Hannah Houston is a behavioural analyst at Canvas8 and holds a BSc in criminology. She loves learning languages, whether that be coding, foreign, or body language, and is passionate about human behaviour. Outside of work you can find her walking or stroking a dog.

In 2020, the much-hailed future of work finally arrived. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, large-scale 

 went from a possibility to an international norm in a matter of weeks. Mass digitisation changed how we work, communicate, and collaborate – and transformed people’s relationships to their jobs. By September, 

 in the US agreed that the shift to working from home had saved them time and increased comfort, and more than six in ten said it had improved their daily routines and brought them closer to their loved ones.

However, for many others, the shifting landscape of work spelled more precarity rather than increased stability. According to 

, there could be as many as a quarter of a billion people worldwide who are unemployed by the end of 2020. The effects of the pandemic are 

, disproportionately affecting people from structurally disadvantaged communities. This may create new responsibilities for brands, organisations, and employers. In 2021, human capital strategy is set to take on new meaning as people demand even more flexibility and balance, grapple with changing levels of empowerment, and redefine the links between engagement, wellbeing, and productivity.

In this chapter of Canvas8’s 2021 Expert Outlook, Alec Ross, the author of 

, explains the changing nature of the gig economy; Vipula Gandhi, managing partner at Gallup, breaks down new employee expectations surrounding management, feedback, and performance; and Dr. Heejung Chung, a reader in sociology and social policy at the University of Kent, suggests that what people value about work is rapidly changing.

Gig workers are becoming more empowered, so they’ll expect better benefits

and former senior advisor for innovation to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

We're in the midst of a massive acceleration in the future of work. Trends that we thought would take five to seven years to manifest will now take place in two to three years instead. For instance, labour is becoming more project-based and less employer-based substantially faster than we’d projected, partly driven by people working from home and becoming untethered from physical workspaces. Particularly among knowledge workers, we are also seeing a spectacular de-densifying of talent in urban cores like San Francisco, London, Tel Aviv, and Shanghai, as well as in specific zones within these cities. This leads to a psychological, emotional, sociological, and economic decoupling from central employers and accelerates project-based work and learning.

The gig economy is simultaneously evolving and devolving. During the pandemic, we’ve seen some gig workers become viewed as indispensable. The gig economy is also evolving to incorporate increasingly specialised forms of work. People in industries like engineering, for instance, are now able to heavily curate their work, performing very expensive forms of labour in a distributed, project-based way. However, it’s also devolving in the sense that we are seeing less gig-based work on some of the big platforms like Uber and Airbnb. To invoke neoclassical economics, supply is higher but there is less demand. People who previously would have done employer-based work are pushing into gig-based work because they have to. We’re seeing a 

-like devolution of certain forms of gig work and a 

-like evolution of high-end forms of gig work. And over the next decade, individuals on the high-end are going to be operating from a position of empowerment – and 

A recession could set back those who’ve fought to gain ground at work

This is the third big recession of the last 20 years – the first was the dotcom implosion that began in March 2000 and the second was the 2008 financial crisis. In recessions, below-average workers become unemployed, average workers become underemployed, above-average workers migrate towards high-performing organisations, and the top 5% of talent remain insulated from the disruption. Corporations are going to be increasingly ruthless in light of this increased competition. Previously, there was enormous demand for employer-based benefits like mentoring or 30 minutes of yoga for every 30 minutes of work. In a post-COVID world, this employee leverage will decrease – not just because of lower economic output and GDP, but also because of the sheer numbers of knowledge workers coming out of developing economies. For every hyper-privileged 28-year-old from the Boston suburbs, there's somebody coming out of a substantially less-developed area in India, Eastern Europe, or East Africa, who is willing to outwork them, placing fewer demands on their employer. However, star performers will be as valuable in the COVID- and post-COVID world as they would have been from 2014-2019. If you’re competing for the top 5% of global talent, you’re going to give them yoga if they want it.

Employers are going to need great human capital strategy. If you’re producing goods and services that are highly innovative, deeply specialised, and are overwhelmingly defined by a creativity or knowledge core, then your crown jewels are the people who comprise your human capital. Seattle-based start-up 

 is a great example of brilliant labour management. COVID-19 could have been a tsunami for them, with labour mobility dropping to nearly zero, but they have coped thanks to a model that is simultaneously agile and stabilising. And the new CEO of Goldman Sachs, David Solomon, is also incredibly sharp. He has done a series of things that no one expected him to do, but which have fundamentally re-oriented both the bank and its key partners. They have announced they won’t underwrite a single IPO for a company that doesn’t have a non-White, non-male board member. This is actually a great example of a company associated with old-school Wall Street power that is helping pivot not just itself, but the system and its larger stakeholder group into the 2020s and 2030s, helping bring about generational change.

