Building Creative and Innovative Workplaces for Today’s Hybrid Workforce
With the ebb and flow of the global pandemic in 2021, hybrid work models are enabling some people to return to on-site work while others continue to work remotely or move between remote and on-site work.
The top categories that emerged for discussion revolved around how to lead a workforce that would enhance productivity and innovation in a hybrid working environment.
Several executives pointed out that the leadership models that have persisted since the industrial revolution -- such as hierarchical organizational charts and a bias for physical presence in the workplace -- are waning rapidly.
Toni Vanwinkle, Adobe
According to IDC, over 40% of the global population turned to remote work models in 2020. With the ebb and flow of the global pandemic in 2021, hybrid work models are enabling some people to return to on-site work while others continue to work remotely or move between remote and on-site work. Much progress has been made in re-envisioning the role of the workforce in today’s hyper-distributed workplace. Nevertheless, IDC believes that businesses will be compelled to continue adjusting their strategies to manage this new hybrid workforce while maintaining secure and productive operations.
BizTechReports caught up with Toni Vanwinkle from Adobe to explore how enterprises are optimizing the creativity and innovation of today’s distributed workforce to accelerate the accomplishment of business transformation objectives.
Here is what she had to say:
The top categories of concern revolved around how to lead a workforce that would enhance productivity and innovation in a hybrid working environment. We also explored the strategies that would allow us to accommodate full-time work-from-home workers, flex employees that plan to split their time between on-campus and remote work, as well as the rest of the workforce that would come back to the office full time.
How employees are ultimately categorized, pointed out by Toni from Adobe, is not an insignificant issue. She described how the entire community of interest surrounding employee/employer relations is in the midst of exploring the new factors that will have to be managed from compliance, tax, and general human resource management perspective. “Getting this right is important because people who work from home will have a different status than the associates that choose a flex arrangement. It will even affect how salaries are structured” as organizations come to grips with the implications of abstracting where people work from where people live.
A significant portion of the discussion revolved around the kind of leadership structures, skill sets, and attributes that will separate effective leaders from those that are bound to struggle if they are not able to adjust to the new working environment. Several executives have pointed out that the leadership models that have persisted since the industrial revolution -- such as hierarchical organizational charts and a bias for physical presence in the workplace -- are waning rapidly.
Enterprises were able to track significant gains in productivity through the COVID-19 crisis. This seems to prove that physical supervision is not a requirement for accomplishing tasks in an effective manner. Indeed, many executives have started to express concerns that their associates are being too productive -- or at least working to the point of risking burnout. The absence of workplace/home-life boundaries added to the number of hours employees were spending at work. Several companies have created enforced organization-wide days off, or no-meetings days to provide some respite to their shelter-place workforce.
The concept of “empathy” and making a conscious company-wide commitment to recognizing that colleagues are not just workmates but “complete human beings” was discussed in a businesslike manner. Critical “soft skills” have emerged as the key to getting the most of an increasingly diverse workforce. This heterogeneity has become more apparent by the introduction of work-style options (at home, flex, at work). This further elevates the importance of communications among employees and between employees and their leaders. There has been no shortage of opportunities to express empathy over the past year.
Among those who experience challenges with keeping their remote workplace productive, the problem seemed to stem from allocating sufficient resources or inadequately redesigning processes to reflect the new conditions on the field of work. Shifting the workflow to accommodate employees operating out of their homes, and ensuring that employees have the tools they need to perform their tasks requires a lot of new thinking and very specific resources as well as tools.
A stickier problem emerged around the issue of optimizing innovation. There are concerns about lost opportunities to take advantage of serendipitous in-person encounters -- perhaps around the proverbial water cooler -- to bounce new ideas and unconventional thoughts that can produce significant breakthroughs. Toni’s point stressed the importance of challenging leaders to move away from tracking “output” to encouraging “outcomes.” This, she stressed, is the leadership challenge and opportunity of the day. The good news is that there has never been a stronger technological foundation for tapping into human potential at work and beyond.
“One of the things that I love about my job is that it takes place at the intersection between human behavior and technology. It keeps me interested and intrigued every day. It is also a sweet spot for the Adobe value proposition and its legacy at the nexus of technology and creativity. It teaches us that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating ‘outcomes’ that will take our organizations forward.”
For more information about BizTechReport podcast interviews, please contact Melissa Fisher at MFisher@BizTechReports.com.