Human Futures Think Tank - Future of Work

Over 6 in 10  global respondents say skills in collaboration technology like Slack are viewed as the most important skills needed by businesses today and over the next five years.

Despite respondents’ prowess with everyday collaboration technology like social media and digital communication, only 25% rated themselves “advanced” in collaboration technology skills needed specifically for the workplace.

Only 31% of Gen Z respondents, the first truly digital native generation, feel “very equipped” for a digital-first job right now.

Not many Gen Z respondents believe they have “advanced” digital skills in areas like coding (20%), data encryption & cybersecurity (18%), and AI (7%). 

A majority of senior leadership respondents (54%) said they are prepared with the digital skills necessary now. However, less than half of managers and individual contributors agree, signaling a disconnect within organizations. 

It estimated that 14 G20 countries could miss out on $11.5 trillion cumulative GDP growth if the skills gap isn’t addressed.

Despite this finding, 64% of Salesforce’s global index respondents rated themselves as “beginners” in AI digital skills. A mere 17% of global survey respondents consider themselves “advanced”

The majority of respondents (82%) plan to learn new skills to help them grow in their current career or a new career.

Over half of respondents (51%) want to learn new skills to help them grow in their current career over new or different career paths. Where digital education, training, and job creation is concerned, business leaders don’t need to start entirely from scratch. By harnessing the potential and motivation of current employees to innovate, they can accelerate progress towards closing the skills gap. 

Younger generations have more confidence and ambition to learn skills they don’t know as well – across the globe, 36% of Gen Z and Millennials are “very actively” participating in learning and training, compared to only 22% of Gen X and 15% of Baby Boomers.

Many of these in-demand workplace skills — from collaboration tech to cyber security — aren’t found in typical school curriculum,

While the index reveals that collaboration technology skills has the biggest percentage of “advanced” practitioners, this still only equates to roughly 25% of survey respondents.

Despite 58% saying encryption & cybersecurity skills are particularly important, only 14% report “advanced” knowledge of the subject.

Nearly half of all respondents view digital sustainability skills as important “now and in the next five years.” Even among business owners, only 16% say they have “advanced” digital skills for operating technology that promotes sustainable business activities like tracing, measuring, and analyzing climate data within an organization. 

A newly digital-first world presents a major opportunity for companies to rethink what agile teams look like. By building training programs based on what workers believe will make them most successful in the workplace, companies can create a flexible working culture that empowers all employees to connect, learn, and progress from anywhere.

Measures of corporate culture matter significantly more.

Although other measures of corporate culture vary in their gravity, all matter substantially more than hybrid work availability.

However, there is no doubt now that remote work is here to stay and will provide an added degree of flexibility over the location where employees perform their work. While the percentage of workers who perform their work exclusively from home has declined from 54% to 25% between April 2020 and September 2021, the share of workers who perform at least some work from home has grown from 15% to 20%, according to the latest data from Gallup.

The availability of remote work will not be "a game-changer” for organizations’ ability to raise employee engagement, but it is a complementary tool in their arsenal.

Each organization will have to decide how much remote work to allow–and whether different sets of employees should have different options when choosing how and when to do their work.

Unlike traditional statistical analyses, ours is the first to control for employees’ perception of their organization’s corporate culture, ranging from managerial quality to the degree of development and training opportunities.

Controlling for these factors, in addition to demographics, is hugely important because the people who can work remotely because of the nature of their job also tend to work in companies that have a higher quality of life and stronger corporate culture.

These results highlight that remote work is not a strategy in and of itself: Corporate culture and managerial quality remain quintessential drivers of employee engagement.

Instead of commuting and general slack time in the workplace, employees can allocate that time towards career development and learning activities. Many began taking online courses.

By focusing on creating a culture of excellence, appreciation, clear communication, and learning, companies can use remote work as a complementary tool to enable the sort of flexibility that helps organizations to flourish and generate value.

Many employers have reluctantly embraced long-term hybrid and remote work arrangements after repeatedly postponing return-to-office dates or finding that workers pushed back on going to the office.

Agreements between team members about when people in the group will work are growing in popularity across industries, said Ms. Subramanian. Flexible schedules are likely to endure beyond the pandemic, she said.

