HUBREPORT The future of work in the digital age | HUB Institute

Despite technological innovations, working in a company was still until recently strongly inspired by the factory’s Taylor-Fordist heritage. A world, where the manager exercised his power to lead by explaining what to do, how to do it and by monitoring like a foreman the proper execution of tasks and respect for schedules.

2020 with the Covid-19 crisis will have been a tremendous accelerator to shake up large companies in their overhaul of management and work. We can almost speak of a tectonic shock as organizations suddenly and totally have to rethink themselves. If faced with a digital world, it was already essential to gain in agility, the Covid-19 and imposed teleworking have saved whole years in terms of change.

The worst may have finally brought out the best in organizations. Faced with a general crisis, all the elements of the company came together with an agility that few would have dared to dream of. When we show confidence and empathy, it is collective intelligence that reveals its full potential. Responsibility for managers to reinvent themselves, at high speed and from a distance, within a learning organization. The organization and HR must offer new tools and master new skills around technology and data.

But this transition was not smooth and painless. Fatigue, anxiety, fear of unemployment, burnout, isolation… teleworking requires real support, a new organization and a new mindset. With the crisis, everyone raises the question of the raison d’être of their job and their company, of the alignment between professional and personal life or with their values. Companies must rethink their attractiveness around new, more engaging and inclusive criteria.

It’s time to take your organization back to a VUCA world.

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