Are we living the Smart Working Revolution?
By: Jair Ribeiro
Tags: Future Of Work, Smart Working, Home Office, Work From Home, Workplace

Photo by Mikey Harris on Unsplash

Are we living the Smart Working Revolution?

The future of work has come due to the pandemic. Are you ready?

Before the pandemic, there was a lot of speculation about the effects of technology on jobs’ future. The message was clear: the future of work is not predetermined; it is up to us to shape it.

However, that future has come sooner than anticipated for many countries, companies, and workers due to COVID-19, significantly changing the way we work.

In the end, this new way of working is becoming not just an emergency solution due to the pandemic. This agile way of working is finding its way between organizations worldwide because it blends people’s focus and efficiency.

Since March of this year, I’ve been working exclusively from home and I strongly believe (at least until my next performance review… ) that I’ve been doing it with a noticeable increment of productivity and quality.

According to a recently published post by Forbes.com, Google, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Capital One, Zillow, Slack, Amazon, PayPal, Salesforce, and other major corporations have expanded their home-based work choices.

Mark Zuckerberg said as many as 50% of Facebook (FB) employees could be working remotely within the next five to 10 years. Zuckerberg pitched the idea as both a matter of satisfying employee desires and also as an effort to create “more broad-based economic prosperity.”

“When you limit hiring to people who live in a small number of big cities, or who are willing to move there, that cuts out a lot of people who live in different communities, have different backgrounds, have different perspectives,” Zuckerberg said on a Livestream posted to his Facebook page.

Google and its parent company, Alphabet, will allow its employees to continue working from home until at least June 2021.

Jack Dorsey, the CEO of both Twitter and Square, pushed the boundaries and said, in a paradigm-shifting, COVID-19-inspired move, that his employees can continue working from home “forever.”

German-based Siemens, the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe, announced that 140,000 employees may work from wherever they want for two or three days a week. Several days a week, the work-anywhere — decision was due to a global staff survey, where employees expressed the desire for greater flexibility in their approach to work.

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

It is happening, right now!

According to the recently released report by the World Economic Forum, The Future of Jobs, on average, 44% of workers are able to work remotely during the COVID-19 crisis, but 24% cannot perform their current role.

This estimate indicates an aspiration to expand the availability of remote work in the future.

This is enough to understand how much the topic of smart work has been cleared of the pandemic customs and has come to be identified by many as the future of work.

This is happening now also due to the undoubted benefits of saving time and resources for businesses that no longer need to rent vast spaces for their workplaces, pushing for this approach to be implemented within multiple organizations.

This is a new reality that I am observing in many companies that are facing for the first time during the lockdown, but which in some cases is changing from a temporary option to a structural one, provided that a well-designed strategy of agile work allows the needs of family life to be met and reduces the burden of relocation without yielding to efficiency.

The emergency has accelerated the transition to this way of working, and businesses are now entering into agreements with workers and labor unions that will allow them to adopt more flexible smart work models, allowing employees the ability to choose how to alternate work from the office to home.

This way, an increasing number of people now can choose whether to go to the office or work from home regularly while maintaining the health and safety of colleagues and customer service needs.

Photo by Dillon Shook on Unsplash

How do you recognize a revolution when it is happening?

The progress of this new way of working is not taken for granted.

Clearly, this transformation must be shared at all levels of society. In other words, a cultural shift is required, which implies a rethinking of the way human resources are structured, with direct implications in terms of results control and management autonomy.

The secret to the modern work model’s success is the managers’ attitude, who must also engage and inspire workers who work remotely,

Companies must also invest in specific coaching and training sessions addressing professional, emotional, motivational, communication problems, and regular, interactive sessions.

Like any innovation in work and labor relations, it is accompanied by positive and negative factors.

Teleworking, if well implemented, is most advantageous to both parties. Employees tend to reconcile a better quality of life, and companies can acquire a clear opportunity for productivity improvements.

Is your company part of this revolution?