Focusing on how many hours people are working is outdated,

The Future Forum survey, which was conducted between Nov. 1 and Nov. 30, also found that the share of people working in hybrid models, where they split their time between an office and a remote location, increased by 12 percentage points since May, as more workers have returned part-time to their traditional workplaces.

More than two-thirds of those surveyed said a hybrid setup was their preferred way of working.

Many workers have found their productivity surged while working from home and they achieved the work-life balance they had been seeking

While many large companies have decided that the majority of their employees will combine remote work with in-office days, hybrid work has its downsides.

Among executives surveyed, 71% said they work in the office at least three days a week; 63% of nonexecutive employees said they go in as often.

What employees want may not be the most effective way for organizations to operate

Seventy-five percent of those surveyed by Mr. Bloom want to choose the days they work from home, as opposed to their employer telling them which days to go in.

People inside companies complain about the lack of energy in the workplace when it is sparsely populated. Forcing a one-size-fits-all solution across a large workforce can seem risky to managers, he said, at a time many workers are a flight risk.

expand its wellness platform in response.

People celebrate special events around here: Up nine points to 81%Everyone has an opportunity to get special recognition: Up six points to 76%Management trusts people to do a good job without watching over their shoulders: Up five points to 86%People are encouraged to balance their work life and their personal life: Up five points to 69%Promotions go to those who best deserve them: Up four points to 77%

elevated personal and leadership development, enhanced our wellness offerings, and embraced a ‘better together’ philosophy,

With volume and speed defining how we collaborate, much is lost in terms of context.

A shrug, a furrowed brow, a quizzical tone – all provide human elements that add to a collaboration.

In-person interaction also solidifies communication more effectively, making the content of a meeting more easily recalled.

Likewise, comprehension suffers in a blur of jam packed huddles. Anyone who’s gotten to the end of a meeting-heavy day, breathed a sigh of exhaustion and thought, what did we even talk about? understands this.

Recordings and transcripts are useful tools to some degree, but the ability to capture a factual summary does little to inform complex understanding and action steps.

the challenge is logging them in such a way that they can be referenced quickly and efficiently.

Even if they are accessed, a professional likely needs to rewatch a video, or replay an audio file, using fast-forward and rewind functions to find the data they need, slowing down operations overall.

Conversational technology that allows for a single repository, with a unified system of records, will be the game-changer when it comes to harnessing the value of these conversations.

By capturing topical information and the experiential factors used to deliver that information – tonality, facial expressions and the like – that data increases exponentially in value.

It’s been reported that time spent by managers and employees in collaborative activities has increased by 50% or more in recent years, further accelerated by the remote workforce of the pandemic.

The newest conversation technology enables teams to capture these vital snippets, flagging them by timestamp or importance for easy reference. By archiving only the details needed to move forward with next steps, information gathered can be streamlined.

Covering the full spectrum of employee engagement, cataloging exit interviews could reveal common threads, giving managers a glimpse into why they might be losing workers.

More importantly, leadership can address those commonalities to better retain talent in a competitive marketplace.

a simple permission step is usually all that’s needed to clear that hurdle.

entire conversations don’t need to be held, only the key points.

An internal depository also assumes a secured perimeter, with trust in the content’s merit justifying that boundary.

There is robust evidence that control over one’s schedule helps employees maintain engagement at work and protect their well-being.

One way to counter the expectation of constant availability is to offer your team the flexibility to choose when they work, while also making clear that there should be times when they’re offline.

the “ideal worker” is expected to be available at any hour of the day, any day of the year, throughout all the years of their careers. During the pandemic, the burden of ideal worker expectations fell especially hard on the shoulders of women, who often not only did their day jobs but were also primarily caregivers for family members.

Another approach is to have company-wide no work times.

Even beyond the pandemic, when people do not have boundaries between work and home and are not able to “shut off” work, they are more likely to experience burnout.

One practice that some organizations have used to manage this tension is limiting communication during typical after-hours. Leaders can model this by scheduling calls and emails to send the next business day rather than at 10:00 pm,

Indeed, during the pandemic, average working hours increased, and people were more likely to send emails after traditional work hours.

