Companies are about to be hammered! I am not sure the leaders of most companies know what is coming at them!
I have been talking with a variety of employees for a number of years and I see several trends coming up that business need to be aware of.
Fixed Rules Won’t Work
Business for the last 100+ years has worked more in the mode of dictatorship than freedom. The management dictated how things will be done and the employees are expected to fall into line.
Now, the new world is not going to tolerate this type of management. Dictatorship was fine in the past but the new wave of employees aren’t going to tolerate that type of management.
HR Needs to Change
Currently, HR rules are standard across all employees. Rules for junior team members are the same for the most senior team members. A junior team member wants to build a career and make money. An older worker may want more time off and extras (like inexpensive health care).
The future of HR is going to need to be very flexible and create different packages for different employees. I forsee HR customization. A unique employment package for each employee.
I can hear the HR team members collapsing on the floor passed out! Yes, we need to have separate packages for each team member!
I realize it will be a legal and work nightmare but I think we can all rise to the challenge. We need to make each package fair and to meet the laws of the government. Yes, very difficult but very possible.
Working Away From the Office
The rise of open work spaces is driving employees to work away from the office! Open work spaces are a disaster for almost every person I have talked with. I have found exactly one person in the last 3 years who likes the open office layout! One out of several hundred!
Yes, I know there are many challenges to make remote work viable. I have discussed this in other blog posts. If you are in management, you cannot avoid this. It is coming at your hard!
Technical Managers
Technology companies have long had a habit of promoting technical team members in to management. Frequently, it has been a disaster. The best engineering talent gets promoted into a job that is people oriented. They have been used to working alone or in a small group.
Now, they are taken away from the work they love and they have to meet people all day, solve problems, intervene in people problems, and working with upper management. A hard change.
I have seen some people make the transition. Others, cannot make the leap and they stay in management and it is a disaster.
Years ago, I worked in a sales organization that promoted the best sales person as manager of the branch office. It was a disaster. He was an amazing sales person that could sell so much! He was a disaster as a manager. So, he went out in the afternoon and sold so his branch office would have some sales. The others and I did a terrible job at sales. There was a senior sales person that was great at paperwork and terrible at sales. He would have been a great manager taking care of the paperwork. Leaving the top sales person to pound the streets.
Same in companies today. If you take your best engineer and put them in management, you lose a top engineer and you get a mediocre manager. There should be a method of promoting the engineer without making them a standard manager. It is time we get very creative in doing our work.
I have technical knowledge but I am NOT a top engineer. Never have been. Never will be. But, I am good at managing technical team members, I can talk their language and I know the language of management.
Experience At The Office
This is a new area of concern. I the movie, The Apartment (1960), Jack Lemmon stars in a movie that shows an office with a hundred steel gray desks in a big room with everyone heads down pounding on the manual adding machines working in unison like robots.
I grant you that was a exaggeration but it does give an idea of how many offices are setup these days. Some companies are making progress with couches and other areas they can sit and do their work.
However, few are worrying about how employees are getting through the day. Studies have shown that over 80% of employees have Sunday scaries by getting upset on Sunday afternoon in anticipation of Monday. Imaging looking at 5 days of work that you are dreading? How can you get good work out of your employees if they are discouraged by Sunday night?
You need to examine the daily activities of your team members and work on ways to make the work more enjoyable! Yes, I can hear old time workers snorting and guffawing but I assure you this is the future – get used to it.
I will discuss the daily experiences in a future blog post. Standby for more fun discussion.
To your team success!