Organizations must create attractive and welcoming workplaces to encourage employees to … [+]
Consultants and management gurus are prone to exaggerating what they call “paradigm shifts,” but it’s hard to argue with the central premise of Julia Hobsbawm’s new book: Working assumptions.The scale of disruption we are experiencing has not been seen in the workplace for a hundred years,” she writes early on. How chaotic and unpredictable the world of work has suddenly become since the change in habits accelerated by the pandemic , coupled with the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, is demonstrated by how far things have come in the just two years since her earlier book, The Nowhere OfficeHobsbawn, who has written and advised on the world of work for many years, was brave enough in that work to suggest – when others were predicting a rapid return to normality – that things would not end up where they started, but she could not have anticipated the pace and scale of change that was occurring.
Fortunately, Hobsbawm began a regular column around the time the book was published—under the same title as this new book—and examples appear throughout to illustrate the developments as they have occurred. Along the way, she makes it clear that she believes that managers who, even now, argue that the shift to more flexible ways of working and the attitudes of younger generations of employees are not conducive to developing culture or improving productivity are wasting their time. The working assumption that you can put the genie of flexibility back in the bottle may prove to be one of the biggest management mistakes of the post-pandemic economy, she writes.
This doesn’t mean she thinks this is an easy situation to deal with. “To be honest, hybrid work is difficult to manage and causes headaches for managers precisely because it is not one size fits all,” she writes. Instead, managers will have to make decisions about which jobs can be performed flexibly and which jobs require presenteeism.
But flexible working is of course not the only issue causing turbulence. Of much greater potential impact – particularly for well-educated knowledge workers – is AI. She describes the arrival of ChatGPT as a “game changer” for the white-collar world, in the same way that automation and outsourcing had been for their working-class counterparts decades earlier, and says it “has ushered in an identity crisis that we now have. I’m just beginning to understand it.”
This is perhaps not so surprising. Technology has already had such a far-reaching effect on what gets done especially in offices that, combined with the prevailing management language, many job titles are almost incomprehensible to all but those who hold them. If AI doesn’t so much eliminate jobs as change them (as its more optimistic proponents suggest), this fear will only increase. As such, it will only add to the sense of unrest in the workplace – and the headaches for managers.
Hobsbawm himself hopes these changes will create an “extraordinary opportunity”. This may be because — as she herself says — she did not go to university and, instead of hoping that a degree would lead to success and status, built a career through networking and seized her opportunities. But she does believe that leaders and managers will have to change their behavior to bring out the best in employees who may not share the same approach to work as they do. One specific challenge involves creating what a commercial real estate expert quoted in the book calls “peak work experience” as a way to encourage employees to return to commuting. Apparently the role of free coffee in this should not be underestimated.
More seriously, employers need to realize that making the modern workplace work requires soft skills as well as more technical ones. Just because it’s possible to monitor time spent online doesn’t mean it’s the best way to motivate people. Leaders need to respond to this period of uncertainty by embracing it. In fact, says Hobsbawm, they need to convey as much uncertainty as conviction.
Unlike those proposing a universal basic income, Hobsbawm is confident that work will remain part of the fabric of society – although “the details are still up in the air.” We’ll have to look forward to her next reports from the front lines on what those details look like.