The pandemic has reminded us that part of what brings many employees to the office is connection with others. The chance to interact with others, even briefly, fosters a sense of deep belonging to a team and organizational identity.

To battle feelings of isolation, organizations can reshape social connections by strengthening friendship ties

weekly social time, such as a 20-minute window to discuss a different, light-hearted but personal prompt, like sharing your favorite movie or best birthday memory. Even brief connections with colleagues can decrease the emotional exhaustion caused by loneliness, and help prevent burnout.

To make these prompts feel less invasive, encourage employees to use their discretion in terms of what they feel comfortable sharing, and let them know it’s okay to maintain privacy when they need or prefer it.

reducing video-conferencing fatigue. 

an organization might create team or organization-based Zoom backgrounds to level the playing field.

One great promise of hybrid work is that individuals will be able to work from home. Indeed, multiple studies show that flexibility allows individuals, especially mothers, to maintain their working hours after having children and even stay in relatively demanding and well-paid occupations through times of high family demand.

workers are penalized when they take advantage of flexible work arrangements or time off, because constant availability and in-person work is still a preferred way of working. This creates a flexibility bias, where employees who choose flexible work arrangements are stereotyped as less committed and not worthy of rewards.

organizations have historically rewarded those individuals who work long hours.

Optional: Employees have the option to work from home or the office.

Partial: Some employees, based on role and situation, are able to work from home.

Remote First: The processes required to work remotely lead the company’s operations, with in-office processes coming second.

the crisis highlighted and accelerated trends that had been bubbling under the surface for years, including an increased focus on employee mental and physical health, the needs of a multi-generational workforce, greater emphasis on corporate purpose, and the shift to remote work.

The pandemic raised the stakes for companies looking to retain top-tier employees and build thriving cultures.

For knowledge workers, the office shouldn’t be a place to tackle a to-do list. It’s a place for collaboration, creativity, and learning, where an employee feels nurtured and a sense of belonging. Names of buildings, floors, areas, or rooms should reflect this intent. Terms like “learning center” or “innovation space” communicate the new perspective, shape design changes, attract talent, and influence behavior.

Think of Covid as a catalyst to talk about what the best employees want from their workplaces, even if you can’t execute on every idea.

or most organizations, reverting to the status quo won’t be an option. People will expect more flexibility, better technology, and incentives to come to the office, and companies must heed that call.

Some companies will create a new headquarters post-pandemic. But most can design a more thoughtful office environment. To start exploring ideas for your own organization, our recommendation is to start small. Repurpose conference rooms, invest in a new teaming table, or refurbish a floor instead of an entire building. You might also incorporate multimedia technology to bring people together and breathe new life into your office.

Many companies have invested in smart hybrid meeting technology as well. Look also for multi-use opportunities.

For younger knowledge workers, the office is as much a place to learn and socialize as it is a place to meet deadlines.

Nearly 60% of Millennials report that opportunities to discover new insights are extremely important to them when applying for a job, and they may also stay longer at a company if they get involved in social causes. Smart companies make this happen by partnering with outside organizations to provide such programming.

Activities like yoga or meditation, community service, or continuing education are a good place to start. Even small initiatives like a hanging work from local or student artists in rotation, canned food drives in the lobby, or pop-up food trucks outside can fuel employees’ sense of purpose

But what if there is a technology that lets you read your attendee’s emotional state remotely? Well, that’s what precisely Emotion AI-enabled platforms can do. With Emotion recognition technologies like facial coding, you can detect and analyze your attendees’ facial expressions and even non-verbal cues. And by using this technology, you can interpret attention, engagement, sadness, happiness, and more while collaborating virtually. In short, by using this information, you can make your virtual collaboration more effective.

Remember, the purpose behind the virtual collaboration is to make it easy for you to get the work done even from far apart. But collaborating should not become a distraction from getting the job done. And, for that, you need to collaborate with intention and focus.

We all know effective communication is paramount for the success of virtual teams. And, with most of the workforce now working remotely, virtual meetings are, quite literally, what gets the business running these days. As they’re letting companies connect and collaborate with their customers, candidates, and team members. But with so many of these meetings happening daily, it becomes tough to recall the main points. Though most of us try to remember as much as we can, the main points can still slip our minds from time to time. Look for a tool that lets you highlight the main points in these meetings so you can quickly revisit them without going through the complete recordings. And no one misses the important information even if they miss the meeting.

