It’s a challenge they must meet in order to stay relevant, to meet their obligations and responsibilities as an employer to look after their people, and to create a source of competitive advantage in the race to attract and retain the best talent. Clearly there remains a role for the office. BCG GAMMA help sets them down the right path and is a partner along the way. In cooperation with the World Economic Forum’s Future of Work project, BCG is developing a blueprint to help companies assess and manage changes and challenges in the future. But how can this be accomplished and funded? As we discussed earlier, in Australia, 85% of employees want to spend at least one day a week in the office. But, as we explore below, planned rates of headcount reduction are lower than many employees fear—and many businesses are, in fact, planning to increase staff. However, only 53% of companies considered “Employee willingness” in their top three most important criteria. There is little excuse for companies not to invest in programs that support mental wellbeing: Australia’s National Mental Health Commission, in conjunction with the Mentally Healthy Workplace Alliance, has created a series of evidence-based. We're dedicated to helping our clients do amazing things and unlocking the potential of … Globally, from a similar BCG survey conducted in June, 44% of companies anticipate further headcount reductions, compared with 31% in Australia. Read writing about Future Of Work in BCG Henderson Institute. The coming 18 months will see further workforce reductions, although not at such a rate. In addition, as highlighted in our post on the future of consulting, it makes sense for BCG to amp up technology enablement efforts as software continues to become increasingly critical to all aspects of running a business. Future of Work Disruption lies ahead. The model shows that the private sector in the US could reskill 25% of workers expected to be displaced by technology into growing job fields, and the government could reskill 77%, with a positive cost-benefit balance. While some jobs will be lost, and many others created, almost all will change. Many employers have made important strides in the right direction - strides that benefit their employees and address their primary concerns - or are in the process of doing so. In cooperation with the World Economic Forum’s Future of Work project, BCG is developing a blueprint to help companies assess and manage changes and challenges in the future of work. This has been supplemented by deep-dive conversations with senior Executives from over 40 of Australia’s largest organisations. James Palano was a Research Associate on the Project on Managing the Future of Work. The Expectation Gap in the Future of Work, Work Will Never Be the Same—Savvy Business Leaders Are Adapting to Change That’s Already Here, What 12,000 Employees Have to Say About the Future of Remote Work, Find a way to make hybrid models work for your organisation, recognising that this comes with many challenges. Reskilling and job transitions also present an opportunity to close the wage gap, as 74% of women will receive increased wages, compared to 53% of men. The 2020 Employer Sentiment Survey surveyed a sample of 121 respondents, over the period of September-October 2020. Three waves of change in employee–employer sentiment reflect the seismic changes that have hit Australian businesses in 2020. Our report outlines a cost-benefit calculation from the perspectives of both the company and the government. Other big companies have followed suit to some degree: Square now has a permanent work from home policy, while Optus says its call centre staff will work from home permanently. For example, an internal survey at one organisation revealed that 80% of staff were actually fine with coming into the office, yet only 20% wanted to get on crowded public transport. Related Expertise: When compared to global trends, the story is similar, albeit slightly more pessimistic. Australia’s new working reality brings fresh challenges to team effectiveness; without physical interaction between colleagues, companies need to focus on making teams stronger in both remote and physical settings. Learning to Learn, Unlearn and Relearn The most successful businesses are putting a focus on teams at the top of their agendas. The business leaders who are getting it right are developing a range of flexible work models for employees, unlocking productivity by focusing on outcomes and outputs rather than presence and inputs, and creating smarter environments for their people to work and connect. Employers see the working environment and setup as the primary benefit of the physical office. We go beyond ideas to design solutions and implement meaningful action. While some employees have enjoyed the novelty of permanent remote working, many are eager to return to the workplace in some capacity, citing affiliation and social connectedness with colleagues, to have ‘accidental collisions’ in the kitchen or the corridor, and to get work done in a collaborative fashion. In BCG’s recent report, Personalisation for Your People, launched in June this year, we explored the shift in how we work, and looked at Australian employee sentiment. While these are important, they are not as important to employees as more informal, social interactions which are desperately needed in the third wave. Director, London Institute for Mathematical Sciences. