Welcome
The world of work has been on a slow evolution for decades. Legacy practice roots run deep in how we design work experiences and build people systems to support them. What if we designed work from the ground up today?
Lars Schmidt
Our workplaces are being transformed by COVID-19. Practices that have been scaling incrementally (i.e. remote) are now making giant leaps forward. Businesses have had to make significant adjustments and rapidly rethink the constructs of βworkβ in order to support employees sheltering in place, juggling childcare, struggling with isolation and mental health, and more.
Many companies are now developing their βreturn to workβ plans. What are we returning to? When are we returning to it? What will βitβ look like? The truth is we donβt fully know β we only know it will never be the same as it was.
What if this is our chance to reimagine work altogether?
Since February Iβve been curating and crowdsourcing a range of resources, tools, templates, and articles on how companies are responding to COVID-19 - most notably the Coronavirus HR/Business Communications & Resources Guide (
). Itβs been an interesting front row seat to the conversations and considerations facing business leaders today.
People/HR executives have an incredibly difficult role in the best of times. The mental and emotional toll of this pandemic is consuming for them. They rarely have much bandwidth for thoughts outside of guiding their company through this. When they do, itβs often around βwhere we go from here?β
Reimagining βWorkβ... Together
Last week I raised a question to my network on how they might design work from the ground up, today. I received dozens of responses and ideas I compiled
. As the ideas mounted, I quickly realized static questions and answers werenβt optimal for a discussion like this.
I created an interactive way for people to contribute and read ideas, as well as upvote ones that speak to them. You can start reading below.
This idea board was created to solicit thoughts on how and where we might reimagine work in our current COVID-19 world. Not just today, but over the next 3β5 years and longer. The aim is to crowdsource ideas that can spark conversations and plans as people and business leaders adjust their operations to our current times.
This is a difficult time for everyone. Struggles often yield invention, so this situation is also a unique opportunity to rethink
work
in general.
My hope in creating this is to spark ideas and conversations that might lead to new practices that better support our employees, our businesses, and perhaps the way people team operate.
You can add and upvote your ideas here. If you have any thoughts or suggestions on how to make it better Iβm all ears. You can reach out at any time at
or
.
Instructions
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Add ideas by pressing the
Add New Idea
button below.
Upvote ideas by pressing thumbs up next to the ideas you like.
Contribute Without Logging In
π Reimagining Work Idea Board Forum - "Chatter"
Per your feature request, we added a new forum to allow you to interact on this platform, ask questions, share your work, etc. You can visit chatter
.
All Ideas
Add New Idea
Idea Overview
Categories
Idea Details
Vote
Upvoters
Author
Date
1
Reallocate commercial real-estate and travel & expenditure budgets to programs that support remote work and wellness
Benefits
Remote
Work Practices
Employee Experience
With less employees traveling for work or coming into the office, companies have an opportunity to re-allocate those budgets towards programs that optimize remote work and employee wellness.
π
33
4/16/2020
2
Mental health becomes a core benefit (Categorize as Self-Care that incorporates Physical, Emotional, & Psychological and also has a positive connotation)
Benefits
Wellness
Mental health and wellness support becomes a foundational part of company benefits.
π
24
5/8/2020
3
Shift nomenclature of 'remote work'
Remote
Inclusion
Performance
Employee Experience
Work Practices
When we use the term 'remote' work we push against diversity of locations and inclusion of those not physically located in the defined and central location. Remote means far or not connected and we are certainly not that in the world of technology we live in. Shifting to "distributed work" (see Matt Mullenweg's work at Word Pres), just defining a colleague's geographic location (I'm working from NJ or I am working from TX) and or simplifying to "I'm working at the organization's Center City Philadelphia location" or "I'm flexibly working from downtown San Francisco today."
π
20
5/11/2020
4
Design more autonomous learning strategies
Remote
Other
Employee Experience
Refocus on remote training: self-directed and peer learning, micro-lessons and content that builds over time, layering into workflow but accessible any time anywhere.
π
17
Kristen Lisanti
5/9/2020
5
Internal career coaching to support agile teams
Performance
Employee Experience
Create internal career coaches who proactively track acquired skills, capabilities, and interests of your team to deploy them to different internal projects as needed, rather than keeping them locked into rigid roles and teams.
π
15
5/8/2020
6
Universal Basic Income
Compensation
Work Practices
Employee Experience
Performance
Pay people a monthly stipend to cover basics in life so that they are intrinsically motivated to show up and perform. Workers become more productive, and the experience of work is more satisfying.
