Join Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange for two exclusive webinars this week. Later today, our own Christopher J. Dwyer will join Lesley Walsh of Beeline for an exciting webcast featuring discussions around the extended workforce, going “beyond VMS,” and what it means for the Future of Work:
And tomorrow, join the Exchange again to learn which trends will shape the Future of Work in the year ahead:
Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange are excited to announce that registration is now open for an exclusive webcast, Beyond VMS: Transformative Technology for the Future of Work. Hosted by extended workforce platform Beeline, the upcoming event will deep-dive into how the next generation of Vendor Management System (VMS) technology, particularly extended workforce solutions, can transform the ways businesses find, engage, and source talent, as well as enhance how they ultimately get work done.
Beeline’s always-insightful Lesley Walsh (the platform’s ) will join our own Christopher J. Dwyer to discuss:
Click here to register for this exciting event and prepare your organization for what will certainly be a transformative 2023 for extended workforce management.
The Future of Work Exchange (FOWX) and Ardent Partners recently hosted their complimentary webinar, The Five Things You MUST KNOW About the Future of Work, which discussed the critical capabilities that enterprises can unlock to truly optimize the way they address talent acquisition, extended workforce management, and, most importantly, work optimization.
Over the next five weeks, we’ll be recapping each of the five things discussed during the event.
In our fourth installment this week, we’ll be exploring artificial intelligence as a Future of Work centerpiece.
AI and the Rise of Total Talent Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the fourth thing to know about the Future of Work. If there was an informal poll asking to name the leading Future of Work technology, about 90% would say artificial intelligence (a not-so-surprising answer). Of all the technologies available to enterprises that help automate key workforce processes, AI is the pure representation of the Future of Work.
However, there are different shades of artificial intelligence helping organizations optimize the way they get work done and how they think about talent. It’s more than having an artificial persona to help figure things out and make decisions — instead, it’s enabling smarter decisions.
Consider the rise of total talent intelligence. Today, an enterprise’s workforce may consist of 35%, 40%, or 45% non-employees and extended talent. For some, those numbers may be lower, but for others, they’re also higher. Earlier this year, Future of Work Exchange research found that 47.5% of the average company’s total workforce was considered extended, non-employee, contingent, or contract (this figure also includes freelancers, contractors, temporary workers, gig workers, consultants, etc.).
Total talent intelligence is a gateway to understanding the totality of the workforce; a gateway stimulant, so to speak, for total talent management. It’s the idea that enterprises have enough information and data on the entirety of their workforce – including skills, performance, and productivity levels. All of this information allows business leaders and hiring managers to make near-instantaneous, real-time decisions about the talent they need for a new role, project, or initiative.
Total talent intelligence enables smarter, more perceptive hiring. And AI is the way to get there.
AI as a Conduit for Talent Assessments in Recruited Marketing
With regard to candidate assessments, there is wonderful technology out there that helps organizations better understand how efficient and effective a worker can be. It helps the business that went through an AI-fueled candidate assessment tool to source the best talent. There are similar solutions for recruitment marketing that have robust AI capabilities. These solutions are more than chatbots; they’re ubiquitous in how they help a candidate feel more comfortable and engaged. A candidate can use a mobile app and understand how to apply for a job. Likewise, the process for onboarding is clear, especially as it relates to healthcare benefits, time off, and open shifts. It’s these solutions that benefit the recruitment and onboarding side of extended workforce management.
On the workforce management side, AI helps with recruitment marketing. The idea that enterprises can program a bot to fill their talent pipeline overnight is quite amazing. Beyond just providing data, artificial intelligence can spark some of these processes that are beneficial to the business.
Turning to the volatile economy and its potential impact on the workforce, predictive analytics and scenario building are about managing these uncertain times. If enterprises are preparing for a recession, it is important to understand where they’ll be in six months. Data can be fed into a solution to help enterprises build a scenario and predict their financial picture or the state of global markets. The same type of data can model where the workforce is headed based on rates of resignations and retirements. Will there need to be cuts based on finances? Artificial intelligence is the perfect fighter against volatility by providing a clearer understanding of the future and how the workforce may look.
