Wie wird die Arbeit in der Zukunft nach Corona aussehen? Wie wird sich die Rolle des Managements verändern? Mit diesen Fragen beschäftigen sich Paul McDonald von Robert Half und der freie Berater Nic Marks in einem YouTube-Video.
Seit Ausbruch von Covid-19 hat der Kampf gegen das Virus zahlreiche gewohnte Abläufe und Arbeitsprozesse beeinflusst. Diese Folgen werden die Unternehmen und ihr Management noch lange spüren. Zwar werden einige der Veränderungen mit der Zeit verschwinden, doch andere können dauerhaft sein und manche neu hinzukommen.
Worauf müssen sich Führungskräfte und Mitarbeiter künftig einstellen? Dazu stellen Paul McDonald, Senior Executive Director bei Robert Half, und der Berater, Statistiker und Autor Nic Marks in einem Gespräch Überlegungen an.
Wie Covid-19 die Arbeitswelt verändern wird, sehen Sie auch in unserem Video:
Paul: Hello, I'm Paul McDonald, Senior Executive Director with the staffing firm, Robert Half. The world is experiencing unprecedented social, economic and business disruption as the result of the COVID pandemic and the workplace is no exception. Almost every way companies operate and the individuals work has dramatically changed and will continue to evolve over the coming weeks, months and even years. Together with my special guest, internationally renowned statistician and well-being expert Nick marks we're going to explore some positive, practical suggestions for making the transition back to office based work and take an early look at what the future of work might look like post COVID-19. Our goal is to uncover strategies to help both individuals and companies determine what can be learned from this experience and what they need to do now to be successful. Nick as the lockdown and social distancing guidelines start to be lifted and people returning to office based work, let's explore what the new reality of work is going to look like. Do you have some suggestions you know I'm people dealing with fear and respecting worker choice as they head into the office or be invited into the office? Nic: Yeah, it's going to be difficult and for some people quite challenging as there anxiety levels are very high and you know when people are frightened they sort of, part of their reaction is to freeze, so they're not gonna be good at collaborating. They're going to be perhaps nervous of other people, people that have have been trusted colleagues will suddenly feel like, "Oh my, might they have the virus?" And so I think there's going to be a very difficult negotiation. Some people who were more anxious are going to really struggle. Some who are more confident perhaps won't or people who have had it will feel will feel sort of invincible, so there's going to be a big variety of experience as people come back and try to keep a distance and try and collaborate. So it will be, you'll need to judge on an individual basis on individual office location basis and also individual people basis about how it's going to work. Paul: And the communication factor, you know between management or supervisor and employee is just increasing as we look at this remote workforce and what we've been thrown into in this COVID-19 crisis. What is some advice that you would have for managers on communication with their teams? Nic: So I think that we obviously need to do more and we also need to be checking in whether it's working for people. Some people want more, a little chat, and some people want to be left alone sometimes because they've got very pressured windows they can work in because of childcare or elder care whatever else is going on for them. So it's finding tailored solutions for individuals, it's talking to the whole team you know perhaps daily at the moment, but you do have to watch out for too many people on a Zoom or Teams call you know. You can't really open up if there's too many people. So my rule of thumb is only have four people on a call if you want to be creative or collaborative, no more than that. If you want to have more than that then you're basically what I call time sharing, where you're going around and asking individual people to share one at a time. And then that needs facilitating by the manager you can't expect the quiet people to speak unless you call on them, so you really need to be drawing them into it. Again it's just good management but like amplified. Paul: Looking at some of the new skills that are needed by the employee or the worker in addition to the management team we talk about soft skills regularly and the need for soft skills to be effective in today's workforce. When you look at it soft skills as it relates to you know this new world order of technology, video conferencing, what are some thoughts that you would have on the importance of soft skills in this new world of remote work? Nic: I think even more and it's sort of ironic isn't it really that data and tech becomes more and more front and foremost. I think people skills become more, you know we need both of those things: people skills and tech skills. And the remote working accentuates it even more...With remote you've got to be much more intentional, much more deliberate. Those accidental collisions that happened where you could sort of manage by walking around and just checking on people, you can't do that anymore. So you've really got to intentionally reach out, you've got to diarise. Talk to people, one-to-one talks because you're just going to, you're not going to pick them up in the cracks between work at the water cooler or just when you see someone's chill. You're going to have to do that more deliberately. So there is a lot, there's going to be more pressure on that, more more structure to that. Paul: Let's take a look at further out on the horizon, Nic, and you know what's COVID's legacy going to be? You know what's the new reality? What's the new normal going to look like in the workplace and what can managers and workers be doing now to prepare for that? Nic: Well I think that the very fact that employee well-being, employee mental health is front and foreground I think is good because it's always been a loss of productivity, there's always been a loss of creativity, a loss of collaboration. In fact from our estimates you know if you invest in an employee well-being program you'll get five times return on investment in any year in terms of increased creativity, innovation, productivity, collaboration. So I think what it's going to do is it's going to make that more front-and-center and people are going to take more notes and in my opinion that's a good thing. It's going to be a bumpy ride. And