Trends and Tensions That Will Shape Work Post-Pandemic
Volume 22, Chapter XII, Number 003
Dear ,
This Week’s One Great Thing: Trends and Tensions That Will Shape Work Post-Pandemic
Note: the ideas here were originally shared in this interview at Radio Katipunan: The Changing Workplace. You can watch that video if you have the time. But I had the chance to write it out in more detail here so this would also be a more complete version of that interview.
The world changed the past two or three years. And it is interesting to see the subtle and not so subtle shifts in organisations and the world of work. There are practical changes and tensions (i.e. changes and tensions in how organisations DO things), but there are also philosophical changes and tensions (i.e. tensions and changes in mindsets and perspectives - which are also good to track, not necessarily to predict, but to pattern identity so you can make better choices - as an employee — but also if you’re part of management — as an organisation).
Here are some trends and tensions that I see, from my vantage point as an organisational development consultant. These are not exhaustive (and I will continue adding to this list as the world of work evolves).
The Continuing Rise of Hybrid Work
Hybrid work is defined as the working model where employees are given the flexibility to work both in-office and remotely. This is not for everyone. It’s for a particular set of employees in organisations: usually it’s the office or knowledge workers, the leaders and managers, and those in the digital sectors like e-commerce or tech. That will continue to rise. There’s no going back.
The more subtle trend that I see though is that for a long time, hybrid has been seen from the physical set-up (you are IN the office or OUT of the office; you are IN YOUR HOME, or IN A COWORKING SPACE; you are IN A COFFEE SHOP, etc.). What changed in the past two years is a subtle shift in working mindsets. For example, there is a “rethinking how we operate” trend among traditionally in-person work sectors like banking (the rise of digibanking in many parts of South East Asia is proof of this. Here in SG, you can have a bank account without ever visiting an actual physical bank ever! In the Philippines too, digibanks like Maya Bank allows you to do that).
In logistics, some people who work as delivery personnel (for Grab or Deliveroo or GogoX or Lalamove) have never been to their physical offices — they just get assigned the delivery and they pick up and deliver. They get paid through the app on their phone. And that is a trend that cuts across all industries—there’s a massive rethink of how they operate. Traditionally in-person industries are finding ways — as a business strategy to be ahead of competition and simplifying work — to become more digital, tech-enabled, and less dependent on physical transactions. That trend is going to continue, even as the world opens up.
From the employee perspective, more and more employees prefer flexible (meaning a mix of physical and remote) work. In a South East Asia-wide survey, 80% of employees in SEA prefer flexible work arrangements as a policy after the pandemic - they don’t want 100% work from home, or 100% work from office, but they want the flexibility to decide where and when they work, and 60% would consider leaving their jobs if their companies are inflexible. In fact, around 25% are looking for work in other industries because they want flexible work. They don’t want to go back anymore.
Changes in Managing Performance
As a consequence of that, there is a shift in how work performance is measured. From measuring your attendance (a “time-in, time-out” mentality) to more output-based and value-based metrics. It’s a real challenge to move from hour-based metrics to high-quality output metrics. Many managers are not used to that or do not know how to do it. In fact, many managers have been subconsciously trained to measure performance by attendance. And this is where the tension lies. A Gartner survey of nearly 3,000 managers revealed that 64% of managers and executives believe in-office employees are higher performers than remote employees, and 76% believe in-office workers are more likely to be promoted. So we still have a long way to go about that. The world has changed. Employee’s desires have changed. But managers’ and executives’ mindsets haven’t.
The Role of Managers will Change — less management, more leadership
Connected to this change in performance management, more and more managerial tasks will be automated, which will change the role of managers moving forward.
First, in a hybrid environment, the manager-employee relationship has become more important than ever. For hybrid employees, their managers are their primary connection to their company. Company culture is represented by their leaders and managers. How you experience the company is via your experience of the manager. Managers are also the first line in surfacing and elevating fairness concerns (which is also another growing trend).
So while that’s happening, there are more technologies available that replace an increasing number of repeatable managerial tasks; things like scheduling, approving expense reports and reimbursements, and monitoring direct reports’ completion of tasks. Our research shows that up to 65% of the tasks that a manager currently does has the potential to be fully automated by 2025; including providing performance feedback, making memos, reminding employees about company policies. All these will be automated potentially by 2025. With this growth in automation, organisations will be faced with a choice: decrease the number of managers or change the expectations of what it means to be a manager. Some organisations will get sizable savings from decreasing the quantity of managers, but other organisations will insist that managers evolve.
If you watch Simon Sinek’s videos, what he talks about is actually the evolution of management in this new world: less of the admin tasks, and more of the leadership role that we’ve always advocated but in real organisations, real managers fail to do because either they’re not trained for it, or because they’re eaten up by administrative tasks and don’t have the margin and psychological space to do it.
There’s more pressure on managers this time: to be the leaders they were not trained to be. Sadly this is what happens in many organisations — you promote a very good individual contributor and you expect him to manage. So you end up losing a very good employee, and you gain a mediocre manager.
One very clear example of people not being trained for leadership roles is that before this pandemic there’s an unwritten rule that you’re supposed to separate work from personal life. But during this pandemic, people started talking about their issues on mental health, employee well-being, inclusivity and gender. All of a sudden, managers find themselves ill-equipped to handle their employees. Managers have not been trained for that. Some of them panic. I remember talking to a manager who came to me and said, “Eric, he cried. And I froze. I did not have any words to say.” Organisations need to start transitioning managers from managing tasks to managing people with the fullness of their lives. Because the world will no longer go back to this dehumanising dichotomy of work and life.
Next week, I’ll discuss the trends on fairness and equity, nuancing employee well-being, the great resignation, the rise of the passion economy and our “young” retirees who find themselves retired but still very healthy.
What do you think of these trends? Shoot me an email and let’s discuss!
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More Great Stuff:
Appropriate to our topic on post-pandemic trends is this Manifesto on Asynchronous Communication
- An amazing twitter thread from the founder of Doist: Amir Salihefendić. What are the SOPs that you default to when you embrace asynchronous communication and hybrid work?
This beautiful article by Karla Starr on Slow Productivity:
It’s a long one, but here’s a gem--
"Burnout happens when, over a period of time, our resources are depleted faster than they’re restored. It’s partially explained by “exhaustion at work, cynicism toward the meaning of work, and sense of inadequacy .” It’s mediated by workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values. There’s a pretty substantial overlap between the symptoms of burnout and depression, as both entail a loss of motivation."
Let’s start looking at burnout like this: as a symptom of something else that needs to be addressed. What else can we do in the face of endless tasks but begin to disengage? When we know that the To Do list is never going to get shorter, why would we naïvely summon extra motivation when we know that it’s not going to change our overall circumstances, if the tasks just won’t stop?
Our bodies and brains are lazy by default—it’s evolution’s way of ensuring we don’t use more energy than necessary. Motivation, like respect, has to be earned. Leaning out and starting to disengage is a sign that your environment is unsustainable, depleting more resources than it’s offering in return. It might be control, reward, community, a sense of fairness, or a conflict between your personal values and the endgame of the work that you’re doing. Working fewer hours or having fewer assignments isn’t going to fix burnout if you’re constantly going to work with $1 and leaving with 95¢. It’s a motivationally unsustainable situation, and burnout is an adaptive response.”
Ok! Now pause, get yourself to a window, look up to the sky, smile, and have a great day! Look forward to send you another letter next week!
☕ eric santillan