The Future of Work Exchange (FOWX) and Ardent Partners recently hosted their complimentary webinar, The Five Things You MUST KNOW About the Future of Work, which discussed the critical capabilities that enterprises can unlock to truly optimize the way they address talent acquisition, extended workforce management, and, most importantly, work optimization.
Over the next five weeks, we’ll be recapping each of the five things discussed during the event.
In our third installment this week, we’ll be exploring the evolution of talent as a Future of Work centerpiece.
Talent and Talent Acquisition Transformed
To begin, the number three must-know about the Future of Work is the evolution of talent as a Future of Work centerpiece. When talking about the evolution of talent as part of the greater definition of the Future of Work, it goes back to how talent and talent acquisition are changing for the better. Major transformations are occurring, but talent helps make the world go round and helps businesses run. It provides a competitive advantage. Talent is the number one competitive differentiator from one organization to another. With the right talent in place, enterprises can do remarkable things.
The fact that talent engagement and talent acquisition have been evolving for some time, speaks volumes for how it has become the centerpiece for the Future of Work. Let’s look at digital staffing, which enables accelerated hiring. Enterprises can find the workers they need very quickly without making a phone call or sending an email to a staffing supplier.
The other link to this evolution is direct sourcing, which has come a long way over the past few years. Direct sourcing is a talent acquisition revolution, but is not a brand-new strategy (the idea of becoming one’s own recruitment agency was spearheaded 10 or 15 years ago). It’s certainly not a new concept, but according to the Future of Work Exchange and Ardent Partners research, it has become one of the number one priorities for businesses today.
Businesses have woken up to the value of direct sourcing. Business leaders enabled with a direct sourcing program and associated technologies have the ability to curate talent into a talent pool or talent community and then segment those workers into tiers by geography, skillset, and compensation, and quickly tap into that community when needed, resulting in true workforce scalability.
Grow the Candidate Experience
Thus, talent communities need to be fostered and nurtured. Businesses need to keep their talent engaged. So much is about the candidate experience, and enterprises should never get away from that. Always touch candidates with value, whether through emails or text messages. Use talent intelligence to know when the best time is to reach out to those in the talent community. This type of end-to-end program helps boost the quality of talent, speeds up talent acquisition and hiring, and improves the way talent is brought into the organization and redeployed in the future.
Again, regardless of the business function, the candidate experience is paramount when sourcing and hiring talent. There needs to be a level of culture-building that extends to clients and candidates and how they perceive the business. Consider how the brand is perceived, down to the colors of the company logo. Are those colors present on the career page and job portal? Do candidates know who the company is and what it stands for? Recognizing and knowing those things goes a long way in building rapport with candidates.
In addition, what is the overall talent experience when applying for a job? Is it easy to apply for a job and is there an assessment? What type of assessment is it? Can it be completed via a mobile app or laptop? Is the assessment aligned with the candidate’s skillsets and the job itself? Does a candidate know if the organization aligns with them from an individual perspective? All those aspects help build up an amazing candidate experience.
Purposeful Work Is Fundamental to the FOW
The other aspect pertaining to the evolution of talent is purposeful work, which will shape the future of the workforce. It is a non-technological component of the Future of Work.
For many, work is a paycheck that puts food on the table for their family, helps pay for their children’s college, and funds vacations and other extra expenses. The concept of purposeful work fits into the idea of what we are doing with our lives. Is there a purpose behind the work that we’re doing? If we’re spending 10 to 12 hours (including commuting) at our places of employment, are we doing something that satisfies us as humans?
Purposeful work has become a crucial way to think about talent and the workforce. People want their work to be purposeful, which causes many to reevaluate where they are in life. They question what they’re doing with their lives. How are they working? Whom are they working for? How do they fit into the Great Resignation, or more appropriately, the Great Resettling? Many workers were either displaced or left voluntarily but will eventually resettle in some way. They may be doing more purposeful work by starting their own business or becoming an entrepreneur. Some become freelancers or contractors to suit a more flexible lifestyle.
