on this path, businesses must undertake an intelligent job design process, flatten their hierarchies to make room for flexible, self-managed teams and boost their arsenal of applied technology skills.

Intelligent Job Design 

Traditional roles are narrower in scope — the tasks an employee performs directly maps to what the employer outlined in the job description.

But automation and algorithms take over the routine and fixed aspects of work, business leaders can free their employees to use their critical thinking and feeling talents on tasks such as like data interpretation, problem solving, empathy, creativity and teamwork.

While you don’t have to throw out all your existing job descriptions, it’s worth looking at your workforce with a broader lens. Consider creating what Deloitte calls a “job canvas” — a more fluid and expansive way of examining the work you need done.

You can launch your canvas, which can be organized by team or individual, by thinking through the following questions:

• What core business problem does this team or individual need to solve?
• What should their outputs or deliverables be?
• What kind of supervision will the team or individual need to accomplish these objectives?
• What technologies can this team or individual use to augment their capabilities? Which tasks related to this business problem are best suited to people, and which should we automate?
• What learning processes can we put in place to target essential skill development for this team or individual?
• How will we measure this team or individual’s success?

Because you are now looking at your workforce at a higher level, you will likely find that your superjobs (or superteams) cross departmental fault lines of HR, IT, finance, sales, etc. Integrating data-driven insights with human intuition will be a central component of all superjobs. Depending on your business, your superjobs might include:

• a “customer experience architect,” who uses sentiment analysis to create stronger real-time engagement;
• a “case synthesizer,” who examines legal precedents mined by an algorithm and handpicks the most impactful ones; or
• a “supply chain effectiveness analyst,” who uses performance data to make recommendations that balance both cost and sustainability.

For more on superjobs, check out the full article on the AMEX Business site.

Effective Writing is More Important Than Ever

Good writing is infrequently considered a business skill, but when practiced, it can make everything from brand building to email marketing more effective. It's especially important now that businesses have been relying on digital channels to stay connected to their customers during the pandemic, finding themselves competing for attention with virtually every brand that has a social media presence.

Now is an excellent opportunity to hone your writing skills and craft a style that stands out in the era of social distancing — not to mention emoji, images and acronyms. 

1. Make your communication easy to digest.

Writing may not have been your strongest subject in school, and English might not be your first language—but as a business owner, your credibility depends on steering clear of grammatical pitfalls.

While you can absolutely take advantage of the “smart” features in word processors or presentation software to catch spelling and grammar errors, don’t rely on them exclusively. When in doubt about a word, phrase or sentence, check out online resources like Grammarly, 5 Minute English, FluentU and Grammar Girl.

If you’ve ever received advice for giving a memorable presentation, you might have heard this rule: “Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.” This guidance applies to every form of written and oral communication. If you want your reader to absorb the message, share what you're about to say and why, explain the details and then summarize the key points.

Aim to get to your main idea quickly. Pretend you only have less than 30 seconds to sell a product to a just-browsing customer in a store, and make your document easy to scan with large headings.

2. Know your audience.

Your content and tone will vary depending on the target of your communication — for example, is your audience an investor, a customer segment or a group of frontline employees?

Think through what this audience wants to hear from you. What is this group worried about? What answers to do they need?

You may need to do some research via survey and interviews to determine where and how your audience consumes content. If your audience will be more receptive to certain messages and completely turned off by others, you want to know that before you start writing. A few questions to consider asking:

• Do people read an internal blog or e-newsletter?
• Are they on public social channels or is real-time instant message more their thing?
• Do they value expert advice?
• If they visit multiple channels, what would they most prefer to read on each one?
• Is there a particular type of content that your organization is best suited to deliver? 

Remember that your communication must strike a balance between what you need to say and what your target audience wants to hear. This is admittedly tough, so even if you are writing to a large population, it may help to imagine a single person reading the communication.

For the rest of my tips, head over to the AMEX Business site.

Americans Feel Their Employers View Them As Disposable

A new DeVry University study conducted for Labor Day found that at a time when American workers should feel recognized and celebrated, more than a third felt their employers could take or leave them.

Thirty-six percent of DeVry respondents said that based on their employers’ actions since the start of the pandemic, they believe their employers view them as disposable. This perception resonated  more with younger workers than older ones, with 47 percent of Gen Z-ers (born after 1996) and 42 percent of millennials (born 1980-95) saying they felt disposable compared with 28 percent of Gen X-ers (born 1964-79) and 32 percent of baby boomers (born 1946-63).

Respondents agreed that in today’s workforce, tenure, education, and industry experience do not matter as much as hard work,  meeting goals and deadlines, and having a positive attitude.

If you’re an employee, being disposable is clearly not the ideal status as it makes you vulnerable to layoffs, consolidations, or random turns in your marketplace. Fortunately, you can protect yourself from natural evolution and future disruptions by focusing on your career durability, or your ability to sustain gainful employment over a long period of time. The five components of career durability include:

Soft skills are interpersonal attributes that you need to collaborate successfully with others at work. As machines take over more work tasks over the next 10 years, soft skills like empathy, intuition, diplomacy, judgment, and problem solving will set human employees apart. You can hone yours through personality assessments/recommendations, classic business books such as those by Stephen Covey and Dale Carnegie, and on-the-job experience.

Hard skills are those in a specific area for which learning can be measured (i.e. you either know it or you don’t). If you’re applying for a given job, employers will expect you to perform the requisite functions. For instance, if you’re a phlebotomist, you must know how to insert an IV. You can acquire the hard skills you need via degree programs, online courses, certifications/microcredentials,  and employer training.

Applied technology skills represent the ability to leverage people, processes, data, and devices to do a job more efficiently. In all occupations, digital technology exists to augment human work. But do you know, for example, what software is available in your role and how to use it? You might increase your base of applied technology skills with employer training, mentorship, solo exploration, and investigation.

Institutional knowledge is industry specific expertise gained through experience and/or tenure. Organizations are facing a brain drain caused by the retiring baby boomers. Some things can only be learned by facing similar scenarios multiple times over a career lifespan. You typically acquire institutional knowledge by staying with one company or in one industry and gaining cross-functional and adjacent expertise via job shadowing, informational interviewing, and volunteering.

A growth mindset is the positive attitude that influences how an individual sees their world, and that motivates them to learn and change. Today’s learner must be continuous and self-directed, and curiosity, agility, and drive to improve will win the day. You can enhance your growth mindset through self, peer, and manager evaluations, acceptance of failure, implementation of constructive feedback, intrapreneurship, and inspirational books and podcasts.

Employee actions are only one piece of the puzzle, however. What if you’re an employer, and you’re rightfully concerned that so many of your talent employees feel disposable? Improved benefits and greater pandemic safety measures are essential, but don’t get to the heart of the disposability issue. The key  is to show appreciation early and often. The DeVry survey respondents indicated that the most effective ways are through pay increases (69 percent), awards (34 percent), and greater schedule flexibility (30 percent).

This year especially, Labor Day is an appropriate time to take the right steps so employment is beneficial and satisfying for all sides.