<img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" data-src="/media/image/44444604_thumb3_150x80.jpg" class="awcLazy" width="150" height="80" border="0" alt="An illustration of colorful circles connected No, the way we think about the very meaning of work, and how to maintain balance, health, and energy while doing it, is a hot topic of conversation—in the workplace and in the pages of s+b. At times, it seems as if it is the only topic of conversation. To be sure, the ongoing pandemic has a lot to do with this, but so, too, do forces like technology, globalization, and evolving consumer habits.
At work, disruptions and innovations have always tended to pile atop one another (fax, email, conference calls, the web, “telecommuting”), and people adjust on the fly. But the organizational contexts in which workers operate—the ways we organize, and the bureaucracies and systems we set up to get the work done—tend to evolve much more slowly. Helping to close the gap between what exists and what is needed has inspired a rich vein of articles in s+b in recent weeks.
It’s incumbent upon us, as leaders and readers, to get ahead of systemic changes. In an article published last month, PwC’s Bhushan Sethi, Blair Sheppard, and Nicole Wakefield describe the four key forces shaping workforce strategy: specialization, scarcity, rivalry, and humanity. As important, they offer some pointed advice to leaders on how to harness those four forces to inform their plans.
More PwC insights
The recent disruptions to the physical workplace have highlighted the importance of the human connections that people make on the job. In an excerpt from her new book, Redesigning Work, Lynda Gratton of the London Business School plays off an insight made nearly 50 years ago Workplace must-haves are the subject of an article When you’re always at home—as has been the case for many remote workers over the past two years—it can be difficult to draw the formerly bright line between work and personal life. Now more than ever, people have to engage in the often challenging task of drawing boundaries. In an article published in February, Liz Sweigart, a former PwC principal, and clinical psychologist Dana Gionta note the importance of establishing psychological boundaries in the workplace. “Although it is a critical piece of interpersonal know-how,” they write, “the skill of boundary setting is rarely taught either in school or at work.”
‘The skill of boundary setting is rarely taught either in school or at work,’ observe s+b contributors Liz Sweigart and Dana Gionta.
Where is the office, anyway? Many of us work in what journalist and author Julia Hobsbawm calls the “Nowhere Office.” In an article that draws insights from her book of the same name, Hobsbawm argues that remote-work policies should be less focused on precisely where people work and more focused on who is doing the work—and what stage of their lives they find themselves in. The workers Hobsbawm calls “learners”—typically young recent graduates—may find it important to be in a physical office. “Leavers,” experienced workers who tend to work on a freelance or contingent basis, may be content to come to an informal gathering place every now and then. As for “leaders”? They need to work harder than ever to get in touch with the human needs of their colleagues—and, as Hobsbawm puts it, “listen and learn more, and impose outdated algorithm-led monitoring and appraisal techniques less.”
That’s solid advice, no matter where your “office” happens to be.