Whatever the reason, purposeful work is going to shape the future of the workforce. This is an area that the Future of Work Exchange will always remain incredibly bullish on because it is a fundamental piece as humans to want to have a purpose in how we work.
The Future of Work Exchange (FOWX) and Ardent Partners recently hosted their complimentary webinar, The Five Things You MUST KNOW About the Future of Work, which discussed the critical capabilities that enterprises can unlock to truly optimize the way they address talent acquisition, extended workforce management, and, most importantly, work optimization. Over the next five weeks, we’ll be recapping each of the five things discussed during the event.
In our second installment this week, we’ll be diving into the “first-mover advantage” and what that means for innovation and resiliency.
Adoption of Future of Work Accelerants
The number two must-know about the Future of Work is that the first-mover advantage (in this case, early adopters of Future of Work-era strategies and solutions) translates into urgency for innovation. During the scary early days of the pandemic, businesses were either struggling for survival…or were thriving. When we think about where we are today, let’s look at the organizations that adopted some of these Future of Work accelerants: they tapped into remote work, became brought in a broader set of workers and in their workplace, while also improving their workplace culture and overall work optimization strategies.
Businesses also embraced aspects like artificial intelligence and used their technology more expansively. For example, a Vendor Management System (VMS) wasn’t used just for requisitions, but also to build scenarios and leverage predictive analytics to scale the workforce and understand what could happen tomorrow based on today’s numbers. Doing so could lead to smarter and more educated and intelligent-led talent decisions. Thus, there is an urgency for innovation.
This is not simply about thriving, but surviving as well. Those businesses that have adopted some of these accelerants, whether they’re strategic or technology-led, are much more likely to thrive in the months ahead. The first-mover advantage sets these organizations up very nicely for the future.
Thrive Through Understanding and Embracement
The Future of Work Exchange’s architect, Christopher J. Dwyer, highlighted a discussion he had with a director of talent acquisition, who said it was easy for her company to transition to a remote workforce because it was already a hybrid workplace. The company took what it learned in pre-pandemic times over so many years that it was fairly simple to transition to remote work. It already leveraged both HR and contingent workforce technology and had those systems integrated, so it knew where its workers were across the globe — a company with approximately 300 global locations. She said the company had the capability to know who was working on what projects, where they were located, when their assignments ended, and what locations were being hit hard by a COVID-19 surge, which allowed them to react in real time. Speaking with her months later, said Dwyer, the company was thriving because of the lessons learned and its embrace of Future of Work accelerants during the early days of the pandemic.
This is not to say that a business struggling in 2020 couldn’t be thriving today. The first-mover advantage means that enterprises shouldn’t sit back and watch others pass them by in terms of what they’re adopting and embracing from Future of Work, innovation, and progression perspectives. What else is happening out there? What are their peers and competitors adopting from a technology perspective? How are their business leaders managing the workforce? How are they treating their workforce? Why are they losing talent to other organizations? Why are they getting hit harder by The Great Resignation than others?
The next economic recession will be unique because of existing inflation; however, many industries are doing well and thriving because of lessons learned and the collective trauma experienced over the last three years from the pandemic. During the next downturn, companies are likely to weather the storm much better because of the technology they’ve adopted and the new strategies they’ve embraced. The innovative thinking that comes from those decisions makes companies better suited to handle the challenges of today.
Flexibility Cannot be Underestimated
What does this mean for the workplace? In many respects, hybrid is the ideal workplace model because of the flexibility that workers crave. Obviously, many workers are unable to work remotely because of their job description. And, some businesses look at remote and hybrid work models with concerns about productivity and workforce control. However, time and time again, workers have proved that avoiding a 90-minute commute to and from work allows them to be more productive each day.
It also speaks to the flexibility of taking care of life events. The ability to go to the dentist or pick up a sick child from daycare or school can mean a great deal to workers. Workers are humans, not just numbers on a spreadsheet. It doesn’t matter if you’re a contractor that worked 4.5 hours or an employee who has been with the company for 40 years. These are not faceless workers. We are humans and humans crave flexibility. We want the ability to feel connected to the organization.