I think we're going to be here for quite a while. And everything's changing. Markets are changing, you know customers are changing, supply chains are changing, so what do we need to do? I think the main thing is we need to really have an ear on the ground, we really need to listen. Listen well to our customers, listen well to our employees, listen well to our suppliers. I'd even suggest you know you get a chief listening officer. You know someone that's going to really help coordinate that and do that in a great way in your organization's to take that forward. And if you listen and you react then you can be what we call agile and you can respond to that and this might be opportunities for smaller companies because they typically are more agile and more able to respond than larger ones. And large ones are more difficult to still though they probably have more access to capital so they might ride it out better. But the world is not going to be the same. That's for sure. This is a huge global shock. We need to be more tech savvy. I think it even more increases the need for people skills and that actually that, you know the two sets of skills of people and tech are going to be the growing managerial skills that we need and the growing skills are all employees need to be able to do is to use both of those things. So you know the more that we do remote working, the more empathy we have to have, the more we have to understand differences between people and the different circumstances. So it's an interesting world. Paul: You have companies that are willing to have employees work remotely. It brings down some geographic barriers that historically have been in place when recruiting individuals. So it's going to be interesting obtaining talent, hiring talent remotely, but it opens up new frontiers for employers to go after workers. Nic: Yeah, I think you're entirely right. We've also seen, you know, in some ways that the future comes sooner than we expected. You know, we had the gig economy going on and quite a lot of people self-selecting into being freelance or doing piecemeal work. And obviously there's some times that they're forced into but sometimes people are choosing and I think that a lot of people will quite like working at home and they may choose to go freelance and they may choose to do work in different ways, different rhythms. Maybe three, four day weeks will become more popular. It's going to be a huge, huge shake-up and that's before we even think about other things which we know are coming as long-term trends like AI and other things. So there's a multitude of things coming. And what I do think is that there's a possibility that people will be freer, possibility that there'd be able to work in ways they more want to. And if employers can go with that they will actually get more out of people because when people choose how they want to work they work better. So there are possibilities of sunshine after the rain. Paul: We hope today's insights proved interesting and help provide an early look at what COVID-19's legacy could be when it comes to where and how we work, both now and in the future. Kudos and special thanks to Nic Marks for joining me from London today for this discussion which we hoped has provided some positive practical suggestions on how we can all continue to adapt and manage our way through this turbulent time. Please don't hesitate to contact us here at Robert Half if you have questions or would like additional advice or support. In the interim, please stay safe and well. Bye for now
Wir fassen hier die wichtigsten Thesen und Aussagen zusammen. Die zentrale und abschließende Botschaft sei aber schon an dieser Stelle genannt: Die Zeit nach Corona erfordert zwar große Umstellungen, aber “nach dem Regen kommt wieder Sonnenschein”.
Hinweis: Die Unterhaltung ist auf Englisch. Sie können sich bei Bedarf über das Zahnrad-Symbol unten rechts (Einstellung) deutsche Untertitel einblenden lassen.
Investieren in die Zufriedenheit der Mitarbeiter
Nach den Wochen und Monaten der Kontaktbeschränkungen und dem deshalb vielfach verordneten Home-Office kommen viele Beschäftigte wieder an ihre Arbeitsplätze im Unternehmen zurück. Manche dürfte die zurückliegende Zeit mental mitgenommen haben. Damit verbunden ist oft ein Verlust an Produktivität. Deshalb sollte die psychische Gesundheit der Mitarbeiter im Vordergrund stehen.
Nic Marks rät Unternehmen, in das Wohlbefinden der Belegschaft zu investieren. Denn Untersuchungen zeigten, dass zufriedene Mitarbeiterdas Fünffache an Rendite pro Jahr hinsichtlich Kreativität, Innovation, Produktivität und Zusammenarbeit erbringen. Dieser Fakt wird wegen Corona stärker in den Fokus rücken.
Besonders jetzt ein offenes Ohr haben
Der Weg in die Zukunft der Arbeit wird bis auf Weiteres noch holprig sein können, weil Märkte, Kundenbedürfnisse und Lieferketten in Veränderung begriffen sind. Deshalb sollten Führungskräfte ihren Geschäftspartnern, aber auch ihren Mitarbeitern, jetzt besonders gut zuhören. Das hilft dem Management, Prozesse neu zu koordinieren und in die Organisation zu implementieren.
So können Unternehmen schneller reagieren und agil(er) werden. Das funktioniert in kleineren Betrieben besser, weil dort die Hierarchien flacher als in größeren sind.
Technologische und soziale Kompetenzen stärken
Die Corona-Pandemie hat die fortschreitende Digitalisierung beschleunigt. Deshalb, so Marks, müssen Führungskräfte künftig technisch versierter als bisher sein. Weil die Entwicklung auch die Mitarbeiter betrifft, erhöht sich zusätzlich der Bedarf an sozialen Kompetenzen.
Es wird mehr Empathie gefragt sein, um den Beschäftigten, ihren Aufgaben und ihren Arbeitsbedingungen gerecht zu werden.
Remote-Work gleicht geografische Hindernisse aus
Für Unternehmen wird es wichtiger, neue Mitarbeiter ohne direkten Kontakt zu finden und einzustellen. Das Rekrutieren aus der Ferne erweitert allerdings gleichzeitig den Fokus auf die Kandidaten.
Der Arbeitsmarkt dürfte sich dahingehend verändern, dass mehr Mitarbeiter als heute das Home-Office oder eine freiberufliche Tätigkeit wählen. Die Drei- oder Vier-Tage-Woche oder die Einstellung von Freelancern könnten im Zuge von Future-Work beliebter werden.
Der Vorteil: Menschen sind produktiver, wenn sie freier darüber entscheiden können, wie sie arbeiten. Das dürfte eher wichtig werden, als der Einfluss von künstlicher Intelligenz und anderen Trends.
Wir bei Robert Half kennen die Herausforderungen für aktuelles Recruiting. Möchten Sie bei der Personalsuche auf unsere Expertise zurückgreifen, dann setzen Sie sich mit uns in Verbindung.