π
14
5/11/2020
7
Real time data analysis
Data
Employee Experience
Before COVID, in best cases, work was more focused on periodic data analysis. One of the most important HR capabilities is agility. How can we implement real-time data collection, to identify precisely where problems are occurring, communicate and iterate/fix.
π
11
5/10/2020
8
Embed open source practices and approaches and sharing as a fundamental pillar of your people strategy
Work Practices
Open-source practices were essential in helping people teams guide their businesses through the early days of COVID-19. This open collaboration should become an expectation, not an exception, to accelerate the evolution of the field.
π
10
5/8/2020
9
Improve manager performance
Performance
Employee Experience
Work Practices
Empower managers to manage their teams with a focus on outcomes and deliverables, as opposed to time spent in the office. Train managers to be coaches, with a focus on employee skill development and growth.
π
10
5/12/2020
10
Inclusion practices for distance
Inclusion
Employee Experience
Focus on practices and strategies for fostering inclusion in new ways, when proximity, confirmation and preference biases can become more pronounced.
π
9
Kristen Lisanti
5/9/2020
11
Remote working as the new normal will lead to significant shifts in compensation philosophy and guidelines. Will cost of living differences still make sense?
Recruiting
Compensation
Once work from home/remote work becomes the norm, will companies force lower salaries on employees who choose to move to a lower cost of living market? Will top talent tolerate a lower salary, or will they demand their same big city salary even when they move to cheaper areas? Compensation teams may need to create more "national" salaries (vs regional/local) and begin to benchmark more to the true value of contributions by an employee vs a regional benchmarking survey.
π
9
5/12/2020
12
Onsite Childcare
Inclusion
Benefits
Wellness
Compensation
Employee Experience
Other
Companies commit to onsite childcare as parents become wary of sending their children to larger daycare centers. Reducing exposure to additional social circles, reliability and convenience of onsite care will increase retention and engagement of parents.
π
8
5/11/2020
13
Support the rise of 21st century 'collective' worker influence models (new normal unions)
Benefits
Inclusion
Employee Experience
Our [US] society is among the least supportive of worker-communities of all developed countries. We tend to label everything as socialist or communist. Balancing a businesses commitment to stockholders with an emphasis on creating a community among the businesses' workers to support their sentiment and regards for one another will be of increasing interest for many as a 'best place to work' post Covid in anticipation of the next black swan event. This would suggest 'worker council' involvement in business decisions, pay equality, emphasis on a servant leadership style of management
π
7
5/12/2020
14
Companies will take advantage of recruiting talent who can work from home to improve diversity.
Recruiting
Remote
Inclusion
Companies face big challenges recruiting for diversity when the total addressable market is small in their target markets, usually close to their big offices. Focusing diversity recruiting efforts on the markets where the diversity already lives will allow for quicker diversity hires and encourage more local investments in cities and schools that don't get the attention of big tech/big employers today.
π
7
5/12/2020
15
Employers will identify new benefits attached to remote work to retain workers.
Remote
Recruiting
Work Practices
Other
Part of the reason employees stay with a specific employer is because switching costs are high for many - moving to a new city and uprooting my social/personal life, or if the employer is still local - the commute would be worse, transportation is a hassle to figure out, daycare for the kids is going to be more inconvenient...even bringing the dog to work (a more common "benefit" in tech). With WFH being the norm, the switching costs are much lower - so if I'm an employee who's now bored or feeling unrecognized or getting micromanaged, and a recruiter calls me about a new role, it's much easier to make a move if I'm not physically moving. Would talent be more fluid with less friction? Certainly. So then it'll be interesting to see if/how companies introduce NEW friction - do they pay for your amazing home office (buy you a giant monitor, ergonomic office chair, provide exercise classes in your home, offer home delivery of meals, offer home cleaning services, credits for uber rides, etc?
π
7
5/13/2020
16
Better meetings
Employee Experience
Distributed meetings will (out of necessity) force teams to adopt better practices for how they work together, that translate when we're back in person as well. [sidenote: I wrote about this
here
]
π
6
5/12/2020
17
Telehealth should be a foundational part of benefit program delivery.
Benefits
Medical plans must include a robust virtual option equal in experience to the physical office visit experience. Technology cannot be an after thought with medical carriers in terms of doctor appointments.
π
6
5/14/2020
18
More companies will start hiring internationally now that the floodgates to hiring remotely have broken.
Compensation
Recruiting
This will help with cost of labor, multi-language support, and time zone coverage.
π
5
5/10/2020
19
Workplace design gets massive overhaul
Inclusion
Wellness
Employee Experience
Other
Open offices become a way of the past. Individual workspaces are reimagined to allow for more privacy and new health standards. How do you create community in common areas that enable safety and connection?