A famous CEO of the world’s largest search engine said that “the Future of Work is flexibility.” We’ve been saying this for a long time on FOWX and it’s true: the Future of Work is built on flexibility.
One of the defining characteristics of the Future of Work is digitization. Enterprises are now operating with more remote and hybrid workplaces. Thus, technology is imperative to a cohesive and efficient workforce. What this means for the individual employee is more daily immersion in various technological platforms and solutions. Upskilling will be a critical aspect for workers as they harness more advanced technologies to communicate, collaborate, and execute their roles.
Digital employee experience (DEX) is a term that describes how effective workers are in using digital tools. DEX is a growing area of interest as companies adopt a plethora of digital tools to augment their dispersed workforces. Companies want to ensure the tools they have integrated into the workplace are intuitive and enhance worker productivity.
Tom Haak, director at the HR Trend Institute, says, “Technology offers enormous opportunities to improve the life of people in and around organizations. In HR, the focus is still too much on control and process improvement, not enough on really improving the employee experience.”
Today, with remote and in-person workers, enterprises must bridge those two environments and focus on technologies that both attract and retain workers regardless of where they work. Technology that supports the Future of Work comes in a variety of forms. Often, artificial intelligence (AI) permeates many digital solutions, providing automated processes and data outputs for better workforce decision-making.
Throughout the remainder of the year, the Future of Work Exchange will be highlighting several technologies from blockchain to e-wallets, and how they impact Future of Work strategies. However, the following are technologies that business leaders and employees are using now and, in the future, to enhance the DEX and drive workplace efficiency and community.
Communication and collaboration. The COVID-19 pandemic put communication and collaboration to the ultimate test. Enterprises and employees experienced first-hand the potential of digital communication as they grew accustomed to using Zoom, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. These platforms proved that remote work could, in fact, be accomplished with the same productive and strategic outcomes as in-person work models. It is one of the major reasons why remote and hybrid workforce options were embraced by enterprises post-pandemic.
There are several communication and collaborative tools to serve the enterprise and its remote and in-person workforce. Basecamp provides both a communication and collaborative platform to keep projects on schedule and lines of communication open. Trello also makes project management run smoothly regardless of where an employee is based.
Beyond these more common collaborative solutions, companies are utilizing chatbots for internal use for collaborative purposes and employee support. ServiceNOW, for example, offers its Virtual Agent solution to bring people to the same collaborative workspace or provide answers to employee questions.
Another evolving collaborative offering is the virtual whiteboard for use during company and team meetings. Companies such as Miro, MURAL, and Stormboard provide effective tools for diagramming and presenting in real time.
Big data (predictive and people analytics). Volumes of data flood enterprises from a variety of sources. For HR and other business leaders, big data is crucial to their Future of Work strategies, generating analytics across the talent acquisition and talent management landscape. Predictive analytics, for example, will grow as a key component of direct sourcing initiatives to curate a pipeline of potential job candidates.
According to a post on the Future of Work Exchange (FOWX), “While predictive analytics are not commonplace today, soon, a majority of enterprises will look to scenario-building as a way to enhance overall talent intelligence. Predictive analytics, in this realm, will augment the organization’s overall knowledge of its in-house skills as well as the expertise available externally (across all talent communities, including talent pools).”
Where predictive analytics will help prepare the enterprise for its future talent needs, people analytics are necessary to understand how employees are embracing digital tools and applications. Are shared applications being utilized by the workforce? Is there participation in virtual workspaces? What are employee sentiments around an enterprise’s digital transformation? People analytics help answer these questions and provide key insights into employee productivity, well-being, and digital adoption.
Virtual reality. In a previous post, FOWX explored the possibilities of the metaverse. Virtual reality will stretch the limits of employee interaction and community. Virtual workspaces where employee avatars can converse and strategize are likely to come to fruition in the coming years. It levels the playing field for remote and in-person employees by creating a setting for everyone regardless of location.
