December 2020 has started. Tenth month of crisis. Unless we are deaf and blind, we are slowly entering a period in which we can say that we now have the necessary hindsight … No more random predictions. We can see now where we are heading, at least with regard to the organization of work in the future. A quick update on what we will keep from these round trips between confinement, deconfinement, post-confinement …
Ultimately, it does not matter that we did not anticipate the constrained and forced adaptations that we can observe in our companies. Reality has overtaken us. Several major trends – so many debates or evolving developments – are now installed. It remains to be seen whether we will be able to manage them.
Triple crash test
Since last March, we have been carrying out three major crash tests in order to determine the shape that the organization of the labor market of tomorrow will take: virtual management, sustainable mobility and universal income.
These are not new issues. These themes figured well before the health crisis among our so-called ‘strategic’ concerns. But the pandemic gave a new tempo to the expected upheavals, with the consequence that we had to implement new organizational solutions, without really knowing if we had the adequate human resources and the necessary financial means to find a new balance.
Is. Here we are.
First, whether we like it or not, teams will now – at least partially – have to be managed remotely, which will require us to redouble our creativity to inspire employees who evolve somewhere, on the outskirts of the company.
Second, it is also better to prepare ourselves to thoroughly review the management of mobility in the broadest sense possible. All models have exploded, without allowing our companies to take a giant step towards a more responsible practice for our environment. Indeed, the renunciation of a number of unnecessary trips is unfortunately ‘compensated’ by mobility behaviors more selfish than ever for obvious reasons of health security.
And third, without income guaranteed by the State, a considerable part of the working population would not be able to live decently. No one really speaks the terms but, with the duration of the crisis, there will come a time when we will be able to recognize that the principle of universal income has imposed itself with the emergence of this damn virus from China (it is finally not surprisingly enough… We all already knew that the next revolution would come from there!).
Working hours have increased.
The consequences for workers are enormous and, to date, not very well controlled. An unequaled level of stress, real difficulties in reconciling family life, the sudden acceleration of digital acculturation,… We will necessarily come back to this in the coming months. However, there is a tangible, powerful and delicate development that really affects those who are still working today: the effective working time has increased.
The time slots during which we work have once again exploded under the double effect of working from home and the efforts required by a permanent crisis situation. And this will continue because it will take a great deal of personal investment to find or maintain economic performance levels close to what we knew at the very beginning of 2020.
The distribution of the workload has undoubtedly never been so inequitable … And it now relies on teams and organizations that have become accustomed to ‘running’ 24 hours a day, 7 days a week … Yes, the management of working time urgently needs to be rethought. Our organizations, our tools, our managers must adapt to this new situation, otherwise our employees will run out of steam more quickly than ever.
Jean-Paul Erhard, managing partner@Peoplesphere
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