π
5
5/11/2020
20
Written and asynchronous video communication will become more important
Work Practices
Employee Experience
Culture & Values
Performance
Remote
Working remotely inherently leads to small communication gaps that accumulate over time.
Being able to communicate effectively with words and asynchronous video will become a sought-after skillset.
π
5
5/12/2020
21
Massive but not complete shift away from on-campus to virtual recruitment for hiring students, grads
Recruiting
Remote
In the U.S. and Canada, the majority of students and recent graduates of one-, two-, and four-year colleges and universities are hired by Fortune 1,000 companies, government agencies, and other employers who hire at scale, meaning dozens or even hundreds a year. People say that small businesses employ most people and that's probably true if you include the owners and 1099 contractors, but it isn't true when it comes to who employs the bulk of students and recent grads.
College and university recruiting hasn't changed much since the 1950's. Employers assess their needs a year or more in advance, determine which schools to visit and what resources will be needed to properly engage the stakeholders on those campuses (career services, professors, students), fly out recruiters and hiring managers mostly in the fall but some in the early winter too, invite top candidates back to headquarters for a day of interviews, extend offers, etc. But more and more organizations have layered on what some call "virtual" recruitment, which essentially means reaching, engaging, and hiring on-line through job boards like
College Recruiter
(my company) and other sourcing tools. Very few organizations have looked at their virtual sources as being any more important than any one of the dozens of schools they may visit.
For the 2020-21 school year, it is become apparent that many and perhaps most college campuses will be closed or inaccessible to visitors at least for the fall. Even if the campus is open, many students will opt to attend classes remotely and so won't be on-campus to meet and interview with employers who physically visit the campus. Employers are scrambling to shift resources from on-campus to virtual, and many are doing so very, very reluctantly as a virtual model requires far less resources, especially on the staffing side. You just don't need nearly as many recruiters and nearly as much budget to hire dozens or hundreds on-line versus flying around the country so those whose jobs or travel perks are threatened are, understandably, not happy.
When the C-suite sees that their early careers recruiting program can be accomplished with far fewer resources and perhaps even better align with their diversity hiring efforts as more students will be hired from more schools, will they want to go back to the old model? I can't see it. It seems to me that we're at a tipping point where college recruiting moves from 1952 to the 21st century. As more students are hired virtually, it also seems to me that we'll see an acceleration in more employers becoming school and even major agnostic, as productivity data has shown that there is little correlation between the school the student attended and their major and their productivity and some studies show a negative correlation.
π
5
5/14/2020
22
More Authentic Communication
Culture & Values
Work Practices
It became impossible for brands to rely on expensive photo shoots and videos to communicate with customers γΌ thus, they started sharing a more intimate and authentic type of content, more "real." I believe in this and think it should become the new normal.
π
5
5/14/2020
23
Create shorter-term employment models
Recruiting
Remote
Performance
Work Practices
Employee Experience
With more employees working remotely (in roles that support it), talent will be more fluid now that the traditional considerations that had to align (i.e. commute, relocation/location) are no longer a factor. Offset this with one-year tours of duty (akin to LinkedIn's model) with clear outcomes and mutually-additive value for the company and employee.
π
4
5/12/2020
24
Projects and take-home work will play a much larger role in decision making during the recruiting process.
Inclusion
Recruiting
Data
Companies will have to adapt their interviewing practices to involve more work-sample tests if they want to make accurate hiring decisions, and this will promote more inclusive hiring processes. The companies that donβt adapt will over-emphasize video-conference interviews and their process will be riddled with even more bias than before.
π
4
5/12/2020
25
Maternity / Parental leave of 50 weeks minimum
Benefits
Top countries give a minimum of 50-56 weeks leave for maternity and parental leave. We need to stop the stories of US mothers returning to work from two weeks βvacationβ after having a baby.
π
4
5/14/2020
26
Taking The R out of HR - Put Human at the centre of it all
Culture & Values
It is time to abolish the R in HR and build 21st Century workplaces that humans love. At least let's separate the Human function from the Resource function.
It is an insult and attack on human intelligence to call/treat us as resources. As Human advocates, we need to provide opportunities for people in organisations to function as human beings rather than resources β helping them to reach their full potential via authenticity and discover themselves via the quest self-awareness, then they can be aware of their self and appreciate how sublime and worthy they and their fellow humans are (Trust building).
The attributes of the "Human Advocate or Head of Humans" in an organisation would be to be authenticity and assertive humility, recognising that she/he would not be without other humans. Ubuntu! I am because you are.