Artificial intelligence is also a major piece of the virtual reality offering. Currently, employees can create an avatar to complete repetitive tasks using AI or communicate with customers to answer product questions. As technology advances, the potential influence of virtual reality on the Future of Work will only increase. Today’s chatbots are just the beginning of how enterprises can leverage the virtual world and bridge humans with AI.
Just as the Future of Work evolves, so too will the technologies that support it. There are dozens of software applications on the horizon to benefit business leaders and their employees. Explore the options and how they align with your workforce strategy.
The Future of Work Exchange (FOWX) and Ardent Partners recently hosted their complimentary webinar, The Five Things You MUST KNOW About the Future of Work, which discussed the critical capabilities that enterprises can unlock to truly optimize the way they address talent acquisition, extended workforce management, and, most importantly, work optimization. Over the next five weeks, we’ll be recapping each of the five things discussed during the event. In our first installment this week, we’ll be diving into the evolution of talent and the ever-present phrase, “The Future of Work.”
The Evolution of Talent and Talent Acquisition
When it comes to the Future of Work, one of the first things to know is the evolution of talent and talent acquisition. And this idea of the “evolution of talent” can be ambiguous. Talent is always evolving and has been for a long time. The way that businesses perceive their talent is also evolving. And, the way that those businesses get connected to talent, and vice versa, continues to evolve. It’s also being innovated through technology and new strategies and new programs.
The fact is nearly half of our workforce today is comprised of extended workers or contingent workers. We have aspects like direct sourcing and digital staffing that are making it much easier for businesses to find the talent they need to get work done to address those mission-critical projects and fill the appropriate roles. FOWX and Ardent research has been focused historically on the extended workforce and contingent workforce, but we’re talking about all types of talent.
Thus, talent acquisition as a function and as a series of processes has also progressed. We need to consider aspects like the candidate experience, and the way that our culture and our brand attract new talent into our organization. Many business leaders think of the Future of Work as being centered around technology, revolving around the idea that technology drives the Future of Work. And we wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that; technology is a critical piece. And for some aspects and attributes of the Future of Work, technology and innovation are the nexus of those areas.
Technology is a Future of Work Centerpiece
Talent and the growth of the extended workforce represent the first leg of the stool with such things as the candidate experience, but also digital staffing, direct sourcing, online talent marketplaces, and core workforce management solutions (such as MSPs and VMS platforms) These technologies are helping us to redefine the way we think about work. We’re living in a world where even though we don’t want to hear the word “pandemic” anymore, the pandemic really did shape what we think about the Future of Work.
It’s really critical to think about aspects like remote work and the technologies that support a hybrid workplace and how we leverage digital workspaces, digitization, and the idea of the digital enterprise, all rolling up into this notion of digital transformation. New technology and innovation are not the totality of the Future of Work, but certainly a centerpiece of it. And when we look at the transformation of business leadership, we often juxtapose this with business transformation or business leadership transformation, as well. It is leadership that dictates strategy, it dictates vision, and it dictates culture. And by proxy, we transform the way business leadership manages itself, manages its workforce, and how it expands its power and control over the organization.
Thus, the transparent transformation of business leadership is really critical, and honestly has nothing to do with technology. It all revolves around aspects like conscious leadership, empathetic leadership, empathy at work, and flexibility — thinking about how we lead in very new and different ways. It’s turning on its head the idea that “the boss” is always this very strict person who’s known for rigidity in how he or she perceives and manages the workforce. Business leaders are transitioning to be more flexible in their thinking. When you combine all these aspects together, that’s the future of work and the view of the Future of Work Exchange and Ardent Partners as well.
Ever-Present Future of Work
Thus, the “Future of Work” phrase is ever-present. It’s everywhere. Back when our FOWX architect, Christopher J. Dwyer, started using this phrase in 2013/2014, there weren’t many others using it. Today, we see so many conferences named “The Future of Work” as well as many websites and research studies. But unlike a lot of phrases that are hot today, it’s anything but hype. It really is this idea of permanence. Much of the change that we’ve gone through as people, as leaders, as workers, and as businesses, it’s not hype…nor is it a fad. The Future of Work is permanence. It’s not going to fade from view.
