BR - Economist

THE FUTURE OF WORK • JANUARY 2021

BUSINESS-REPORTER.CO.UK

The Covid nine to five SPECIAL REPORT

How the pandemic has permanently changed where and how we work

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January 2021

E On-shored, near-shored and outsourced Zita Goldman looks at whether the march of teleworking will eventually enhance the quality of white-collar jobs

mploying teleworkers is sometimes a workaround rat her t ha n a labou r cost-saving exercise for business.

Take Estonia, for example – the European posterchild of digitalisation, with a population of just under two million. Digital talent is in short supply in the biggest of countries, let alone in a tiny pool like this. So for Estonians with an entrepreneurial spirit it makes sense to improve their chances and recruit from a global pool of hundreds of millions. They can pick and choose among digital collaborative tools, messaging apps and time-tracking systems to eliminate physical distance.

Meanwhile, team-building retreats organised on an annual basis can give face-to-face boosts to the digital team spirit.

A more localised version of teleworking as a necessity comes from the US. As a result of Donald Trump’s ban on immigration from several Muslim-majority countries in 2017, and his hostility to, and eventual suspension of, temporary work visas last June, Silicon Valley

has set its eyes on Toronto as a near-shoring destination.

What makes Toronto an ideal choice is how the city has reinvented itself as a tech hub with a current local tech workforce of 400,000. Figures show that one million Torontonians have a STEM degree, with 40,000 new STEM graduates joining their ranks every year. The city’s appeal for big tech is further enhanced by its ethnic diversity and Canada’s Express Entry Visa programme.

But in September, as remote working is becoming a permanent arrangement for more and more tech companies, news of aligning salaries with the shrinking costof-living outside Silicon Valley hit the headlines. It may sound somewhat cynical of big tech to frame these pay cuts as “necessary steps” to ensure equal pay for different working locations, given that the stellar rental costs and food prices in the San Francisco Bay area are hardly news. But the situation illustrates the huge disparity of living costs in the region: figures show that those who, for example,

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January 2021

make a 60-mile commute twice a day from Salida, Colorado to Fremont on the San Francisco Bay may reduce their cost of living by as much as 80 per cent (the same figure for Toronto is only a modest 14 per cent).

Is remote office technology a friend or foe of white collar workers in the long run?

The same digital tools that make remote team-work viable have also led to the rise of platforms which connect businesses with distant freelancing professionals.

On these platforms, as Richard Baldwin, author of The Globotics Upheaval explains, copy editors from Bangkok and web designers from Belarus, for example, can sell their services at a fraction of the cost in more expensive locales.

Recruitment and delivery of the job by the contractor, as well as payment for it, take place on the platform. Screenshots taken from the contractor’s computer while they carry out the task will serve as proof that the hours they bill for are genuine, and ending the contract is as simple as pushing a cancel button.

Baldwin argues that the “telemigrants” of these platforms will create unprecedented international competition for stable middle-class jobs in the US and Europe – especially when natural language processing (NLP) will have removed many of the language barriers. He envisages an on-demand economy, where a small number of top-skill core employees are complemented by an entourage of global freelancers at discounted rates.

But it’s hard to tell whether the use of freelancers from countries with lower labour costs will eventually reach critical mass. Everyone who has ever tried to sort out a bad internet connection with customer service on the other side of the globe can testify to how the customer experience can be compromised by outsourcing practices.

And even if the discounted freelancer has The Hitchiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’s Babel Fish in their ear, translating between any two languages in real time, cultural

contexts and the gaps between them will remain.

And there are also some important social and economic implications to reckon with. There seems to be a consensus now that today’s political turmoil in the UK and the US can be traced back to blue-collar workers feeling left behind and disenfranchised by globalisation, and the same could happen to white-collar professionals if telemigration becomes mainstream.

The macroeconomic consequences of outsourcing can also be seen now more clearly. The Made Smarter group of British industrial experts, for example, believes that the UK’s efficiency puzzle can be partly explained by the outsourcing bonanza of the preceding decades. On a flexible British labour market there was less need for long-term thinking and much less was invested in training and upskilling, which today are key to having a modern, digitally apt workforce.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and we’ve been learning that the hard way during the pandemic. For many businesses in this crisis, cutting costs is synonymous with trying to scrape through the lean times. But in the long run, easing the current workforce into a full-on digital age and aligning university and vocational training with the shifting demand of the labour market needs to have priority. Frugal short-termism and the former paradigm of racing to the bottom only tears the social fabric apart further, rather than repairing it.

Insight to action: why supply chain automation is changing the future

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ow do businesses prepare for uncertainty? If Covid-19 has taught us one thing, it is that supply chains can be fragile and that to ride the waves of change and unforeseen events, businesses need to be more agile. But the challenge facing many organisations is where to make the changes and what to prioritise.

The proliferation of data should be a blessing to businesses. It is the raw material for getting insight into personnel and asset performance, processeses, buying habits and other outside factors that could impact the business. But that’s all it is, a raw material. It needs intelligent analytics and modelling to add real value, to understand how it can help organisations work out the possible impact of problems in the supply chain and where automation may or may not help in solving them.

But this is not just about dealing with possible disasters. This is about the ongoing digital transformation of supply chains and understanding where and how they can be more effective. Automation is already changing how some people work and, as a result, how some supply chains operate.

What this means is that supply chain teams can build a credible plan to add greater value to the

business by being more strategic and tactical.