Finally, organisations have a duty of care in loving/protecting/trusting their employees and coaching them on how to do so, allocating conscious time to travel with them throughout the complicated, messy, and sometime painful feelings and emotions that make the journey of a human being (an employee). It is now the time to Design for Trust and this needs to be the currency of the new economy.
Who's with me?
π
3
5/13/2020
27
Crowdsource ideas by timeline
Work Practices
There are multiple positive ways of prioritizing ideas in this model: function, top ideas,, crowd sourced thumbs up etc. and, they rightfully should be in the front of consideration with few if any limits other than the Covid compass is pointing that way. But after agreeing with so many of these great ideas, I begin to want to recast them from the perspective of investment, resistance among stakeholders of older solutions, inadequate technology and timeline when wide adoption expected if we all agreed to do it- if only as a means to separate low hanging fruit from what a community might not have the resources and energy to push forward.
π
3
5/15/2020
28
Mental Health (to add additional color to the above item)
Benefits
Wellness
Add mental health appointments as a "preventive" benefit in terms of coverage and bump up the coverage to one appointment per week. Either 1.) cover all therapy appointments as "in-network" or 2.) cover the full cost of any therapy appointments. Taking care of mental health shouldn't be a financial burden or worse, an access issue due to the minimal coverage due to therapists who don't contract with insurance companies. Simply covering this service in full (by employees submitting their monthly statements with diagnosis code from therapist), would be a huge win for employees and employers of course will benefit too.
π
2
5/14/2020
29
Increased cost per head budget specifically for wellness benefits
Benefits
Compensation
Wellness
Follow on to the idea of wellness (mental, financial, etc) programs increasing, we need the spend to as well. It's time.
π
1
5/13/2020
30
Annual Board Performance Reviews , Succession and Selection Process
β
Board Governance needs a whole scale review. We need diversity of gender, ethnicity and beliefs on all corporate and not for profit boards. Boards members should go through a rigorous selection process and their performance should be reviewed every year. Clear term lengths should be established. Succession and development of new board members in place.
π
1
5/14/2020
31
Humanization of Work
Recruiting
Remote
Work Practices
Employee Experience
Culture & Values
Whether it's going to work or working from home, companies need to humanize work. They need to take the "Robot out of the Human.) That includes transforming not only how works get done, but how people access the work. The pandemic might be the tipping point the world was waiting for when it comes to commuting up to 3 hours every day (not to mention saving the planet!) The pandemic ripped wide open how fragile the current system of work, jobs, and employment were. It immediately shattered the productivity and functional myths about working remotely. Even with the challenges of working from home, work gets done with little preparation and a hodge-podge of technology. Imagine if the transition had been planned! Regardless companies must treat employees as human beings. This isn't only a moral argument but a functional and strategic one too. From all indications, a lot of workers aren't "going back to work as usual."
π
1
5/14/2020
32
Humanization of Work
Recruiting
Remote
Work Practices
Employee Experience
Culture & Values
The pandemic was a tipping point. It was a much needed catalyst moving management toward the humanization of work - taking the Robot out of the Human. Whether work is going to an office/plan or working from home, companies must value the wellbeing of the human being. That includes reevaluating how works gets done AND how people get to work. The silver lining in the pandemic has been that myths have been shattered why work couldn't possibly get done without congregating workers under one roof. Commuting 1 to 2 and even 3 hours every day was insane. Work from home has been a wake-up call and many companies have responded. Slow to adopt industries like healthcare have responded with telehealth. But others are waiting for life to go back to "normal." Normal died. It's a mere memory. Now is the time to focus on how to improve productivity while fostering wellbeing.
π
1
5/14/2020
33
Job Descriptions-Overhaul the process for how they are formed, who drafts them and the information they include
Recruiting
Hiring managers collaborate on formulation of job descriptions. Complete a template that asks key questions to ensure they are clear about who they want for the role and the candidate is clear about the expectations. ie, "what does success look like in the role?" If the hiring manager isn't sure because its a newly created role or out of their purview, just include that in the job description. "You will help to define this role through the interview process and shape it as you are on-boarded". They should identify the skills and background they want BUT be prompted to question WHY they think that background will guarantee those skills to mitigate bias and broaden the pool of candidates.
π
1
Shayna McDonough
5/14/2020
34
Personal development opportunities through coaching and group work
Performance
Wellness
Inclusion
Culture & Values
To support a learning or developmental culture and a culture of inclusion everyone gets the opportunity to look inside themselves to find out what motivates them, what thought patterns limit them and what biases hinder their working relationships.