Future of Work “accelerants” that were once seedlings to the world of work and talent are now table stakes. Remote work, for example, is not new. Many of us have been working in a remote or hybrid workplace for most of our careers. And there are many others who have done so, as well. But for some business leaders and workers, it’s a very new aspect of their daily work lives.
The “Future of Work” phrase is ubiquitous. It’s an omnipresent way of looking at the current and future state of work. We are now focused on how we can improve the way we get work done, the way we manage talent, the way we engage talent, and the way that we treat our workforce. But we’re also thinking about tomorrow and the ways we’re going to get work done depending on several factors, including the economy, politics, global markets, and other aspects that could change the business arena.
Upwork, a global talent and work platform, recently held its Work Without Limits summit as an in-person and streaming event in Chicago. The main stage was filled with customer and enterprise presenters, including Upwork’s Tim Sanders, vice president of client strategy, who discussed the grand redesign opportunity and what the breakdown of the old rules of work means for companies today. (Check out the Future of Work Exchange‘s coverage of the event.)
Defining Grand Redesign
Sanders began his session with a fascinating story about the rise of Shantanu Narayen to CEO of Adobe Inc. in 2007. Adobe was a behemoth software company known for its innovative products like Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, and many others. In the industry, it was second only to its rival Microsoft.
However, in 2007, the company experienced the ramifications of software piracy, losing $1 billion. A year later, the Great Recession took its toll on the company’s flagship Adobe Creative Suite product offering. At a $1,800 price point, companies closed their wallets and revenue declined 20% within the first eight weeks of the recession.
What was Adobe’s response? Mark Garrett, Adobe’s chief financial officer in 2008, recognized the potential of cloud-based subscription models. Thus, the company embarked on its grand redesign, transforming from a physical product-oriented company to a 100% digital, cloud-based subscription service. In 2012, Adobe released Creative Cloud to the world with an entry-level price point of less than $60 compared to $1,800.
Sanders noted that Adobe’s grand redesign was one of the biggest turnarounds in corporate history, growing its market cap from $15 billion in 2012 to more than $200 billion today. Knowing not to rest and accept the status quo, especially during a recession, the company leveraged the opportunity to combine desktop, mobile, and services into a single customer package — shutting the door to the competition.
Our Present Grand Redesign Opportunity
This brings us to today. Sanders explains that companies are experiencing another period of great disruption — the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts. Now is the time to move beyond the status quo and redesign the workplace. He says there are six workplace design options on the table.
Identify Your Model to Rewire Your Organization for Remote-First
Which workplace design model represents your company? Answer that question first, says Sanders, then pose three additional questions.
And as a follow-up question, are there any remote-first companies running recruitment ads in your market? If so, that’s going to change the picture even if you think you’re comfortable with the strength of your local market.
If your leaders have learned how to manage based on outcomes, then they’re completely equipped to manage without seeing people physically every day in the office.
Culture is not about your office. Instead, culture is a conversation led by leaders about how we do things here. It’s about storytelling and how we succeeded in the past. If you want to build a better culture, focus on cadence, not location.
Sanders says these are the questions to ask yourself. The good news? As you embrace remote-first (or at the very least, remote-friendly) workplace design, you are going to rewire the organization.
While remote and hybrid work models are nearly synonymous with the Future of Work, the four-day work week is gaining renewed attention as a characteristic of workplace flexibility. Certainly not a novel concept, the pandemic helped elevate four-day work week discussions as companies sought to bring employees back into the office. Advocates of the four-day work week are encouraging companies to join pilot programs to test the waters and determine its viability.
It is important to differentiate the four-day work week model from a compressed work week. Employees who work a compressed week are still working 40 or more hours over four days. A four-day work week means working 8 hours per day, 32 hours per week with the same pay as a 40-hour week.
