A FUTURE OF THE WORKPLACE AND THE WORKFORCE

Submitted by Arjun Paul and Shishir Arya from FMS MBA-FT 2015

Rapid innovation is becoming highly essential to the survival of an organization in todays hypercompetitive business environment. This has led to the emergence a new kind of creative workforce. These highly sophisticated workers will in turn demand an environment that attracts them, satisfies their needs, and provides an incentive to stay. The work environments provided by companies in the past were increasingly unsuited to evolving patterns of work and inhibited workers from performing to their full potential. An effective workplace today or in the future must allow a natural and efficient sharing of knowledge. As increased knowledge sharing leads to enhanced productivity, improved quality, and accelerated innovation. Freedom, autonomy and flexibility will define the future of workplace. And employers will have to listen. Gen Y, roughly defined as those born between 1983 and 2000, will make up more than 40 percent of workforce by 2020. To many of these, workplace culture is as important as salary. They see the workplace as a very important factor and values it as a place of learning and development. They prefer a work environment where they can emotionally engage themselves, a space where they socialize with other co-workers and a space which supports their health and well-being. Now, all this translates into a different type of employee and colleague we are likely to have. They have a strong work ethic when the job is right and an ability to learn rapidly and adapt making Generation Y employees highly valuable assets. But the right job should have some Generation Y-specific expectations and aspirations. It should be both interesting and fun, provide flexible hours and location to allow for the blending of work, socializing and recreation, and involve opportunity for praise and validation. Generation Y employees are ambitious and are anxious to move up the corporate ladder quickly, sometimes even without becoming competent in their current skills which often lead to loyalty deficit and frequent job hopping (leapfrogging phenomenon). Companies like Facebook, Google and various startups knew this years ago and have amazing cultures and amenities to attract top talent. Health benefits, gym facility and perks are a big part of culture too. Innovative office space designs are being incorporated like: Increased space utilization by providing open workspaces, having more remote employees, desk sharing/Co-workspaces, outdoor working, comfortable furniture and mobile workstations. Another important need for employers is to foster healthy workplace relationship that directly affects a worker's ability to succeed. Moreover, engaged employees are more productive, customer-focused, and

profit-generating and employers are more likely to retain them. Actively disengaged employees erode an organizations bottom line, while breaking the spirits of colleagues in the process. The ever increasing global internet adoption has changed our concept of work. Companies are planning to increase their investment in productivity-enabling technologies such as voice-activation and sophisticated video conferencing. BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend is growing leading to escalated use of smart personal devices such as smart phones, PDAs and tablets, which are used to access a wider variety of tools both for learning and for daily tasks. One such example is the Hyatt Hotel Group which uses iPads for its hotel staff from the Concierge to check in staff. Offices are using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other tools to engage their workforce, customers and other stakeholders. Companies are now measuring how employees use their time using data analytics. They are creating portals for real-time feedback online, internal social networks across professions to improve crossspecialty collaboration and using online gaming tools to manage employees. Usage of cloud computing is booming and applications like Microsoft Office 365 , MYOB , Dropbox, Evernote there is more flexibility in working with documents both on desktop and mobile versions. Meanwhile, to get, and keep a job these future employees typically need a repertoire of technical skills. While the technical skills may get the foot in the door, behavioral and social skills are what open most of the doors to come. The work ethic, attitude, communication skills, emotional intelligence and a whole host of other personal attributes are the soft skills that are crucial for career success. The problem is, the importance of these soft skills is often undervalued or assumed to be present and there is far less training provided for them than hard skills. Moreover, a curious norm these days is to change one's job every few years. The answer in my opinion lies in security and fear of job redundancy. An analysis of the trends show that this process was employer led; that it was not until companies began to implement shorter-term recruitment and retention polices that employees started to think about making more frequent job changes as a means of taking control of, and progressing, their careers. But this doesn't mean that it is a bad thing to stay in a job for a lifetime if it is the right job. Businesses can improve their ability to attract, retain and improve productivity by providing firstly a positive working environment. Generation Y craves for mentorship and needs to be shown the path. Additional perks like flexible workplace options, working with leading-edge technology, locating company in transit-oriented center, and on-site employee amenities can be offered. Employees must be engaged and involved and must have the information that they need to understand exactly and precisely how what they do at work every day affects the company's business goals and priorities. Todays workers dont want to be just a number in the company; they want to make a difference and be recognized. We, as an employer, need to convince Generation Y that they will be allowed to express their creativity and skills.

Employees should also be able to see and measure the outcomes of their performance because they are most engaged when they are accountable The above observations show that workplaces and workforce need to keep evolving in order to stay ahead of the competition. Thats the future of the workplace: Dynamic, global and powerful.