When collaborating virtually, don’t just focus on the work; focus on what your team needs to grow. Focus on their professional development, mental well-being along with the strategy, goals, and culture of your organization. Another goal where you need to keep the focus is to make sure the team continues to gel in this ever-changing environment.

Collaboration is hard and virtual collaboration is even more challenging. But by setting a few ground rules, you can make it easier to collaborate virtually and get the work done. For example, you can set clear expectations for virtual meetings, like everyone will use headphones during these meetings to avoid ambient noise.

If you want to collaborate effectively, you need to master the art of virtual collaboration, and it’s quite simple. What works for virtual collaboration are pretty much the same things that work for collaboration in general, too, like active listening, clear communication, clear expectation setting, mutual respect, transparency, and accountability.

When it comes to virtual collaboration, there’s no secret formula or magic pill. You need to master all the elements mentioned above to make it effective, as every element matters. And it would help if you took these things even a few steps further. For example, active listening is one of the most critical skills to collaborate effectively. But while collaborating virtually, it becomes even more important.

Since you can’t gauge people’s expressions and body language listening with intent becomes one of the most crucial virtual collaboration skills to master.

We all know mastering these skills is crucial; they are like going to the gym every day — everyone knows it’s healthy, but not everyone does it consistently. But you should master these skills to make your virtual collaboration super effective.

Don’t assume that you need every team member in the office to collaborate. Assumptions don’t always work. Before COVID-19 started, most companies thought that remote working wasn’t possible. But, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, we realized it’s possible for businesses to both survive and thrive in the remote environment.

Did you know before the COVID-19 pandemic, 5% of Americans used to work from home? Take inspiration from them.

Last but not least, use the right tools as the wrong tools can stand in the way of effective collaboration. Technology plays a crucial role in enabling communication and remote work. After all, it’s the tech tools that determine the success of any virtual team.

So, to succeed in this remote-first world, businesses need the right virtual collaboration tools which can help streamline the whole process and make it easier for employees to work together.

use virtual tools that let you collaborate effectively, the ones that allow you to focus on conversations where you don’t have to take notes while conducting meetings.

High-touch collaboration activities are typically synchronous, spontaneous, or sensory. Synchronous means two or more people are present in the moment when the activity is conducted, allowing for a free-flowing exchange of information. Spontaneous means unscheduled, low-overhead interactions that may occur outside the confines of a formally scheduled meeting. Some of the best ideas, and even businesses, started as impromptu thoughts or interactions between colleagues. Sensory refers to the nonverbal communication or body language we unconsciously decipher when interacting with others. Arm positions, posture, and tone of voice can influence how or when others choose to engage with or respond to us.

Structured, interactive sessions. Some types of workshops or labs, employing techniques such as design thinking, aim to solve complex problems or help a group achieve consensus on a designated topic. In addition to typically needing a skilled facilitator, participants often need to read the room to assess group understanding, alignment, and engagement.

Ideation and cocreation. Many workers need to brainstorm and exchange information spontaneously, typically in a shared space with a visual aid such as whiteboards or sticky notes.

Spontaneous information exchanges. Employees may need to exchange information directly outside a formally scheduled meeting—perhaps as quickly and casually as poking one’s head in an office to ask a brief question.

Informal connections. Conversations that typically take place in the elevator, office kitchen, or other common areas can foster a sense of connection and community; walking the halls can help cultivate relationships with clients and coworkers. Informal connections tend to rely on interpreting sensory and contextual information.

Vendors launched or enhanced at least 100 digital remote collaboration products in the first eight months of 2020, compared to 24 product introductions we tallied in the fourth quarter of 2019.10

Some of this activity involves familiar categories of collaboration tools such as videoconferencing. Other types of tools—such as digital whiteboards, virtual offices, and immersive environments—may be less familiar, but they can provide crucial support to synchronous, spontaneous, and sensory collaboration activities.

