It’s an unfortunate but real fact: 90% of what we read about the future of work is the result of an elitist vision of the subject and that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Indeed, in the minds of many, the future of work is reserved for executives and other white-collar workers. Sometimes people will tell you “no, that’s not true, we start the reflection there but it doesn’t stop there” but most of the time I find it hard to believe
The future of work, a white collar affair
It’s not a surprise because it’s been like this since the dawn of time: as soon as we innovate in the field of work, it’s first for white collar workers and in priority in the decision-making centers.
For some, it is because the future of work is thought by a certain population and that they intend to serve themselves first. I don’t believe this very much.
A reasoning that I find more plausible is to say that we can only change what we know, so we focus on populations that have a job similar to ours, that we know better in principle.
I would also add that the nature of the work of these populations is appropriate.
The knowledge worker: the ideal playground for the future of work
It must be admitted that we are not all equal when it comes to reinventing work. The more a person performs prescribed tasks, the more his work environment is prescribed by his job (salespeople are needed when stores are open and telecommuting is complicated in the construction industry… try putting a cement mixer in your living room and you’ll see), the more difficult it is to innovate on the context and content of his work.
For white-collar workers it’s a different story. Of course there are rules and processes, but a large part of their work is adhoc and they create their operating modes according to each need. For them remote working is possible. Most of the time the value of what they produce is not mathematically linked to the time spent working and at least not to the place they work from. They may consider doing 5 days work in 4. They may have some flexibility in their work schedules.
By definition, the work of white-collar workers and other knowledge workers is flexible; they have the highest level of autonomy in the business and it is easier to innovate and change things, to experiment when there is no structural rigidity other than that which we wanted to establish in order to give ourselves the illusion of control.
Moreover, we have seen this in the field of remote work, hybrid or flexible work: the business has not so much initiated the movement as it has accompanied and supervised it, the demand coming from employees who in some cases even thought that they could do it alone and that we should just let them do as they please. And in some cases, it only made official certain practices that were going on under the radar.
Blue collar and operational: the third world of innovation?
We can’t say that we’re just discovering things, we’ve been noticing them for ages. When the question of inventing or reinventing the digital workplace arose in many businesses fifteen years ago, almost no one bothered to listen to the field.
What’s the point of listening to the field? The field doesn’t need digital tools. There is no need to give them access to the business communication, to HR tools to schedule their vacations, and even less need to share their knowledge, to collaborate to help each other.
In this sea of sadness I have seen with a food giant how to give access to online communities to people working in its factories, I applauded when a supermarket chain gave access to an environment allowing them to help each other and share their practices or when the same style of approach
Same scenario for digital transformation. Most of the projects I have seen for a long time only concerned a part of the employees but this transformation was often driven by the customer, so it was necessary to equip those who were talking to them. No customer experience without employee experience.
And on the many projects I’ve been involved with in the past in terms of managerial innovation, I can tell you that we talked a lot more about the head office than about the factories and stores.
The future of work: generic and specific
Considering the future of work as a homogeneous whole is not possible for the reasons mentioned above. From there, there are three possibilities.
- Thinking about it for the majority, but this would often exclude those who work on the subject and the so-called superior populations.
- To partially or totally exclude the greatest number of people, but to satisfy the decision-makers and the so-called “superior” professions.
- To have an approach that takes into account the reality of everyone’s work.
To try to adapt to all situations, the subject must be broken down.
What is generic
I put here everything that does not concern work itself. Access to intranets, HR tools, premises, and many HR topics like onboarding, training.
Everyone should be able to train online. Onboarding is as important for a salesperson as it is for an executive. The new career logic can be applied to everyone. There is no reason to discriminate between a blue collar worker and a marketing person in terms of access to HR tools.
What is specific
Remote work is specific to a person’s job. All the thinking about working hours and the 4-day week can only be done on a job-by-job basis and its HR impact is out of all proportion to its impact on the organization of work and production. A sensitive subject.
I’m curious to see how Danone will tackle the issue of flexible work for its 70% of employees whose job can only be done on site.
And then there is everything that touches on the content of work, a subject that has been so neglected. It’s not only the context in which we work but the way we work! It is surprising that when we talk about the future of work, we talk so little about the heart of work, the action of producing something and the way it happens. And on this point, for once, much more effort has been made for blue-collar workers than for white-collar workers, even if not always for the right reasons.
Bottom line
The future of work must be designed to apply to everyone, depending on the context and content of their work.
From the top executive to the blue collar worker.
Image : front line workers by Robert Kneschke via Shutterstock