The goal is to create a mature, dynamic supply chain that doesn’t stutter and stumble reacting solely to market and economic bumps in the road. By unifying processes, people and systems of data, it is possible to build a mature and resilient supply chain capable of driving the efficient delivery of products and services.

The key to this is planning. The more data, the more automation, the better the planning and the more agile and efficient the business and its supply chain. It’s about turning available data into information that can enable fast, informed decision making to ensure great outcomes for businesses and their people. And as with any change, it will require diligence, dependability and determination.

In many ways, Covid-19 has been an opportunity for organisations to realise their futures and what it takes to ensure long-term viability. Resilience, in more ways than one, has become the watchword of 2020 and beyond.

INDUSTRY VIEW contactus@olivehorse.com www.olivehorse.com

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January 2021

Why office space still matters to your employees More than a third of employees still want to work in the office postpandemic, finds a new survey from Nespresso Professional

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rom its partnership with Future Laboratory to its ever-expanding content library, over the past two years Nespresso Professional has positioned itself as an expert in the future of work. In August, the premium coffee provider surveyed more than 500 UK employees across 11 different industries to discover how they felt about returning to the office, what they expected from their employer and their workspace, and what the future of work might look like in light of the pandemic. Nespresso Professional also interviewed a panel of seven industry experts to see what they thought about the future of work.

While it was clear from the results that remote working is here to stay, the survey also found that employees are more eager to return the office than has been anticipated: although 49 per cent of businesses expected to spend more time working from home than before, a substantial 35 per cent of employees said they would be happy to return to their workplace if the conditions were right.

“People work more effectively at home for individual work, but they are missing the community aspect and the sense of belonging you get within the workplace,” said member of the Future of Work interview panel Linzi Cassels, principal and design director at architecture and design firm Perkins + Will.

However, as new technologies enable greater freedom and

flexibility for employees to work away from the office, it seems businesses will need to adapt their workspaces to meet employees’ shifting needs.

“Organisations will have to offer more than just working from home to appeal to their employees and future talent,” Cassels said.

“They need to offer a new workplace experience which includes more amenities. Space needs to be dynamic and more representative of the value and ethics of the company.”

While employees agree that the future office will need to change, it appears they are divided on what it should look like.

Nearly a fifth (19 per cent) of employees said a space for centralised socialising and creative

“While employees agree that the future office will need to change, it appears they are divided on what it should look like.”

thinking was important, while another 18 per cent preferred the idea of a mixed-space building used for multiple purposes by the whole community. Meanwhile, 18 per cent of respondents looked to a “cubiclised” environment where multiple meetings and catch-ups could take place simultaneously.

“Businesses will need to find a way to tempt employees into the office, and away from their homes,” said panel member Adam Scott, founder and exec creative director at design agency Freestate. To achieve this, Scott believes the workplace will start to transform into a “branded home”, which could look like a corporate campus with curated programmes that deliver collaborative and engaging employee experiences through enhanced amenities and multifunctional spaces.

In the wake of the pandemic, many businesses have turned to third spaces such as co-working offices to ensure their employees still have a place to connect,

collaborate and socialise. The survey found this trend is set to continue, with 34 per cent of enter prise businesses seeing themselves using collaborative spaces in the future.

As employees familiarise themselves with these spaces, their expectations become clear, with 46 per cent of those already using co-working spaces expecting a kitchen area, and 34 per cent expecting premium food and drink.

These aren’t the only areas where employees’ needs are shifting. Find out more about how Covid-19 has affected the future workplace, how wellbeing and sustainability remain a top priority, and the role premium coffee breaks play in connecting employees by downloading the full Nespresso Professional whitepaper at the link below.

INDUSTRY VIEW Nadia Moore is public relations manager at Nespresso nadia.moore@nespresso.com Download: https://bit.ly/2K9TlUH

January 2021

Looking after the human element

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Human resources professionals already had plenty to bargain with before 2020.

Nick Martindale looks at how, after a gruelling year of pandemics and Brexit chaos, HR needs to change if it is to meet the “new normal” head-on

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ith the UK leaving the EU, an ongoing war for talent and a longer-term shift towards the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, human resources had plenty of issues with which to grapple before the untimely intervention of Covid-19. But the pandemic has issued in a new wave of challenges, some of which will inevitably shape the next few years for HR. “For businesses, one of the biggest impacts of the pandemic was taking part in the biggest ‘work from home’ experiment ever,” says Aliya Vigor-Robertson, co-founder of JourneyHR. “Recent research by Adecco Group has shown that 75 per cent of workers want to retain the flexibility they gained over the course of the lockdown. In reality, organisations are set to benefit from this new way of working, as flexible workers tend to be more engaged at work and less likely to leave.”

Yet it will also throw up a number of issues for HR. Research by the Advanced Workplace Institute (AWI) and the Amsterdam-based Center for Evidence Based Management highlighted three core areas of a “psychologically safe” workplace – trust, social cohesion and information sharing – which are made harder when people work remotely. “Business and HR leaders need to consider how they motivate and inspire colleagues when they can’t be with them all the time,” says Andrew Mawson, MD of Advanced Workplace Associates. “And they have to rethink how to create energy, momentum, connection and creativity across their communities.”

There will also be implications for the day-to-day elements of HR. “The move to virtual working has the power to shift companies’ entire approach to HR, from

how they think about hiring, learning and development, culture, collaboration and communications with staff,” says Tessa Raum, vice president of HR at Colt Technology Services. “These past few months have taught us that onboarding is even more critical when staff are joining businesses without entering an office. Businesses need to think about how they can embed the same culture and the same networking and social experiences in a virtual environment.”