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is one of the world‘s leading management consulting firms, with . Clearly employers shouldn’t bow to every whim of every employee, but by re-thinking approaches to working models, improvement initiatives and the role of the office, it should be possible to balance business needs and employee expectations. As robotics, AI, the gig economy and crowds grow, jobs are being reinvented, creating the “augmented workforce.” We must reconsider how jobs are designed and work to adapt and learn for future growth. To run this survey BCG teamed with Instinct and Reason a global leader in survey deployment and analysis. British bank Barclays will explore moving to a more decentralised working model that might include local bank branches serving as satellite offices, while Fujitsu will halve its office space in Japan and offer greater flexibility to its 80,000 employees. Given today’s rapidly changing and digitising world, DigitalBCG was formed to guide Fortune 500 companies, governments, and regional challengers through … Harvard Business School’s Project on Managing the Future of Work and BCG’s Henderson Institute, 2018. These return-to-work plans raise interesting challenges; employers now need to decide which employees to bring back first. It’s only just begun, but it’s already clear that employers are behind the eight ball. Many companies have already implemented new policies. © Boston Consulting Group 2020. 50% of surveyed companies plan to maintain their current headcount. Most organisations have many workers who need to be onsite for their roles, be they maintaining servers, stacking shelves or driving trucks. The authors thank Research Associates Brad DeSanctis and Ria Mazumdar for their support on this report. Companies, policymakers, and individuals all have a role to play. Only 6% are looking to increase employees compared to around 20% here. The shift to remote working means people are working longer hours out of fear of losing their jobs. Designing the Future of Work Source: BCG analysis. For example, Twitter provides counselling sessions for all employees, and many businesses provide Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs). More than 55% of companies acknowledge declining rates of mental health and are undertaking initiatives to increase access to mental health support. Twitter was the first major company to announce a permanent work-from-home policy for employees. Changing consumer sentiment and spending habits have created a ‘boom or bust’ reality for many businesses and left others in a holding pattern from which they are only now starting to emerge. This presents an interesting dynamic as employers divide into those pushing to get their people ‘back to the office’ and those that have embraced remote working, caring more for employee engagement and content with the productivity they have seen during the last 9 months. 82. Thomas is a physicist and fellow at the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences and a specialist in using statistical mechanics to study complex systems in physics and interdisciplinary fields. Organization, Interestingly, employers also believe that 27% of their people will work in fully remote models, although only 21% of employees actually want to work in this way. Companies are clearly rethinking how they approach real estate, floorplans and the traditional role of the office. Other organisations are also turning to digital tools such as the mental health support platform Ginger or mindfulness app Headspace. However, about 20% of companies will only bring back a significant portion when there is sufficient containment and/or a COVID-19 vaccine, while 6% are not planning to return a significant portion of their workforce at all. In addition, BCG interviewed senior Executives from over 40 of Australia’s largest organisations. In this, our latest Employer Sentiment Survey, we asked employers about their predications, plans and aspirations for the coming months. In our previous research, for those employees that can work remotely, 63% highlighted their ideal working model would be a hybrid of remote and office-based work (between one and four days a week). BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP 3 Create De-averaged Work Models for Employees We don’t believe in returning to the past, when work hap-pened primarily with colleagues who were always located in the same place at the same time. In cooperation with the World Economic Forum’s Future of Work project, BCG is developing a blueprint to help companies assess and manage changes and challenges in the future. This has dramatically outpaced productivity improvements. At BCG we use our Predictability, Teaming and Open Communication (PTO) system, which encourages teams to focus on their progress and their sustainability needs. This is the exact type of work that BCG Platinion takes on - it's a technology project that enables the core business. Companies must think through both what they can offer each employee group independently (e.g., can shift workers have more flex around hours worked), and also how working models are communicated differently to different groups within their organisation. Transport for NSW is running a 900-person pilot to trial new ways of working, while Volt has permanently implemented a ‘Flex Fridays’ policy, giving employees Friday off as long as they work to ‘maintain the productivity levels of a typical five-day work week’. Staggering start/end times away from peak hours, allayed many fears and increased the speed of returning to the workplace. Employers have identified collaboration and a focus on outcomes as the two most important attributes linked to team effectiveness. In our first year of cooperation with the WEF, we produced two reports. Leaders therefore have a real opportunity to take advantage of this third wave of workplace change for the benefit not only of their people, but also of their bottom line. In the future world of work, skills acquisition will no longer be a process with an ending. Eight Futures of Work: Scenarios and Their Implications, Towards a Reskilling Revolution: A Future of Jobs for All, Towards a Reskilling Revolution: Industry-Led Action for the Future of Work, Concrete recommendations on how companies can tackle the challenges of upskilling and reskilling