π
1
Maria Gerea
5/14/2020
35
Organization Design (people, process and technology)
Other
How are we re-visiting organization design? Currently orgs still design themselves in traditional silos like marketing, finance, HR, etc. Dan Heath talks about this in his new book Upstream. Each department is measured on different things to the customer and employee experience. Based on this org design, are there some metrics/initiatives slipping through the cracks because functional departments are siloed. Can we look at upstream design versus always looking to optimize. It's about getting things right and less fire fighting. Current org design focuses on specialization and silos versus integrated customer or employee experience org design.
π
1
5/17/2020
36
Gig/Project Based Work
Work Practices
Employee Experience
Performance
The design of the organization should emerge as an evolutionary model where work roles become more fluid and experimentation happens regularly. Work roles are more project based focusing on creation of teams of teams to foster collaboration, networking, individual competency and org capability building. This also allows for a higher degree of work and role customization which could support acceleration of innovation, time to market, market differentiation.
π
1
5/19/2020
37
A learning culture to take down barriers to autonomy and collaboration.
Culture & Values
Performance
Work Practices
Develop a learning or developmental culture in which leaders are coaching not telling and people feel psychologically safe to take risks, ask questions, challenge the status quo, offer ideas, admit to mistakes and challenges and ask for help.
π
0
β
Maria Gerea
5/14/2020
38
Video tools (Zoom, Teams, Meet, etc) replace email...
Employee Experience
Either through live engagement or 15 second limited recorded video messages, email is sent to the dustbin of history - hooray!
π
0
β
K.C. Donovan
5/14/2020
39
Mitigating unconscious bias in recruitment and screening
Recruiting
Integrating blind recruiting tools (building out these functions as options in ATS systems) that remove first name, school and maybe even places of employment-leaving in job details) from resumes. This can help candidates move through the process without consideration of gender, ethnicity, school name or employer prestige. Blind screening minimizes the chance of subconsciously scrutinizing candidates due to gender or race & diversifies the candidate pool based on the merit, accomplishments and skills presented in resumes. It might surprise hiring managers that they can get the same level of skill, experience and success from candidates that dont have backgrounds they thought were needed.
π
0
β
Shayna McDonough
5/15/2020
40
Finally move on from using MS Word and PDF built resumes which current ATS "try" to interpret
Recruiting
Data
Work Practices
Performance
β
π
0
β
5/17/2020
41
Reimagining the role of 'manager'
Performance
Work Practices
Employee Experience
The typical role of 'manager' in knowledge-based orgs is increasingly complex and difficult to perform. As well as the basic mechanics of management (from hiring to firing), we've loaded mgrs up with more tasks as progressive people and culture practices have taken hold (cultural ambassadors, wellbeing advocates, inclusive leadership, distributed teams etc) - usually on top of producing their own individual results as well. This is a great time to parse out the constituent parts of 'future management' to reimagine how these get delivered effectively. I suspect it would look significantly different to today.
π
0
β
5/17/2020
42
Distributed role profiles
Remote
Work Practices
Employee Experience
Culture & Values
Recruiting
We were already moving through a period where individuals had a much broader range of choices in terms of how they related to their employer (employed, contract, freelance, etc). Designing organisations that can draw strength from a distributed workforce is step 2 on top of this already existing variety. If we can then maintain this level of flexibility through to the way that we describe roles themselves and step away from formal job descriptions and into hiring for potential, values, behaviors, energy and the ability to learn and collaborate
π
0
β
5/21/2020
43
Use data & transparency to distribute generated revenue based on added value
Compensation
Culture & Values
Data
Remote
The more we move to distributed value creation, the more contribution will become transparent. We should aim to compensate individual contributors based on the value they add, not based on the distribution of market power. So if the design was the tipping point, the designer should be paid according to the impact her/ his work had, not the hourly rate the market constitutes. With the digital footprint we leave, the track of any product should become traceable. Surely, weβre not quite there yet to derive fair comparisons, but we have the tools in digital collaboration tools, AI and βthe internetβ for enough data points.
As a byproduct, it will change the market dynamics for career choices.
π
0
β
David Fuesser
5/21/2020
44
Develop employee privacy protections
Remote
Performance
Employee Experience
Culture & Values
Data
Employers need to know how their employees are performing, but monitoring key strokes, active screen time, screen recordings and the like is not the way forward for remote work and can be an invasion of privacy. Employers should hire employees who they trust to perform a given role at a predetermined acceptable level of quality. Using metrics based on work achieved rather than personal work style is key here.
π
0
β
5/24/2020
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