The pandemic effect

“In reality, organisations are set to benefit from this new way of working, as flexible workers tend to be more engaged at work and less likely to leave” – Aliya VigorRobertson, JourneyHR

The experience of Covid-19 will also catapult the topic of wellbeing higher up the agenda for human resources, something that was already gaining prominence as more employees su f fer w it h menta l hea lt h.

“Employees are likely to be experiencing heightened emotions, worry, stress and tension,” says Teresa Boughey, founder of Jungle HR. “HR professionals will need to be attuned with their people so that they can provide a range of services, not only from counselling, but ongoing development and support. It’s imperative that organisations proactively seek to top up the fuel tank of their HR professionals and respond to their wellbeing needs too. They can’t support the wellbeing of others if they are running on the fumes themselves.”

The rise of remote working will also have an impact on the war for talent – which has been an issue for some time in many sectors, and which will be impacted further by changes to the UK’s immigration system after January 2021. “The war for talent will be a big issue for HR teams,” says Raum.

“The shift to remote working is going to broaden ever yone’s horizon when it comes to looking for talent, which means companies will need to differentiate

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themselves and have a strong employee experience to attract talent.”

This makes it even more important that organisations have a strong employer brand, believes Marilyn Chaplin, chief HR officer at NTT Ltd. “People are looking for interesting work, with interesting colleagues, and a purpose to drive them every day,” she says. “People increasingly want to work for companies that are making a genuinely positive impact on the world and environment. CSR [corporate social responsibility] has always been significant but Covid-19 has truly emphasised the importance of supporting communities and giving back.”

Going digital

Other factors will also shape the landscape for HR in the next few years. The rise of digital, including the use of AI-powered bots, will impact on many businesses, with HR tasked with identifying roles that will no longer be needed, and working to reskill employees where appropriate.

Sundara Sukavanam, chief digital officer at Firstsource, which has a vision of creating teams made up of both people and bots over the next few years, believes this will affect HR in several areas. “This affects performance management and evaluation criteria

January 2021

for managers, as well as cultural aspects such as encouraging experimentation, innov at ion , a nd f a i l-f a s t , le a r n -f a s t behaviours,” he says. “Promotion criteria will also change for similar reasons, as supervisors and team leaders require new levels of technology understanding and skills.” Greater automation will also impact

Aine Hurley, managing partner and head of the global HR practice at Odgers Berndtson. “Like other functions on the leadership team, data analytics enables leaders to identify challenges such as future talent demands or current skills shortages.

“However, the core part of the people function hasn’t changed. Relationship management, influencing, judgement and risk management, and commercial nous “People increasingly want to work continue to be core skills. It’s a multifaceted for companies making a genuinely role that requires an individual to be adept positive impact on the world and in solving both human and business challenges.” A study by Capterra also hinted at environment. CSR has always been the limitations of people analytics, finding significant but Covid-19 has truly that employees would not trust an AI to emphasised the the importance of decide a promotion or salary increase. supporting communities and giving If there is a positive for human resources in the midst of such challenges, it is the back” – Marilyn Chaplin, NTT potential for the function to finally prove itself as a strategic business partner.

HR’s own role, particularly in how companies “Covid-19 has thrown HR and people go about processing job applicants and management into the limelight and put a evaluate interviews. spotlight on a department that can someHR will have to embrace technology in times be overlooked,” says Peter Ryding, a other ways too, including the use of data serial CEO and founder of the HRD Pathanalytics to help make decisions around Finder Club. “Now is the time for HR directors staff and career progression. “Progressive to showcase their own value, raising their HR leaders actively engage with data ana- profile and gaining a position as the CEO’s lytics and emerging technologies,” says most trusted adviser.”

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January 2021

The year of hybrid: five workplace trends to watch out for in 2021

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or companies with an office-based workforce, the Covid-19 pandemic has meant the greatest and fastest workplace shift ever seen.

However, the future of work is not a wholesale move to remote working but a new balance. A hybrid workplace approach encompassing flexible, laptop-centric ways of working tailored for maximum usability and better meetings irrespective of participant location.

Now, with an end in sight, companies need to ask what lies beyond 2020 and how to restructure to prepare for a hybrid future. Here are Barco’s top trends to look out for in 2021…

connection this generation values. We predict an increase in flexible working policies underpinned by collaboration tech, the use of which comes naturally to Gen Z, to accommodate the best of both.

Demanding more from our technology

The comeback of the meeting room

Investment in hybrid working

Appetite for hybrid working has been building for many years – Covid-19 simply brought it into focus. Having survived a period of enforced remote working, corporates must look at how to invest in the technology and infrastructure to deliver this successfully.

Our recent global workplace study, Finding a New Balance, found that, on average, employees wanted to work three days in the office and two remotely. However, our research showed that just 27 per cent of UK workers felt their office was equipped.

A lack of investment in hybrid-working technology will hinder many companies.

They need to commit financially to hybrid working or risk losing valuable team members.

“It’s unlikely that a single moment will shift workplace culture so dramatically any time soon”

meaningful communication, workforces are distracted.