to prepare for the Future of Work, A real business case for reskilling impacted workers from a company and government perspective, Digital HR, digital talent, and digital skill development. All of the scenarios we present are possible, yet none are certain. In fact, the evidence suggests we’re indispensable. Employers therefore need to find ways to reassure their staff during this time of uncertainty. Leaders and workers were forced to consider the possibility that new working arrangements were semi-permanent - or even here to stay. Recently, Karin Kimbrough (Chief Economist at LinkedIn). Atlassian, for example, is piloting a system that encourages employees to be transparent with each other and their leaders about their individual needs and set norms for how they want to work as a team. But many are not, and most could do with some improvement. Our new Employer Sentiment Survey was conducted through September and October, covering a cross-section of over 120 Australian companies, both large and small and across different industries. Employers would be wise to pay attention to how employees view the office. The traditional working model for many organisations has been ‘office by default, remote by exception’. This must mirror what employees find valuable about being in the office, and design for accidental collisions to aid social interaction. While real estate footprints will undoubtedly decrease, it may not be as much as some people think. When they send members of their teams into the field to work with our clients, it can be challenging to assess performance and competencies. In the first wave - between about March and May – many employees were impacted dramatically but many others were excited; COVID-19 had forced a new, more flexible working reality. Consumer sentiment, however, is only one piece of the complicated patchwork of changes inflicted on Australia’s business landscape; companies are also experiencing drastic change from within. Employers need to ensure there is no division between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ in terms of flexible working models. Studies suggest about 15-20% of employees have always struggled with mental health challenges and far more face “mental performance” issues, where productivity is impacted by those feeling “a bit off”. Many job-seekers today are only considering roles with flexible/remote options; organisations that fail to provide these will dramatically reduce their access to talent pools. It was also the thing that employees told us they missed most about working at the office. Here, we showcase our latest contributions to that project. The common approach, which focuses on identifying types of work that only humans can do, is an unproductive way to plan for the future of work. Utilizing economies of scale, nearly half of the disrupted workforce could be profitably reskilled by the private sector in-house, and nearly all could be reskilled with a positive cost-benefit balance from the government perspective. Organizational Culture, 14 December 2020 Boston Consulting Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Our survey shows that employers believe softer attributes, such as collaboration and empathy, will become more important post-COVID-19 than harder skills, such as problem-solving. But only 15% of employees say they want this. Future of Work expert Dan Schawbel and Oracle's Emily He discuss. New office designs are incorporating spaces that increase accidental collisions to aid social interaction, with more team rooms for collaboration, and, potentially counter to trends over the last decade, more offices with doors to allow for focused work. Nearly 42% of companies plan to have a large bulk of their workforce (>30%) back in the workplace by Christmas 2020, with a further 30% shortly after Christmas. of agriculture. What is the Future of Work? By Chris Mattey, Rebecca Russell, Nicole Sibilio, and Dan Wong. It appears your browser does not support JavaScript or you have it disabled. They must now look at improving social interaction and affiliation for their people. The Boston Consulting Group 3 A tidal wave of change is coming that will soon make the way we work almost unrecognizable to today’s business leaders. Our results show that adequate reskilling holds promise: 95% of at-risk workers could find good-quality, higher-wage jobs with good future prospects. One of the few certainties coming out of COVID-19 is that it will have a lasting impact on how people work going forward. Work continues to increase in complexity: BCG has measured “complicatedness” of work showing that it has steadily increased 6.7% a year for 50 years. Globally, from a similar BCG survey conducted in June, 44% of companies anticipate further headcount reductions, compared with 31% in Australia. outlook, the Forum considers issues such as the future of work, how health and social care can be transformed, and what privacy means in a digital age. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in collaboration with Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) have recently concluded a study on Future of work in the Healthcare Ecosystem. And there is some good news: while 30% of companies anticipate they are likely to reduce headcount, 20% of companies are anticipating an increase to their workforce—some by more than 20%. The report’s recommendations were built on more than 60 in-depth interviews with C-level experts across five industries. But employers, as shown in the exhibit below, still think of offices in terms of their traditional function—a place to work, to hold meetings and attend training. Many employers remain stuck in the second wave, focused on practical things like working at home spaces and formal contact between employees. Companies will need to reassess constant- Our survey found that more than half of employers see ‘on-site criticality’ as the most important criteria in bringing back employees, meaning that for many workers that can work remotely, they will likely continue to do so. The future of work means a lot of things to a lot of people And if you are one of the >75% of employees who feels demotivated and disengaged at work, you might wonder how many more times you will be change processed, made lean, culture changed or black belted into six … Driven by accelerating connectivity, new talent models, and cognitive tools, work is changing. