The New Order of Work

Hello dear reader,

I have news to share.

It has been over five years since I have been writing on the future of work. This week, was a first - I was published in print - MINT’s workplace edition this Monday.

You can access the piece here: https://lifestyle.livemint.com/news/big-story/future-work-workplace-office-employees-baby-boomers-gen-z-111691205128445.html

I am sharing with you the unabridged version of this piece. Hope you enjoy reading it.

Tell me what you think.

Nisha

---

The office is now a spectrum of ages. The oldest of my colleagues is 40 and the youngest is 21. Being in my 30s puts me on the wrong side of the list and not only does it make me feel old, but it keeps me constantly on my toes. Whether it is learning/ being on top of the latest culture tropes, Slack emojis, lingo and also trying hard not to raise my eyebrows hearing the occasional swear word being spoken out loud. This is hardly any change, you can argue. Every generation goes through this and more. However, the point is how much of this change is reflected in our hand-me-down workplace policies?

In the industrial era, work was impersonal with machines - as we moved ahead, these machines were replaced with computers, laptops and so on. A change that went unnoticed was that in the industrial era, output was almost equal to input (energy), but today, the input is not just our energy but ourselves. Our mind, our hopes and ambitions, our creativity and our life - for outputs that cannot be measured or sometimes even not seen. There are too many intangibles associated with work today and going forward - when the human and the machine are enmeshed work takes on a new meaning.

Scratching the surface of these conversations only reflects that we need a new Order of Work. One that is governed with a single prime rule. All humans who work are adults and have to be treated so. Wearing that lens, let’s go through some suggestions of how this New Order can unfold. 

1) Work is no longer 9-5. Go through your daily schedule and think about this: how much do you actually get done during your 8/9 productive hours at work? In my 20s, we reached the office at 9:00 a.m. and left at 5:00 p.m or 6:00 p.m. But now, many people walk in through the doors only after 11:00am (not because of the traffic), but that is when the day starts. Many people prefer working late and then the cycle repeats. Ask them how much they get done and answers can range from nothing to plenty. You know why - work is never about the hours we keep, but the intent and endeavour to go all in. It is therefore easier to be on auto pilot and get the mundane done, but when you have a lot of thinking on the job, a great idea can occur to you at 11:00pm as well. How therefore, do we live with the concept of ‘work hours’? The New Order will turn this on its head. A two-year Stanford University study (conducted in June 2021)  found that remote workers were 13.5% more productive, 50% less likely to leave and 9% more engaged in their work. According to Gallup, engaged employees are 21% more productive than their counterparts. In his WorkLife podcast on ‘Rethinking flexibility at Work’, Adam Grant, American popular science author, and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania specialising in organisational psychology spoke of the flexibility people want and said that it is not as much remote work as it is about control over their time and setting their own hours. In this tweet, he summarises, ‘Offering freedom sounds like a risk, but squashing it is also a risk. Stars are the first to leave.”

2) Work comes in pockets/ projects. It takes the work of the mundane to create the extraordinary, but too many mindless mundanes can murder the magic. Having studied our own work, we know that a high is followed by a steep low and vice versa. Yes, we do work 30/31 days a month. Livelihood is important and this makes the calculation easy. But it also leaves me with guilt. In the New Work Order, how about working in packets or projects. Work with all the passion and hard work it takes and finish the project that can last three to six months. Have a resting period of at least 15 days to a month in between and then go back refreshed. Take up tasks like projects, deliver to the scope and move to the next. Better outcomes and more motivation. That is exactly why you see many GenZs leaving full time jobs for contractual/ consultant/ freelance work. A majority, 70% of GenZers consider freelancing to be as viable a career option as a typical office job, according to a February 2023 Fiverr survey of 7,121 GenZers from around the world. The high is different, so are the struggles. Yet, it feels worth it. How about we see a future where we sign employment contracts that are designed for ‘freelancers’ and not ‘employees’. 

3) Work and skills are decentralised. This might sound controversial, but can turn out to be fully logical. Think about this - when an employee has side projects, they moonlight, whereas when a freelancer has multiple clients, they do so for livelihood. Flip this, please. All of us today are accumulating skills that can be used for multiple purposes. Sometimes, doing that for a single company for years can limit who we are. GenZs are clear that they can leave a job in a matter of months if they don’t enjoy the work - but everyone can enjoy work if it comes in projects and one can work on multiple projects at the same time. If we believe that every individual who works is an adult, they will know their boundaries too. Imagine a time when work projects are on the cloud or found on an ‘exchange/ platform’ and one just picks up those they like and moves ahead with it. The power to pick rests with those who have the relevant skills and that is about it. 

Biju Dominic, Behavioural Scientist and Chief Evangelist at Fractal Analytics ,  a strategic analytics partner to the most admired Fortune 500 companies globally, opines that decentralisation should be considered from two aspects. That of the company and of the employee. For the company, it is important that continuity remains and therefore platformisation maynot be immediately viable, however,  when looked at from the employee’s perspective sabbaticals work. This trend will only pick up as India has more people who do not ‘live-to-work’ and the economy flourishes. Further, this trend has been accentuated by the pandemic wherein people have realised they only have one life to live  and do not want to spend it working for a single employer for many years. 

4) Work is not called work. Work is defined as ‘an activity, such as a job, that a person uses physical or mental effort to do, usually for money’. While this is a perfectly legitimate definition, work is much more. Work is purpose and passion too. It can also be someone’s extension to their personality. How then can the word work fit in all of this? Maybe we are trivialising what we do when we call it work. We are a generation that is working but is also seeking deeper meaning through the same ‘work’. How many of us are just happy with the money? Why do we want fame, designations and a personal brand if all we do is the same work? You see, work is now much beyond the job. Work is life. Do you think replacing ‘work’ with ‘a calling’ sounds better, instead? 

Biju puts this in perspective. He says, ‘in education we recommend that a student picks up a subject they are passionate about,’ and this is similar. In the era of lifelong learning one has to keep finding new passions or ‘callings.’ As Marcus Buckingham, the author of Love+Work says in this Harvard Business Review piece, ‘To attract and retain the best people, we must redesign jobs around a simple but powerful concept: love for the content of the work itself.’ Work therefore, should n’t be a stressor, but a source of energy and resilience and hence it deserves better nomenclature. 

If there is something to be learned from folks younger than us, they speak their mind and are clear about their priorities. They are also clear about what they dislike. And if there is one thing they dislike most, it is to be talked down or governed. They are born with a free will that millennials were not and as we move to this new Work Order, it is free will that will govern us. Not hand-me-downs. 

***