Deprived of face-to-face inEmployee engagement teraction, employees long will become the biggest tool for the meeting room’s re- to maintain productivity. turn. People are desperate Employers should focus on not just for the human con- ways to inspire their teams, nectivity of meetings, but and investment in home the creativity they foster too. technology, for example, Productivity remained intact could prove vital to ensure during lockdown, but crea- engagement on remote worktivity plummeted. ing days. Studies have shown Traditional meeting the benefits of high engagerooms are hubs of innovation, ment are lucrative: increasing and 2021 will see them come a company’s engagement by back with a bang: 62 per cent 10 per cent can grow profits of our survey respondents by $2,400 per employee want to use meeting rooms annually. over any other setting in a bid to fill the creative void Generation Next left by the pandemic. Expect In 2020, Gen Z changed to see offices reconfigured workplace culture. Having for larger meeting spaces entered the workforce reideal for brainstorming and motely, it expects freedom group collaboration. and places a surprising amount of importance on Engagement will be face-to-face connection. the new productivity As the workplace Gen Z Right now, employees are population grows, the challess engaged than ever. More lenge for businesses will be used to multi-tasking during to offer the freedom of reremote meetings and suf- mote working without fering f rom a lack of sacrificing the human

This year saw the most intense period of learning in workplace history. Employees spent months mastering remote-working software, often struggling initially: 65 per cent of our survey respondents said they had difficulties setting up impromptu meetings.

Now that the steep learning curve is beginning to plateau, workforces will demand more from their technology, pushing its boundaries to meet their needs. For example, 56 per cent of our respondents favour working on laptops, therefore new technology will need to reflect this. We foresee rapid development in remote-work ing technology that optimises collaboration.

Difficulties aside, it’s unlikely a single moment will shift workplace culture so dramatically any time soon.

After a year of imposed dist a n c e , c ol l a b or at ion technology will bridge the gaps between colleagues, providing the tools for better meetings as the workplace finds its new balance.

INDUSTRY VIEW To find out more, visit www.barco.com/en

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January 2021

The Covid nine to five Francis Andrews looks at what the post-pandemic world of work will look like – and how employers and employees can prepare for it

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ew things have been skewed more by the Covid-19 pandemic than our sense of normality.

Since April, the virus – and the new r ules it has spawned – has crept into every aspect of our lives: social, familial and professional. We limit which friends we see and where we see them; we take care not to come into close contact w ith v ulnerable relatives; and we find ourselves at home, often alone, for much of the day, working from a makeshift desk as the office spaces we used to inhabit lie empty.

The pandemic has atomised our society. Remote working, once a plaything of freelancers, is now the norm for large sections of the working population. Many of those who now go into their offices do so intermittently, swapping their in-days with colleagues and, when there, keeping a distance from those they used to work closely with. We once took for granted the fact that from Monday to Friday our days would be filled with social interaction – meetings, coffee breaks, brainstorming sessions.

E ve n t h e c om mute ,

dreaded by so many, gave added structure to the day.

But for many, this aspect of their lives has gone. Of course, errands can now be run, and walks can be taken. But the office of pre-2020 was a social setting whose value we failed to comprehend until the moment it seemed as if it might no longer be available to us.

Yet there’s a second chapter to the story of how Covid-19 has reconfigured

by companies to cut their spend on office rent while maximising space, meaning that employees have been crammed into eve r- t ig hte r e nv i r on s.

Proximity to colleagues will always, to an extent, improve communication and collaboration, but it leads to overcrowding, lack of privacy, noise, and, ultimately, higher stress levels. Mental health problems resulting from one’s nine-to-five aren’t purely

“The changes have been severe. Yet in a short space of time, we’ve been able to adapt to the sudden fragility of our social and professional lives” our sense of normality. The changes have been severe – empty offices, half-filled train carriages, limited restaurant space. Yet in a short space of time, we’ve been able to adapt to the sudden fragility of our social and professional lives. What’s more, we have begun to work out ways to mould this new reality to our needs.

Within disasters lie opportunities, and the workplace provides a telling example of this. Recent decades have seen attempts

a matter of overly long hours, poor management, negative workplace dynamics and being overworked.

And the impact of inadequately designed office spaces on the wellbeing of s t a f f h a s b e e n we l l researched.

Yet with lockdown easing and both employers and staff growing impatient at the low productivity and isolation that can come with working from home, there has been greater momentum over the effort to have people return to

their places of work. With that, visions of the ideal workplace are beginning to change – and, some might say, for the better.

Contingent workforces

In the pre-Covid era, it was by and large the norm that a business would have a cohesive body of full-time staff. Any contingent workers, whether part-time or freelance, were seen as more of a side dish: valued when they were being used, but altogether peripheral to the main operation. Yet this is likely to change, and the workforce long known for largely being called upon when the going gets tough looks set to establish its central position in the world of work going forward. Contingent workers are by nature flexible, and able to pick up and deliver work at short notice. The temporary nature of the way they worked – shortterm or medium-term contracts, freelance commissions – may well have previously marked them out as infrequently valuable and inessential, but it is likely that through the pandemic’s exposure of the precariousness of business models that had once

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January 2021

seemed secure, this workforce will soon prove its worth. Will there be such a thing anymore as “jobs for life”? Without clarity on when normality will return, how long it will return for, and indeed what exactly it will look like, companies will be reluctant to commit to hiring fulltime staff in the numbers they had previously. Into that space will step, with greater confidence than ever in their own value, contingent workers.

Adaptable skills

It follows that the shift in our understanding of what the appropriate workforce for a post-Covid world will look like comes with a change in our sense of apposite skillsets. Can an individual worker spread him or herself across multiple tasks, or have we created a culture in which specialisation is seen as a distinguishable quality in a worker, while the value of adaptability goes underappreciated? With less rigid workforces likely to come into being, adaptability will be key to ensuring businesses continue to deliver work of a high quality.