But videoconferencing has its drawbacks. Not all work interactions occur in the confines of a formal meeting. Any given videoconference likely includes at least one participant battling audio and video quality issues, including lags that can jumble nonverbal cues and distracting background noise—especially for people sharing space with partners and children.13

Vendors such as Microsoft, Miro, and Mural offer digital tools that aim to provide the benefits of in-person ideation in a remote environment. Such tools typically feature an interactive workspace designed for visually oriented ideation and problem-solving. They are best suited for cocreation and ideation activities but can also be used to facilitate labs and similar sessions.

Many workers will not be returning to the office or may work from a company office only part of the time. According to a June 2020 Fortune/Deloitte CEO survey, CEOs expect 36% of their employees on average to still be working remotely by January 2022, three times as many as before the pandemic.24 One forecast suggests that through 2024, around 30% of all employees currently working remotely will permanently work at home.25 Many organizations are likely to need effective remote collaboration tools and approaches.

These vendors also enable informal interactions through emotive digital gestures such as high-fives or dance movements, allow users to tap each other to instantly join a virtual meeting room, and offer the ability to lock spaces for more private conversations. Many also allow screen-sharing and uploading of files.

Some virtual offices currently lack the ability to integrate with common office software such as Google or Microsoft and may lack common ideation mediums such as whiteboards.

Immersive environments. This is an emerging category of tools that aim to enable workers to connect, share experiences, and participate in simulated real-life scenarios using augmented or virtual reality (AR/VR) technologies. Some studies have shown that VR is a promising medium for remote collaborative work.16

Combined with spatial audio and visible mouth or hand movements, these technologies can give one the impression of being in the same space as a colleague. Interacting with the environment and accessing menus using one’s hands or controllers is highly intuitive.

New features. With so many workers affected by the pandemic, collaboration vendors are quickly responding to user needs and rolling out new features. For instance, Microsoft recently deployed “Together mode,” using AI to place meeting participants side by side as if they were sitting in a virtual auditorium.17

While some may not be inclined to use video games for collaboration or are unfamiliar with the format, others feel they help people think differently and bond with colleagues. The education sector may be another testing ground as teachers, students, and parents around the globe are now being forced to learn how to use virtual collaboration tools. Other formats are likely to emerge.

Collaborating via software enables novel analytical applications not possible with conventional in-person conversations.

Improved tools may eventually solve the videoconference fatigue problem, but it’s possible that emerging remote collaboration technologies may give rise to other unpleasant technology-induced side effects such as the dizziness or nausea that can accompany immersive environments. When choosing a collaboration tool, organizations should take these into account and design mitigation strategies such as time limits where applicable.22

As workers migrated to home networks and personal devices after the onset of the pandemic, firms faced an increase in hacking attempts, and many are enhancing their cybersecurity posture accordingly.

irtual offices are intended to run continuously in the background, showing in real time what your colleagues are doing through the medium of digital aerial views of office floor plans, avatars, or even 3D worlds.

Managers, particularly those in industries where remote working is already familiar, such as technology, financial services, and business and professional services, should begin exploring the use of remote high-touch collaboration tools, especially for collaborative activities that are synchronous, spontaneous, or sensory. As workers’ exposure to and comfort with these tools varies, organizations should consider implementing effective training and adoption strategies as well as policies guiding effective use.26

That’s precisely what Emotion AI-assisted systems are capable of doing. Emotion recognition technologies like facial coding can detect and analyze facial expressions and non-verbal cues to interpret attention, engagement, sadness, happiness, and more. Emotion AI, already a $20 billion industry, is now becoming a part of the growing video communication space.

Organizations are employing Emotion AI partners to strengthen one-to-one interactions and group conferencing scenarios. These platforms use emotion recognition software to evaluate the response from facial emotions of the video callers in the following categories:

But this “escalating citizenship,” as the University of Oklahoma professor Mark Bolino calls it, only further fuels the demands placed on top collaborators. We find that what starts as a virtuous cycle soon turns vicious. Soon helpful employees become institutional bottlenecks: Work doesn’t progress until they’ve weighed in.

In fact, when we use network analysis to identify the strongest collaborators in organizations, leaders are typically surprised by at least half the names on their lists. In our quest to reap the rewards of collaboration, we have inadvertently created open markets for it without recognizing the costs.