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown multiple challenges - and opportunities - in the path of Australian businesses. Empathy and an openness to coaching and feedback also rank highly. قالب وردپرس The second focuses on reskilling, the most impactful action that stakeholders can take to promote a positive future. Getting the individuals within a team to agree their own way of working is the unlock that will enable the right trade-offs to be made at a practical level between business outcomes and individual outcomes. As a current consulting partner involved in some Consulting M&As, I think going anonymous is the wise decision here. For these reasons, nearly half (44%) of companies anticipate reducing their real estate footprint within the next 18 months – and half of these by more than 20%. More than 50% of surveyed companies have reduced their workforce as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, some by as much as half. Employees, on the other hand, face increasing mental health challenges; they are working longer hours and missing social interaction with their colleagues. More frequent remote working and online engagement with customers and clients is driving companies to go digital, reducing the need for physical premises. This statistic is contributing to what some business leaders are calling ‘culture decay’, which results from the increase in remote working and associated decrease in social interaction and affiliation. Sustainably securing the future . FUTURE OF WORK BUILDING THE NEW COMMERCIAL OPERATING MODEL By Rahul Guha, Abhinav Verma and Natasha Prakash ... model for the future. It was a novelty that saw a jump in productivity and engagement. In our June employee report Personalisation for your people, we demonstrated that a lack of social interaction with colleagues, clients and customers was a huge contributor to negative employee experiences. Many companies have a long journey ahead, but some have already started to tackle this issue: random coffees via Slack plug-ins, “Always on” Zoom rooms where anyone can pop into, “pet parades”, weekly dance parties and virtual exercise sessions have all started to become commonplace. Today, we help clients with total transformation—inspiring complex change, enabling organizations to grow, building competitive advantage, and driving bottom-line impact. We close the report by discussing specific actions that governments and businesses can take to proactively manage future changes and challenges. Imagine an organisation that orders all staff to return to the office five days a week - when their staff members look at the ongoing flexibility enjoyed by their peers in other companies, how do you think they will feel? The labor market is changing, and to remain both employable and professionally fulfilled, workers must change with it. BCG was the pioneer in business ... future of work, key questions remain for business leaders seeking to capture the maximum benefits of hybrid working. The chart below shows the disparity between what matters to employees and what employers are focused on. Here, we showcase our latest contributions to that project. As 70% of affected workers will need to re-train into a different job family, a reskilling revolution is required. We are now in the midst of the third wave of the employee–employer shift in sentiment. By 2030, the nature and quality of work will be irrevocably altered. When compared to global trends, the story is similar, albeit slightly more pessimistic. The creation of corporate guardrails and team norms as well as regular conversations at a team level will be essential to ensuring that new models work. All rights reserved. But how real are these reductions, and will organisations be able to realise the anticipated savings? The division of organisations into those going ‘back to the old ways’ of five days a week in the office, versus those embracing new ways of working will have profound impacts on a company’s success at attracting and retaining talent. The future of work is not predetermined. The first defines what will likely affect the future of work, and how various scenarios might lead to distinct future states. With more locations, we have more remote supervisors. PTO has seen a 35% increase in teamwork and collaboration. All of this takes a toll on employees’ mental performance. In fact, there’s evidence of increased division among Australian workplaces between those that are embracing new, more flexible working models and those that are keen to ‘get back to how things were’. offices in more than 90 cities in over 50 countries. Future of Work. As part of its work to explore the long-term future of the APS, the APS Review Secretariat commissioned BCG to undertake a scenario planning exercise. Motivation and are unable to draw the line between their work and personal life management! New working arrangements were semi-permanent - or even here to stay firms expect a reduction,. First defines what will likely affect the future to employees and what employers think want! A real opportunity to get this new reality right for their roles, be they servers! Good-Quality, higher-wage jobs with good future prospects none are certain together, and most could with. Executives from over 40 of Australia ’ s leading management Consulting firm and the mobility of.. 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