Workers therefore need to be ready to continually refresh, update, and widen their skillsets, while employers would do well to invest in new forms of training and come to the understanding that too many specialised staff may ultimately thwart the growth of the business.

Further reading…

Teleworking During the Covid-19 Pandemic and Beyond Produced by the International Labour Organisation, this guide on employer best practice for safely managing the workspace gives the nuts and bolts on how the virus spreads around offices, and what rights employers and employees have given the new threat. https://bit.ly/32g8TNh Working Safely During Coronavirus The UK government’s official guidance to working safely across a range of sectors, from close contact services to performing arts or heritage sites – although note there are separate guidelines for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. https://bit.ly/2GGzXwM

access to breakout areas may well be restricted, small meeting rooms left abandoned, and desks spaced farther apart. In some cases, offices have erected protective screens between desks.

It all leads to a more impersonal workplace experience than we’d known before. Recent research that uses sensors and other devices has offered a clearer view of how people behave in the office: how often they bump into Changing workspace one another, how often Already the character of they use the kitchen or the workplace has, for restroom, and so on. This many businesses, pro- gives an improved picture foundly changed. Social of how space is used, and distancing requires that from that, researchers have colleagues carefully regu- been able to determine the late the way they interact efficacy of social distancing with one another in the measures. The findings office. This means that show that, in short, it’s very

The Design of Work Post-Covid This overview looks at key areas in which workplace design and technology – proximity sensors, illness screening and so on – can best meet the new needs brought about by Covid-19. Written by US HR consultancy Mercer, it is nevertheless highly relevant to the UK. https://bit.ly/3ihYuX0 Managing WorkRelated Psychosocial Risks During the Covid-19 Pandemic This report exploring psychological ill-health resulting from Covidrelated workplace pressures looks at worklife balance and aspects of communication and support that are vital to maintaining the wellbeing of employees. https://bit.ly/3bI106x

difficult to do well – people always encroach on others’ space.

The upshot is that businesses will likely need to rethink their entire setup.

How many staff can they realistically have in the office at any one time? Can people really use break out areas without breaching social distancing guidelines? It may well be the case that as the realisation of these difficulties become more apparent, employees altogether stop seeing the office as a social space, and use it only periodically, and for functional purposes: meetings, use of equipment, and so on.

Enhanced technology

If remote working is to become the norm for millions of people around the

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country, then technologies – in particular, communications and those used for employee monitoring – will be integral to maintaining business momentum. Already the virtual meeting platforms Zoom and Microsoft Teams have become synonymous with the new age of work we find ourselves in, and with them users seek to replicate, as best as possible, the traditional meeting format.

Clocking-in technology, including phone apps, have been around for a while, but have taken on new prominence. The ability to easily complete timesheets from home will become yet another requirement of the post-pandemic era. Businesses will know that unless they can quickly leverage this technology, core aspects of the management side of t he operation will suffer – and

many of the initial problems that have slowed “While larger operations are likely to businesses will resolve themselves over have contingencies time. But others may not, and it’s evident that new in place, or the working arrangements resources available require new strategies for to call on third-party project management. project management KPMG has produced a useful four-part model to companies, things get more complicated assess a company’s ability to respond to the volatile for SMEs” nature of work today, looking at its ability to react with that, so will employee (resetting processes, adaptsatisfaction, turnover and ing employee roles), its a whole heap of other meas- resilience, its ability to ures of success. recover from loss and regain stability, and the Project management flexibility it brings to the Workers, whether they be new reality. Each of the employees of financial core components of sound firms, schoolteachers or project management – civil servants, frequently budgeting, communication, remark about their vastly staff, timelines and so on increased workload since – take on added importance lockdown began in the UK. in this new climate. ComGetting to grips with the panies may decide that, new reality is taxing, and g i v e n h o w q u i c k l y

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longstanding ways of running businesses have changed, it is more efficient, and ultimately more cost-effective, to farm out project management to specialist third parties who will have developed a variety of contingencies.

SMEs

While larger businesses will have contingencies in place, or the resources available to call on thirdparty project management companies, things get more complex for small-to-medium-sized organisations.

SMEs are vital to the UK economy – they account for half the country’s total business revenue, and employ nearly half of all workers. But they are, on the whole, much less secure than larger companies. As McKinsey notes, 80 per cent of SMEs reported stable or growing revenue

prior to April 2020, but, as of June, the same percentage said revenues were in decline. Some recovery has been achieved thanks to the easing of lockdown and government support, but the marked downturn indicates the precariousness these vital engines of growth experience.

But paradoxically, their smallness might be their ultimate saviour. SMEs are generally more flexible than large companies, and more embedded in local communities. Their profile has been raised since April, with concerned consumers encouraging one another to support small businesses in whichever way they can.

The strength of local networks becomes paramount, as does an adaptable crisis management strategy.

Enhancing these characteristics of SMEs will be vital to their longevity.

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January 2021

Why the future of work shouldn’t exclude the helping half of the workforce

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n times of crisis, an inspirational quote from Fred Rogers of the classic PBS children’s show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood makes the rounds in the US – “look for the helpers” – and it always seems to soothe nerves in troubled times. As lockdowns were imposed worldwide after the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, this mentality often took the form of spontaneous applause from apartment windows and balconies for medical frontline workers coming home after long shifts.