First, it’s important to distinguish among the three types of “collaborative resources” that individual employees invest in others to create value: informational, social, and personal.

Social resources involve one’s awareness, access, and position in a network, which can be used to help colleagues better collaborate with one another. Personal resources include one’s own time and energy.

Unfortunately, personal resources are often the default demand when people want to collaborate. Instead of asking for specific informational or social resources—or better yet, searching in existing repositories such as reports or knowledge libraries—people ask for hands-on assistance they may not even need.

But only 18% of the requesters said they needed more personal access to him to achieve their business goals; the rest were content with the informational and social resources he was providing. The second most connected person was Sharon, with 89 people in her network, but her situation was markedly different, and more dangerous, because 40% of them wanted more time with her—a significantly greater draw on her personal resources.

The exhibit “In Demand, Yet Disengaged,” reflecting data on business unit line leaders across a sample of 20 organizations, illustrates the problem. People at the top center and right of the chart—that is, those seen as the best sources of information and in highest demand as collaborators in their companies—have the lowest engagement and career satisfaction scores, as represented by the size of their bubbles. Our research shows that this ultimately results in their either leaving their organizations (taking valuable knowledge and network resources with them) or staying and spreading their growing apathy to their colleagues.

For example, Do.com monitors calendars and provides daily and weekly reports to both individual employees and managers about time spent in meetings versus on solo work. The idea is to identify the people most at risk for collaborative overload. Once that’s been done, you can focus on three levers: Encourage behavioral change.

Encourage behavioral change.

The latest version of the team-collaboration software Basecamp now offers a notification “snooze button” that encourages employees to set stronger boundaries around their incoming information flow.

It’s also worth suggesting that when they do invest personal resources, it be in value-added activities that they find energizing rather than exhausting. In studying employees at one Fortune 500 technology company, we found that although 60% wanted to spend less time responding to ad hoc collaboration requests, 40% wanted to spend more time training, coaching, and mentoring. After their contributions were shifted to those activities, employees were less prone to stress and disengagement.

In addition, requests for time-sapping reviews and approvals can be reduced in many risk-averse cultures by encouraging people to take courageous action on decisions they should be making themselves, rather than constantly checking with leaders or stakeholders.

A study led by the Boston University assistant professor Stine Grodal documented the detrimental effects of team meetings and e-mails on the development and maintenance of productive helping relationships. When possible, managers should colocate highly interdependent employees to facilitate brief and impromptu face-to-face collaborations, resulting in a more efficient exchange of resources.

Can you shift decision rights to more-appropriate people in the network? It may seem obvious that support staff or lower-level managers should be authorized to approve small capital expenditures, travel, and some HR activities, but in many organizations they aren’t.

The result, according to research that one of us (Adam Grant) conducted with David Hofmann and Zhike Lei, is fewer bottlenecks and quicker connections between nurses and the right experts. Other types of organizations might also benefit from designating “utility players”—which could lessen demand for the busiest employees—and possibly rotating the role among team members while freeing up personal resources by reducing people’s workloads.

But we also find that roughly 20% of organizational “stars” don’t help; they hit their numbers (and earn kudos for it) but don’t amplify the success of their colleagues.

They don’t just measure goals; they also track assists. Organizations should do the same, using tools such as network analysis, peer recognition programs, and value-added performance metrics.

Efficient sharing of informational, social, and personal resources should also be a prerequisite for positive reviews, promotions, and pay raises. At one investment bank, employees’ annual performance reviews include feedback from a diverse group of colleagues, and only those people who are rated as strong collaborators (that is, able to cross-sell and provide unique customer value to transactions) are considered for the best promotions, bonuses, and retention plans. Corning, the glass and ceramics manufacturer, uses similar metrics to decide which of its scientists and engineers will be named fellows—a high honor that guarantees a job and a lab for life. One criterion is to be the first author on a patent that generates at least $100 million in revenue. But another is whether the candidate has worked as a supporting author on colleagues’ patents. Corning grants status and power to those who strike a healthy balance between individual accomplishment and collaborative contribution. (Disclosure: Adam Grant has done consulting work for Corning.)