The World Has A New Kind Of Worker - The Flexetariat

The future of work was foretold half a century ago, not in commerce but in art.

The future of work was predicted half a century ago, not in commerce but in art.

In Rene Magritte's 1953 Belgian surrealist painting "Golconda," the sky is filled with a crowd of men in trench coats and bowling hats, surrounded only by buildings. They are found in a narrow and monotonous formation.

Only upon closer examination can you see any individual character on their faces. The suggestion of office life as a surreal prison is obvious.

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In 2022, prisoners jumped from barricades. The air is filled with grand resignation and quiet calm. Nearly half of senior HR leaders surveyed by consulting firm Gartner Inc.

Now concerned about "mass turnover events".

Gone are the assumptions of an era the painting captured: the rising ambition of post-war capitalism, when professional and technical work quadrupled. Wearing the white collar of a suit and tie (as opposed to the blue collar of a manufacturing suit) brought higher profits and prestige.

When the commitment and the daily commute to the gleaming city's skyscrapers was a price worth paying for the promise of a promotion.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, 8% of knowledge professionals were working from home. By the second quarter of 2020, the International Labor Organization estimated that an average of 17.4% were working remotely.

Statistically, it takes 66 days to establish a habit: by the spring of 2022, when a permanent return to working life seemed possible in the majority of countries, 700 days had passed since the beginning of the pandemic.

New habits have been inculcated in people's lives, new childcare arrangements as well as new transfers.

And something other than re-evaluation.

“We are not the same people who went home to work early in 2020,” noted Microsoft's 2022 Work Trends Index, which included more than 30,000 people in 30 countries.

The shocking and consolidating effect of Covid-

19 itself made a reassessment of priorities prevalent and gave a new lease of life to the phrase carpe diem. People are already starting to "seize the day." A 2022 Gallup poll puts well-being and work-life balance a step further, with pay as a priority.

The pandemic has caused a low rumbling about the work-life balance.

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It is clear that had it not been for the nature of the still ongoing lockdowns in China - which are still ongoing - the switch to WFH and the surprising results of productivity gains would not have happened. Merely "going back", which is the working assumption of most governments and business leaders, turned out to be wrong.

Today we are at the beginning of a new era that I call The Nowhere Office, in which many old assumptions about where, when and how people work will continue to be shifted by new realities that dominate the people who pursue knowledge work and those who manage and lead it.

I see three particular trends to note.

The growing demand for flexible work

The first is flexibility.

The flexible workplace will win the inflexible place and the world has a new type of worker: The Flexetariat. The unquestionable toiling day, besieged by transportation,

It has been replaced by a very assertive factor who puts freedom and flexibility at the heart of their working identity.

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McKinsey & Co.'s latest survey of American Opportunities shows that 87% of workers say that if flexibility was provided they would accept it. About 58% of workers in both blue-collar and white occupations are already employed -

Able to work from home at least one day a week. Data from recruitment firm Upwork Inc.

That 78% of self-employed people cite the ability to schedule flexibility as a major concern. The global freelance job market is set to grow at a compound annual rate of 15% from 2021 to 2026.

Flexetariat values ​​their time as much as their freedom. Apple company

And Alphabet Inc. is among the companies that have all faced backlash from employees against their current efforts, with Stanford University professor Nicholas Bloom, the lead researcher on remote work trends, noting that noncompliance is as high as 40% in some companies trying to force a return. To the office on the staff.

Many leaders were - and some remain

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Skeptical of hybrid working (a post-pandemic way of describing flexible working) because it disrupts implementation so much and there is still a lot of work in progress. These leaders continue to feel frustrated and disappointed because they cannot force or persuade their office staff to return. Tesla Inc. One of the most vocal companies.

CEO Elon Musk, who has embraced a new motivational leadership style by publicly berating workers who are not in the office and suggesting that they "pretend to work elsewhere."

However, smart leaders are beginning to mitigate their presentation bias: a June-July survey from Morning Consult, commissioned by Zoom,

Show that 90% of senior leaders prefer a hybrid or remote work environment over full-time attendance. They understand that culture and cohesion can be built in new ways in new schedules.

Companies like Harman International Industries Inc. , an audio technology company owned by Samsung Electronics for headphones and luxury in-

Automotive systems with approximately 30,000 employees worldwide, Harman Flex introduced and recently invited top global leaders in Miami to commission them. It is expected to affect 40% of the company.

Experiments have been conducted four days a week and are underway all over the world. Fujitsu Co., Ltd. has adopted a flexible working policy called #workyourway,

Making flexible working the norm, and some European banks now say flexibility is a competitive advantage. For better or for worse, having a flexible labor policy will become strict.

But flexibility has its drawbacks. There is no one size fits all, which makes managing them very messy. Plus,

Those who can work from home face downsides ranging from unwanted surveillance to longer hours and a perpetual culture. Also, those who can't work flexibly still outnumber those who can - and tensions often build when they do so in the same workplace. In the future, the mediator for many of these tensions will be labor unions,

Who are the focus of the second shift to watch: The Force.

Transformation of employee power - the employer

Flexible labor policies are now appearing in a host of new legislation around the world. Ireland has announced teleworking a national strategy.

The latest reform of EU labor law will affect 180 million workers and is designed to regulate the increasingly unpredictable labor market.

The UK's 'Right to Demand' flexible labor law is expected to be updated for the first time since 2014.

A recent parliamentary recommendation noted the need to "continue to consider the rights of those who wish to work flexibly and to develop a better understanding of what 'flexibility' means for the different groups that make up the workforce."

Recognizing that legislators must understand their workers better somewhat reduces the shift in power.

Consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP notes that "there is an opportunity for unions who want to build a more prominent role to do so and reassert their relevance in the modern workplace."

While trade union membership continues to decline overall, 80% of countries have participated in union-led discussions during the pandemic,

According to the International Labor Organization. Syndicate immune regulators have encountered so far - from Amazon.com Inc. To Starbucks - Unprecedented activity and unwanted media attention.

White collar demands have become a contagion that may indirectly increase the strength of frontline workers as well.

Part of the rebalancing of power is clearly related to the historically tight labor market - making employment and retention in some industries a headwind in every part such as geopolitical instability or the energy crisis.

But part of it is leaders' failure to update their business assumptions.

Australian psychologist and philosopher Elton Mayo, whose research in the 1920s and 1930s challenged assumptions about workers as mechanical humans whose productivity can only be improved through extrinsic rewards such as wages and who heralded the human relations school of management,

It was noted in the Social Problems of Industrial Civilization that “the industrial society can no longer suppose that the technical processes of manufacturing will remain unchanged for a long time in any kind of labour.”

The daily commute is dead

clearly,

Mayo's "Technical Processes of Manufacturing" as it applies to modern knowledge workers change through technology, as well as the location of that process.

To the third transformation: the place.

Travel is now seen as a passion killer for workers. In the UK, cities like Watford,

Which lies within an area known as the "Golden Triangle" between the universities of London, Cambridge and Oxford, its fortunes are increasing, while the billion -

A dollar deal by real estate agents Workspace Group Plc across fifty suburban offices in the US shows a bet on the continued office migration to be near where people live.

BY
ProBuzzFeed