Doesn’t that seem like so long ago? Now weary from the rising daily confirmed case numbers with some restrictions again in place in Europe, it’s worth pausing to consider if we are losing sight of the helpers as we begin to roll out vaccines – particularly as corporations plan investments post-crisis.

Most – 80 per cent – of the world’s workforce doesn’t work behind a desk. These workers don’t have fancy home-office setups or corporate Slack accounts – they’re on the front lines, keeping the roads open, food shortages at bay and making sure the power stays on. Many of them deserve the term “essential employees.”

While digital transformation has changed many industries, with breakthroughs in automation and AI leading to new products and better experiences for consumers, the nature of work at these jobs has not changed as much.

Hourly workers still learn about company policy updates from printouts on the walls of break rooms. Yet they still end up picking up their smartphone to text or call a boss or corporate counterpart, bypassing company IT systems.

As a result, a very real and dangerous gap is emerging between the technology “haves” and “have-nots” at work. Less than half (38 per cent) of frontline workers we surveyed say they use existing work applications and software effectively. Many want more training or better tools. Employers concur: 86 per cent of companies say their frontline workforces need better technology-enabled insight.

It’s past time we extended the benefits of digital transformation to everyone at work.

This calls for a revolution and an open ecosystem. That means more than just window dressing or piecing together lightweight tools

that connect to broader digital transformation initiatives around inventory management or operations. From the greatest tech companies in the world to start-ups, we need to build for frontline workers’ unique needs across industries so employers can arm them for mutual long-term success. In short, we need to meet frontline workers where they are.

Increasingly, that’s on their phones – offering a clue as to where an answer might lie.

While most frontline workers do not have company email addresses or access to a work computer much of the day, they usually have smartphones that can serve as gateways to access personalised versions of company systems. Better yet, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel with new working methods. User-friendly features that have already transformed our individual lives in social media and online can be equally transformative at work.

We’re already seeing the first fruits of these efforts in mobile apps such as LumApps for Frontliners, the only digital workplace app designed to align all workers, whether in the office, home or in the field. But an entire ecosystem is needed.

In many industries, frontline employees are the closest to the customer, operations or product – making it critical to get this right.

It’s also important for society at large. Productivity growth – the increase in worker output per hour – hovers near record lows today, and the divided economic recovery after the early months of the Covid-19 crisis reveals a worrying chasm between the well-off and the less economically secure.

Ultimately the digital future of work can be bright if we give the helpers the tools they need to thrive and focus at work, building lasting business relationships. A rising tide of productivity can lift all boats. The alternative is burnout, fatigue, high turnover, inefficiency and continued stagnant recoveries – something we should all want to leave in the rear-view mirror.

INDUSTRY VIEW Sébastien Ricard is CEO and founder of LumApps, which was recently named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Intranet Platforms, Q2 2020 contact@lumapps.com lumapps.com/flw

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Why the best sales professionals have a buyer-first approach B2B selling has changed under the pandemic, with business restrictions concentrating minds on how virtual selling tools can deliver even better results, writes LinkedIn’s Liam Halpin

S

uccessful business-to-business sales professionals always put the buyer first.

And it isn’t hard to understand why. B2B buyers are consumers, after all. They search online for the best products and prices. They have little appetite for advertising, especially when it’s irrelevant.

And they want to be treated as individuals.

This means that it’s never been so important for sellers to put themselves into the buyer’s shoes, to understand their needs and to develop a real partnership based on trust.

That can pose a challenge in the current environment. Because of the pandemic, salespeople are increasingly using technology to connect with potential buyers.

Email and online ads can be used to contact large numbers of prospects. But without insight into the people you are selling to, this shotgun approach won’t get you far, even if some people do click on your ad or open your email.

Selling in a virtual world

Digital technology can support B2B sales. In fact, there is evidence that most buyers prefer this approach. A recent survey from McKinsey showed that only 20 to 30 per cent of buyers want to go back to the way things were before the pandemic struck. Succeeding with digital technology simply takes the right mindset, and support from the right tools.

You need to talk to the relevant people. So go online to identify your prospects. Tools such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator are places where you can find up-to-date information on your potential buyers and be alerted to signals that they may be ready to engage with you. Finding prospects from

“The important thing that we have had to realise as business leaders is that there is no going back to the way of selling that existed before the pandemic, and that many B2B buyers prefer the new normal”

this type of source means that, as well as finding the names of prospective customers, you learn something about them at the same time.

When you have your list of potential customers, it doesn’t mean it’s time to start selling.

Sending out mass emails at this point will be ineffective, and even counter-productive, as you could si mply i r r it ate you r b e s t prospects.

Prioritise your prospects

Instead, you need to identify those prospects, and find organisations that need what you are selling and

individuals who will be open to what you have to say.

There is a lot of freely available information online that will help with this. Monitor what people are posting on LinkedIn, the news in the trade media and announcements on the websites of prospect businesses. When you have identified the organisations with the most potential, you then need to find the right people to talk to in those organisations.

That’s not always simple. The average B2B sales process takes six months to conclude and involves seven people at a target account. All of these people are likely to have at least some influence on the final outcome, so get t i ng to k now t he m i s essential.

Again, LinkedIn can be really helpful here. You can use it to identify individuals with particular interests or roles, unravel how people connect together, including how they connect with your competitors, and discover who has recently been recruited by organisations you are targeting: new recruits may be particularly grateful for advice from a trusted partner – which is what you want to be.