However, various studies have shown that a four-day work week can produce higher productivity levels compared to employees working more days with longer hours. A four-day work week can also lead to lower stress levels as well as a happier and more loyal workforce. When employees know that their company values flexibility and work/life balance, there’s a greater commitment toward enterprise goals. It is this insight that led to a drastic change in work hours/days in the early 1900s.
Work Hours and Days Not Etched in Stone
Historically, until the 20th century, the work week spanned six days, averaging 80-to-100 hours per week, with the majority of labor working in factories or heavy manufacturing. In 1926, however, the Ford Motor Company transitioned to five days, 40 hours per week due to productivity insights of its workers. TIME highlighted Henry Ford’s philosophy on this in his company’s Ford News in October, “Just as the eight-hour day opened our way to prosperity in America, so the five-day workweek will open our way to still greater prosperity … It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either lost time or a class privilege.”
The Fair Labor Standards Act, passed in 1938 and amended in 1940 by Congress, made the 40-hour work week standard. Thus, the notion that the work week cannot be anything less than five days, 40 hours per week is not realistic given our current times. As evidenced by the Future of Work movement, today’s workplace landscape shows yet another tectonic shift in workforce productivity and engagement.
Now, more than ever, with remote work becoming a mainstream workforce model, it is relevant to further explore the four-day work week concept. And that’s exactly what hundreds of companies are undertaking across the world from Europe to North America and beyond.
Largest Four-Day Work Week Pilot Launched in the UK
The largest-ever four-day work week pilot is occurring in the United Kingdom from June to December 2022. Led by 4 Day Week Global in partnership with leading think tank Autonomy, the 4 Day Week UK Campaign, and researchers at Cambridge University, Boston College, and Oxford University, there are more than 70 organizations varying in size and sector participating in the six-month trial, including over 3,300 employees who are being paid one day off weekly during the six-month pilot.
According to Joe O’Connor, 4 Day Week Global CEO, “The organizations in the United Kingdom pilot are contributing real-time data and knowledge that are worth their weight in gold. Essentially, they are laying the foundation for the future of work by putting a four-day week into practice, across every size of business and nearly every sector, and telling us exactly what they are finding as they go,” he says.
“We are learning that for many it is a fairly smooth transition and for some there are some understandable hurdles — especially among those which have comparatively fixed or inflexible practices, systems, or cultures that date back well into the last century,” O’Connor adds.
With the pilot now at its halfway point, all participating organizations were sent a series of questions with multi-choice answers on a scale of 1 to 5. According to 4 Day Week Global, of those that responded (41 out of the 70 companies), here are some insights on the four-day work week at this juncture in the trial:
A Bright Future for Workplace Flexibility
The outlook is encouraging for four-day work week adoption for some of the companies involved in the pilot. The fact that 49% of the company respondents are seeing an improvement in business productivity is something to note as well. The Future of Work Exchange will follow up once the pilot concludes in December.
In the meantime, if your company is interested in a 4 Day Week Global pilot in the United States or Canada, information can be found here.
Ultimately, companies will need to determine how a four-day work week impacts their business and workforce model. Flexibility of any kind within today’s enterprises is critical to talent acquisition and retention. Companies that tested but decided against adopting a four-day work week have still realized the importance of flexibility and implemented other measures from no-meeting Thursdays to seasonal half-day Fridays. Determine what is meaningful from a stress and work/life balance perspective and use that as a starting point for a flexible workplace program.
Since the beginning of the Great Resignation in 2021, millions of workers have left the workforce — many retiring from the job market altogether. However, some of those retirees have now unretired and reentered the workforce. According to Nick Bunker, economic research director for North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab, as of March 2022, 3.2% of workers who retired a year earlier are now employed. What does this mean for companies and the Future of Work? Essentially, there remains a large talent pool of unretired seniors who bring varied skillsets and interest in remote work — a perfect combination for a pipeline of contingent labor.
The Pandemic Spurs Mass Retirement
Most of the planet can relate to how COVID-19 affected our work lives. Throughout the first two years of the pandemic, many senior workers decided to retire from the workforce. However, it occurred in unprecedented numbers.
