Five year plan and forget about it, the combination of Covid and Chatchy PT has shortened the time against which we work. The author’s overall working Assumption is that turbulence is here to stay and stability is long gone. The author believes that return to work policies are a big mistake and that the real opportunity for the workforce is to listen, learn, iterate and change.
We’re in a new state of work that the author has called the United States of work. The global workforce has never been disunited primarily by anxiety. We’re looking at managers that are very short sighted from how fast changes occurring, but employees are very short sighted by how work life is not meeting their expectation.
The difference between common challenges are becoming narrow and narrower. Jobs which have been dominated by class and educational disparities, are all facing the same headwinds, and we’re seeing a blurring of roles between jobs across many different companies and industries. We don’t need 2020 perfect vision in a post covid world to see how things were, how things are and how things are going to be. Workplaces all have very similar elements. They have construction, they have administration, they have management, they have marketing. And humans remain at the heart of any operation.
The phrase of the moment is keep the human in the loop. Focusing more on the similarities than the difference is what’s going to help, because any organization that pulls in that direction is more successful than one that doesn’t. You should all be united by the exact same challenge. It’s not particularly an enemy, but it’s AI. Every employee is gonna have a very shiny new coworker. This coworker doesn’t need much sleep, doesn’t have feelings, doesn’t need management, doesn’t even need hand holding, and they work much faster. The chatbot, our coworkers, this co pilot, they are everywhere and everything all at once. As this technology enters our lives, we humans need to stick together. It’s the human spirit when coming together that this technology will not be able to replace.
In the recent movie titled Poor Things, with the protagonist played by Emma Stone, Emma Stone receives a new perspective on humanity after receiving a baby brain’s implant. The movie serves as a metaphor for what’s happening today. She begins to understand and appreciate traditional values such as love and community, while also appreciating science and technology, which are essential for progress.
The closing scene of Poor Things Act actually shows a garden which encompasses both work and rest living together. This underscores a message that how we live and how we work are not so separate. This part of the movie serves to be a reference to workers today in a very challenging environment, that what we need are both knowledge, skills and very strong support systems. And so what is a chosen workplace is more than just a culture that has a brand with a slogan. It adapts to the time, and it remains real and authentic. It’s a culture that values fairness, openness to change and uses the best technology and the best human psychology to support its employees. It may have a combination of work remote or hybrid, but it really thinks about all of these different aspects on support the future of work.
The optimist in me, the author, does see a change in culture happening within management, specifically in the people function, which is the rebranded HR function. I see HR communities as sort of being in like health and social care, but in the workplace, generally speaking, they care deeply, but they’re forced to work in the part of work that is the most out dated. But they care and they know that their job matters deeply. Leaders need to convey as much uncertainty as they convey conviction. And it would help if they started to use things like case studies from the past because the past impacts the present and the future. They’re built on elements of the past. For example, thinking about the Hawthorn Effect, where individuals change their behavior performance based on knowing that they’re being observed.
I always say we need a global dashboard of data. We need to see what works well in different countries against specific metrics like employment, skills, gender. There’s so much we can learn from the Nordic childcare model or the South Korean R&D model, just as there as we can learn from working flexibility laws and productivity, the UK will be an interesting test case in this. What will be with the US? Will the American work ethic of always in and always on regain its momentum?
I think Americans love work. They just don’t like working for no benefit, meaning not enough money to cover the cost of rent and savings as Johnny Paycheck sank all these years. If it isn’t right, take the job and shove it. Or Beyonce in her most recent lyric of Break my soul. The tools of social media and the post covid landscape give the amazing Z as in Gen Z generation a lot more power than it ever had before. In the future of work, they can be listened to through songs and cultural trends, but also through their actions. The soul of the American worker matters, even if it took a pandemic and a threat to the world order of work to make that change. And like the author says, better late than never. And we are seeing some institutional level change.
America matters. It is the largest economy in the world right now. It is the very fabric of what the world relies on. It has created mass transportation, mass communication, mass change. And now they are the leaders in AI. But it’s also because of its art, its culture and its stories and the precedent that it sets for the whole world.
America’s survival as a great nation of work is not just important to America, but it should be important to all of us. We see ourselves in America and we always have. I’m optimistic that the current dramas and conversations around work are pretty extreme and they will come and settle. Even thinking about the 4 day work we campaign, it’s the idea that our personal lives and our work lives both matter. Let’s let the tech help us, not hinder us. It took 2020 to see such drastic change. And when they happen, when change happens, it happens suddenly.