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All of this takes time. It means being really curious about about both the challenges faced by different organisations and the people who are a part of them. But do this, and you will be able to talk to them about things that will hold their attention.

Engage to establish credibility

Establish your credibility first.

Engage with buyers indirectly by contributing to LinkedIn groups they belong to: activity on these has doubled over the last two years, meaning they are a great place to learn more about your prospects and engage with them directly, sharing their posts, tagging them in your posts, commenting on what they have to say and asking them questions.

Armed with credibility, and knowing that you have something interesting to offer, it’s time to reach out to your best prospects.

Personalise what you have to say so that it is uniquely relevant to them. And make it clear up front what you want – to talk to them about your products.

Close the deal

You have identified the most likely prospects and you have established credibility with them. Now, but only now, it’s time to start selling.

You don’t do that by selling products, though. You do it by providing solutions.

When you understand what they need, be honest. Level with the buyer about the pros and cons of what you have on offer, so they can make the right decision. If it turns out you don’t have the right solution for them, admit it. If that sounds counter-intuitive, it isn’t.

You don’t want a client who is unhappy. They aren’t going to be coming back for more or acting as a brand advocate. Quite the opposite.

But if you do have the right solution for your customer, try to uncover anything that might be a potential obstacle to making the sale. Will the client find using your product difficult? Are they likely to face opposition from colleagues who are also involved in the buying process? Are they still leaning towards a competitor of yours? If

you know the obstacles, you can address them.

things seem a little more difficult.

It’s always good to be able to look people in the eye and shake them After the sale by the hand.

Once you have made the sale, you But the restrictions caused by want to ensure customer delight the pandemic should not be seen and success. Stay engaged, and as an insurmountable set of probmake sure the buyer is happy with lems. Rather, they present an your solution. Share any updates opportunity to make the most of relevant to their business. Remem- the tools available online. Selling ber, making a sale isn’t the end of in a virtual world is not just feasithe selling process: it’s the start of ble. In many ways it’s preferable: the next sale. just as flexible as face-to-face selling but more time-efficient Pointing the way and more cost-effective. All you towards new need is the right attitude and the opportunities for sales right technology to assist you.

The important thing that we have had to realise as business leaders INDUSTRY VIEW is that there is no going back to Liam Halpin (far left) is Vice the way of selling that existed President Sales EMEA and before the pandemic, and that LATAM Sales Solutions at many B2B buyers prefer the new LinkedIn. LinkedIn Sales Navigator normal. Life has certainly been a uses LinkedIn’s network of more lot different during the pandemic. than 700 million members and And salespeople are having to get 30 million businesses to connect used to working differently as a salespeople to the right buyers result. But good sales professionals by helping them understand won’t let changed circumstances their prospects and stay in touch get in the way. The absence of with them face-to-face meetings might make www.linkedin.com/in/liamhalpin

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January 2021

W

orkplace training, like work itself, is changing rapidly, driven by digital technology. But it’s easy to get caught up in the hype of shiny new digital training tools such as virtual reality and AI. To get training right in the new world of work we must go back to basics by understanding its objectives. Trainers using technology should know that the aim isn’t merely to impart information.

It’s to engage people and change the way they think and behave.

For truly effective training, we need to go back to school

Digital literacy

How we work is increasingly influenced by digital technology. So employees need digital skills. For most people that doesn’t mean coding or understanding how IT systems work, but people do need to be digitally literate.

Digital literacy is the ability to use digital devices efficiently. It goes far beyond watching TikTok videos and talking to friends on WhatsApp. Keeping safe online, knowing how to search for information efficiently, identifying “alternative truths”, behaving appropriately, protecting reputations: these are fundamental digital skills all employees need.

Many, perhaps most, need help in acquiring them.

Soft and hard skills

But digital literacy isn’t enough.

These days most workers are knowledge workers, even those in what were “semi-skilled” jobs such as caring, hospitality, logistics and retail sales. And knowledge workers need soft skills, such as effective communication, empathy, analysis and creative thinking.

These skills can be acquired at school and university. Drama teaches communication. Music teaches listening skills. Literature teaches analysis. Retaining the humanities as part of the school curriculum is essential for the future digital workforce.

Of course, science is important too. Basic maths skills deliver an agile mind. And an understanding of scientific research techniques, a familiarity with statistics, and

Jeremy Swinfen-Green looks at how training should be for life, not just a one-off conference room course the ability to critique scientific “truth” are all important skills for the workplace.

But coding and advanced calculus are not. We should be teaching the workforce to collaborate with computers, not to compete with them.

by users who get lost or fail to understand how to progress.

Worst of all is the digital training designed as a regular test of knowledge of a particular subject such as cyber-security or health and safety. This “training” often consists of a video followed by multiple choice questions. It doesn’t Training methods explore what the student really Remote digital training methods understands or whether their are increasingly popular. These behaviour is likely to change. It is have advantages: people can access often resented, especially where training, anytime and anywhere, it is used as a “punishment”. (“You and at their own pace. Interactivity failed our phishing test so you can provide engagement. And it’s must pass this training”.) easier to track if people are focused Of course, well-designed digital on their learning. training does have a place. But it But digital technology is by no needs to be part of a wider set of means perfect. For instance, a methods including self-discovery 45-minute Zoom lecture is unlikely and group learning. Technology to engage the audience. During provides no short-cuts. the pandemic, many academics learned that they needed to cut Emerging technology their lectures into short, highly New technologies are further focused segments, with activities changing the nature of workplace at the end of each one. training, often in highly significant There are other issues: remote ways. For an engineer learning learning is rarely effective at en- how to make a repair in a dangercouraging discussion or questions. ous environment, VR headsets And a badly designed training and haptic suits can give them package will be abandoned quickly practice without exposing them

(or indeed the device they are repairing) to danger.