During a Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis podcast titled “Retirements Increased During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Who Retired and Why?,” Miguel Faria-E-Castro, a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, remarked on the number and the reasons for retirements beyond what was expected as the baby boomer generation exits the workforce.
“… And actually, I find that there were about 2.6 million excess retirees on top of what those trends would predict. And there are many reasons why people are retiring during COVID-19. There’s the fact that older people tend to be more susceptible to severe illness from COVID-19,” he says.
“There’s the fact that many of these older workers had to care for loved ones who used to be in daycare institutions that were now subject to lockdowns, and there’s also the fact that asset values were rising very rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic, which might have influenced the value of pension and retirement accounts,” Faria-E-Castro adds.
Despite the reasons behind retirements, 2022 witnessed the return of many retired workers to the workforce.
A Generational Return
While retirement numbers reached unprecedented levels, the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, along with simpler and more obvious reasons like boredom and a sense of purpose, prompted retired workers to find employment.
Other reasons to return include:
Inflation. According to the latest U.S. Department of Labor data, the inflation rate for the United States is 8.3% for the 12 months ended August 2022 — an increase of 8.5% previously. Higher prices throughout a variety of industry sectors including food and beverage and consumer products are causing financial hardships for retired workers. Returning to the workforce is helping to ease that burden as well as pay for rising healthcare expenses
Tight labor market. A tight labor market means available jobs. Prior to the pandemic, employment opportunities for older workers were less plentiful and even scarce. However, with the enticement of flexible hours and remote work to fill open positions, enterprises are opening their doors to unretired employees — and they’re taking those opportunities.
Higher wages. Companies understand that the lack of talent requires a higher wage to lure candidates. Unretiring to supplement pension and Social Security payments is helping to offset inflationary pressures on monthly expenses.
Leverage Senior Talent for Greater Value
Now that senior workers are returning to the workplace, how can companies best utilize this unique talent pool? In her Forbes article, “Is the ‘Great Resignation’ Actually a Mass Retirement,” Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, CEO of 20-first, a global balance consultancy based in London, highlighted three critical areas for how companies can retain older workers.
Build senior talent into your hiring strategy. When examining the makeup of your workforce, how many are older employees? It is critical to know the age distribution of your workplace for a variety of reasons. First, it may be a sign that the enterprise lacks variability in its senior talent. There is much to be said about a multi-generational workplace and the advantages of pairing younger workers with more seasoned employees. Second, tribal knowledge is rarely written down for the benefit of others. Whether it’s processes, procedures, or shortcut efficiencies, companies rarely capture that knowledge before employees retire and it’s gone forever. Third, transparency in your age distribution can lead to a strategic outlook on potential succession plans. It should also serve as a significant part of your knowledge management process.
Invest in professional development. As humans, we’re always learning. And in today’s enterprises, change is a constant. With that in mind, professional development should not be an investment for only younger talent. Despite many multi-generational workforces, ageism is still present within companies. Today’s hiring initiatives should focus on removing that practice and the barriers it creates for senior employees. Having purposeful work is just as important to the older workforce as any other segment. Unretired employees often want to learn new skillsets to broaden their experiences and provide meaningful outcomes to the enterprise.
Flex the workplace model. As retired workers return to the workforce, they’re looking for remote and work/life balance opportunities — which complements the Future of Work paradigm. Understanding the purpose of why an employee is unretiring can help shape how best to utilize their skills. It also opens a dialog about the potential tenure of a senior employee. Rather than a sudden departure that often occurs with traditional retirement, companies can plan eventual exits and ensure knowledge capture and a succession strategy.
The Future of Work is not generation-specific. It encompasses all generations within the workforce from Gen Z to Baby Boomers. In fact, it is Baby Boomers who can serve as a valuable source for continent labor. Those coming out of retirement to find a second calling or support a former company or industry in a new and beneficial way have much to offer. And leveraged strategically, the knowledge of this generation of workers can spark innovation and provide a unique dynamic within multi-generational teams. At the end of the day, age is just a number.