The Future of Work

FountainBlue’s June 12 VIP Roundtable was on the topic of ‘The Future of Work’.

We were fortunate to have a diverse range of executives in attendance who shared a wide range of perspectives around the Future of Work.

We have all been impacted by the worldwide pandemic, and more recent by the re-boarding pressures and more recently the civil unrest across the nation. Our thoughts turned to how these game-shifting events will be changing the way we work in the new normal.  

The Future of Work will be digital, leveraging the technology and tools to ensure that people can work productively and securely from anywhere, with full access to tools and information, and in full compliance with regulatory and privacy standards.

Difficult as the technology, process, compliance, security, privacy and other hurdles are to solve, technology leaders and innovators will work together to indeed resolve these issues and provide more versatile, more scalable, more customized solutions for a very demanding and growing customer base. 

Some of the challenging questions are highlighted below:

• How do we help our people manage work-life integration when work can be done 24×7 from home?
• How do we facilitate collaboration between staff, partners, customers and executives when we are all working remotely?
• How do we continue to build current relationships and make new connections when we are not meeting face to face?
• How will you deliver tradeshow-like experiences for the masses?
• How do you replace the relationships of trust online which have historically been built in-person?
• How do we conduct immersive training for our workforce while still sheltering in place?
• How will schools and universities again survive and thrive while still sheltering in place? and when we re-board?
• How do we help a remote worker become a fully autonomous worker, with full access to standard operating procedures, roles and responsibilities and priorities?

Below are some suggested best practices in a new normal at work.

• Ensure that staff has self-service access to HR and IT related support so that they have the infrastructure they need to work seamlessly from remote locations.
• Embrace digital solutions to optimize both working from home, and also re-boarding.
• Plan to have sufficient emergency equipment so that those who need to report to work are protected in a future scenario similar to COVID.
• Provide the equipment and resources so that staff can make productive use of their time.
• Focus on the result, rather than on when staff can turn in work or how it is done.
• Think, speak and act like your people are your greatest resource, bringing positive employee experiences to all.
• Be data-driven so that you can plan-fully address issues and measure and report on outcomes.
• Generate actionable reports based on specific data.
• Provide access to contact-less support so that field engineers can access remote experts.
• Allow customers to personalize their offerings so that they can also efficiently support their staff.
• Further enable video and audio communications to do everything from telehealth to video conferencing.

Below are some thoughts on the future of work.

• Look for machine-to-machine communications.
• Grow the network and infrastructure like 5G/6G to support telecommunications and cell phone usage – there will increasingly be more data to integrate and manage.
• Design Robotically-based telepresence solutions.
• Adapt past learnings to new situations/real-world problems.
• Automate workflow by providing access to self-service applications, incorporating standard modules.
• Design digital solutions which will replace in-person participation in large conferences.

We concluded that the Future of Work is upon us – with the timeline accelerated through the pandemic. These changes are here to stay. The flexible, the collaborative, the tech-philic leader will be best prepared for this new way of working.

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