The Future Is Now

Eight years ago when I was just getting started as an HR Partner at DIRECTV, we had a small group of HR folks who were part of the “Workforce 2020” task force. Our mission? To predict the future of work and help us ensure that we were prepared as business to face those realities and what it might mean for our talent practices and strategy. And as we enter in 2020, I can’t help but remember when I thought about that date as “the future.”

Well, the future is now, y’all. 

As a member of that team there were several things that I was fortunate enough to support: re-thinking the performance management model (doing away with those pesky ratings), developing remote worker guidelines, preparing our managers to be more emotionally intelligent and flexible as they dealt with the greatest diversity of people in the workforce, providing self-service career development tools, and much more.

Together we were able to accomplish a lot. And a good chunk of our ideas were great. A few of them were probably shit. And not everything we predicted necessarily came true – nor were we thinking we would be swallowed up by a much larger company that would eventually flush everything we worked on down the drain.

The truth is that predicting the future is quite hard. Yet, as people who want to help shape strategy and be seen as visionaries in our field, we want to not just have our finger on the pulse of today, but look ahead at what might be. I wouldn’t call myself a futurist, but I do enjoy looking at where we are at and noticing themes of what might be to come. So with that huge caveat in mind, here’s a few things I’m expecting to see in the future of work:

The Future is “The Robots Are Coming”

Since the Industrial Revolution, technology has always disrupted the workplace and how we perform our work. Automation will continue to get smarter, faster, and better. As machine learning gets stronger, artificial intelligence will become more sophisticated than ever. Certain functions that are manual, repetitive, and data entry-focused, will eventually be phased out.

While some future-thinkers have predicted that this will be a fast, sweeping change, I’m expecting this to take a little more time. If you’re in a job that relies heavily on these types of work I would recommend you find ways to upskill yourself to a function that requires more independent judgment, critical thinking, and creativity. Or learn how to maintain those robots.

The Future is “Tailored Client Experiences”

People love the convenience of online shopping, yet they don’t buy everything online. Yes, online retailers have absolutely hurt brick-and-mortar retailers and sales: you don’t need to look very far to see the corpses of former retail giants. However, I’ve seen another trend that has interested me and I feel is the way of the future: one where customers are catered to based on experience needs.

Restoration Hardware has a concept called RH Modern with locations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Napa Valley, and Palm Beach, FL where it is a showroom just like any other Restoration Hardware out there. However, when you arrive into an RH Modern location you aren’t greeted by salespeople and pricepoint marketing. Instead, you’re welcomed into a lifestyle experience: food, drinks, and snacks, a restaurant, Instagram-ready showrooms, designers ready to help you outfit your home, and a distinct feeling that this isn’t your grandma’s Restoration Hardware.

This concept doesn’t work for everyone, which is why I think it’s important if you are in a business that has an end-client (which is really most of them) that you are mindful about your customer segments/profiles and serve them in a way that makes sense to them. As we’ve incorporated more technology and the removal of humans from some work, people are actually now (ironically) willing to pay a premium to deal with a human that creates an experience for them.

The Future is “All About Data”

Within the early 2010s most companies were building out their data science practices, primarily from a consumer perspective. The leaders of those departments realized that they could use similar methodologies for internal employee data and thus workforce analytics was born. As workforce analytics became more advanced, they moved beyond simple descriptive stats like headcount, turnover, diversity, productivity, etc. and turned towards predictive analytics. Congrats, y’all, we’ve entered the Minority Report of the workplace.

Predictive data is helpful and useful as it can help drive decisions based on past behaviors and with the assumption that people are generally creatures that prefer patterns. It’s not foolproof (spoiler alert: nothing is) however, we’re seeing that predictive analytics tend to be right more often than not, and certainly more reliable that making “gut-based” decisions.

What happens with data now, though? We’ll continue to use data to drive decision-making. However, as we’ve become awash in data and have witnessed the abuses of data (Cambridge Analytica et al.), we’re seeing a natural backlash and concern around data privacy and data collection transparency. I expect that we’ll see even more concern, legislation, and global conversation around our data, how we control it, how we use it, how data interpretation can be biased, and what happens to our data after we die. Bring on the awkward conversations!

The Future is Leadership 2.0

Throughout the 2010s, employees craved and many were given the ability to work remotely. Whether on a flexible schedule or as a full-time telecommuter, remote work continues to be an important part of both the current and future state of the workplace. Additionally, as companies continue to expand and operate globally, geographically distributed teams are becoming more and more common (for example, having team members in New York City and Singapore). Generation Z is entering the workforce in larger numbers and has a different set of expectations for work and what they want from it.

Looking ahead, I expect leadership to shift even further from the old “command-and-control” hierarchical models of the past. New generations, cultural differences, technological advances, and geographic distances require a new type of leader with the ability to pivot with the various circumstances and stakeholders they are dealing with. Coaching skills, emotional intelligence, business savvy, cultural and diversity sensitivities, and political savvy won’t be “bonuses” to have when being a leader or manager – they will become non-negotiables.

Those are just a few examples of how I expect the workplace to evolve in the future. There are many other things happening globally and within the US (healthcare, leave of absence, basic income, etc.) that will have impacts on the workplace. As HR professionals, it’s our job to look “around those corners” and prepare ourselves for the changing workplace. So make some predictions. Take some actions. Get messy and make a mistake or two. It’ll be a damn sight better than being left behind in the dust.