AI is also transforming training.

AI will start by analysing existing training and outcomes, improving the quality of training. It can provide detailed analysis of individual training requirements, delivering content based on prev ious behav iour or new requirements. Ultimately it will be used to generate content that improves itself over time.

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that is reducing the need for training. AR devices such as smart glasses can deliver information to people whenever they need it. No need for training when you can call up the information you need by interacting with a virtual interface. And in only a few years, non-intrusive brain-computer interfaces will do away with the need for AR devices and allow you to “think” your way to the instructions you need.

Best practice for training

Too often, training is thought of as something that takes place at specific times or in response to a particular need. But the nature of work, and the technology that drives it, is changing too fast for that to be effective any more.

We need to move to life-long and continuous learning so that people can constantly upgrade and evolve their work skills. We need a flexible attitude to training where new content is always being generated to replace tired case studies or out-of-date information.

Organisations must spend time developing and testing training.

And they must put time aside for their employees to learn and grow.

If we are to develop a workforce fit for the new digital workplace, a shift in culture will be required. The sharing of knowledge a nd ideas should be encouraged, as experience is far more valuable than information.

Rather than focusing only on practical training, we should be encouraging curiosity about the future, and about new ways of doing things.

| Publisher Bradley Scheffer | Editor Dan Geary | Client manager Maida Goodman | Project managers Paul Aitken, Matthew Rodford

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January 2021

T

he pandemic has changed the once-familiar world of work. More of us are working from home. Zoom calls have replaced meetings. Work is no longer a physical location, and its new role as a verb rather than a noun means that businesses have wider talent pools and employees can choose the company not the commute.

One area of business that is changing particularly fast is communication between businesses and consumers. A survey of business decision makers by customer engagement platform Twilio shows that almost all organisations are seeking new ways of engaging with their customers.

Digital communication is at the heart of excellence in customer engagement. Businesses have known this for some time.

But the pandemic has broken down the inhibitors to innovation: 79 per cent of Twilio’s respondents say that Covid-19 has increased the budget for digital transformation.

One area that’s enabled by technology is “omnichannel” communication. Today’s consumers have many different communication channels: video, messaging, telephone or chat for example. But omnichannel communication allows businesses to use the same data about a customer and deliver a high-quality experience, however consumers get in touch.

Essentially, technology allows better communication between businesses and their customers.

This generates increased engagement and creates loyalty. The pandemic has been a major factor here. Results from Twilio’s survey of business decision makers shows that Covid-19 has accelerated compa n ie s ’ d ig it a l communications strategy by an average of six years.

The opportunities provided by technology include enhanced contact-centre experiences. Customers can choose which channel to use – video for some, chat or voice for others. IVR options can be c ha nged based on t he

Shaping the future world of work availability of human operators.

AI-powered tools can identify how best to communicate with individuals. Some may prefer to interact with a machine – people making an insurance claim, for instance. Others would be better assisted by a (well briefed) human than by a chatbot – people with a complaint, perhaps, or people showing rising emotion.

Transforming an existing contact centre to take advantage of these opportunities is challenging: legacy systems are often difficult to adapt. Starting again from scratch sounds daunting.

But it isn’t necessarily. Products such as Twilio’s Flex use cloud computing and modular software to enable the very rapid building of customised contact centres.

Flex is highly developer-centric. Because of its modular, cloud-based approach, it enables transformation to take place in days – just eight in the case of insurance company BGL , a

leading digital distributor of insurance and household financial services, which includes in its portfolio brands such as Budget Insurance and Beagle Street, as well as price comparison site comparethemarket.com.

This ability to change the architecture of contact centres rapidly has been vitally important during the pandemic. Many have been forced to change from an on-premises model to a remote one. Cloud technology has enabled this, giving remote contact centre workers instant access to customer information and providing a range of communication channels, from video to SMS, for customer engagement.

The pandemic brought with it rapidly evolving business requirements which will continue to change as society moves beyond the disruption caused

by Covid-19. Beyond the contact centre, organisations across a range of sectors, such as retail,

education and healthcare, have accelerated their digital transformation as a way of continuing to operate while physical proximity has been limited. The convenience of this will continue to drive behaviours as we transition to a post-vaccine world.

There is no doubt that digital engagement is here to stay.

The ability to change rapidly is a critical source of competitive advantage. With Twilio, it’s possible to build a wide range of channels into customer communications, with high levels of speed, flexibility and customisation. With this level of software agility, the only limit to reaching new levels of customer experience is the creativity of the organisation itself.

INDUSTRY VIEW Twilio’s Covid-19 digital engagement report is available at twil.io/digitalacceleration twil.io/futureofwork

Effective virtual selling starts by putting the buyer first.

Take the lead from top salespeople and put your buyers first. LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps you find and grow relationships with buyers virtually, within its 722 million-member network. And today, when 97% of B2B decision-makers are happy to make buying decisions through a wholly digital buyer journey, that’s more important than ever.

Source: McKinsey & Company, Survey: Global B2B decision-maker response to COVID-19 crisis, October 20, 2020

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