As WFH has become the norm, switching off has gotten harder

Managers are key to retention, so they’ll need to step up to become performance coaches

, managing partner at Gallup and member of the Global Management Committee

COVID-19 ushered in the future of work we were likely already on track to realise. Before COVID-19, only 

 of the population actually reported working exclusively from home. At the first peak of the pandemic, we had 

 reporting exclusively working from home. And the majority of employees actually prefer working remotely – only about 

 want to continue to work from the office. The rest don't want to return to the office for various reasons. Companies need to think about the wide-ranging implications these preferences have for employee value propositions, organisational policies, real estate, and, of course, personal wellbeing.

 globally for 15 years, tracking how people feel in the everyday and how they evaluate life. When COVID-19 struck in April, the percentage of people who we classified as ‘thriving’ came down precipitously. It was the 

. We have since started doing better, but levels of stress, exhaustion, and worry have increased. With mental health taking centre stage, organisations are trying to ensure that managers are keeping in touch and are ready with offers of effective support.

High employee engagement is always a big business advantage – and it’s an even bigger one during a recession. An organisation can have great strategies behind market leadership and own the technology to support that strategy, but the rubber really meets the road on how its managers are inspiring and driving performance at the team level. Managers are responsible for 

 of the variance in team engagement (and thus, performance), and they are key to optimising it. But at the moment, the science of management has outstripped the practice of management.

The reason we did very well post-March 2020 was because we all had built trusted relationships with our colleagues over months, years, and decades of working together

Meaningful feedback is the actionable part of employee engagement, and when people work from home, it becomes much more important for driving businesses forward. 

 who said they’d received meaningful feedback while working from home for four or more days were engaged. The importance of the manager in providing this ongoing, meaningful feedback is hugely critical and magnified under the remote working arrangement, but many are struggling with their own inspiration and engagement. In 2021, business leadership and human resources will have to focus on upskilling managers and supporting them, making sure that they have buy-in around their own roles in boosting organisational performance. Leaders and managers will need to become performance coaches.

Remote work is great for self-reported productivity, but less so for innovation. This raises questions around its long-term sustainability. Creativity, collaboration, and agility are not going out of fashion anytime soon, but these need people meeting spontaneously, in person. 2021 may not be a normal year either – many companies plan to let people work from home indefinitely. So, how do you brainstorm? How do you whiteboard? The future will be a hybrid model of in-office and remote. Companies will have to thoughtfully define the futures of their organisations – decisions should be closely aligned to unique needs. In tech, 

 was one of the first organisations to actually go remote forever. Microsoft followed up with an announcement around its ability to go long-term remote. Their competitors are trying to invite people to offices to encourage collaboration, innovation, and agility – but are not finding success just yet.

Trust has helped us survive 2020 because we built that trust in a pre-pandemic environment. The reason we did very well post-March 2020 was because we all had built trusted relationships with our colleagues over months, years, and decades of working together. So, when we were thrown into an environment where we didn't see people in person, we were still able to trust them. But in-person connections are crucial to building it and new team members change this whole dynamic in terms of collaboration. That's why I believe that hybrid systems are the way forward. We need some time together – we just have to plan it better than before to ensure that we're directing our time together towards the highest value activities. This pandemic will have winners and losers, and we all have our work cut out for us at this unprecedented time.

Management skills are evolving as teams shift to virtual environments

People want autonomy over how and where they work

, reader in sociology and social policy at the University of Kent

For many, the pandemic has reinforced the desire for flexibility. There has been an increase in people working from home and wanting to reduce their hours to spend more time with family and work flexibly on the whole. Approximately half the working population work from home now, and probably more than half have actually worked flexi-time during the pandemic. A lot of retail brands are using staggered hours for their staff, ensuring that there are fewer customers at any given time so that staff don't all have to rush in at the same time and have the same shifts. We’re going to see even more of that as this stretches on.

We will also see more costs of the economic downturn. Furlough systems will continue, but with so much insecurity, there will be much more competition within and across companies in terms of who's going to survive this pandemic and recession. There will be sectoral differences, demographic differences, and social position differences in terms of who is affected. Young women and ethnic minorities will be heavily at risk. Thinking about 

, work experience might have improved remotely because it means people suffer less from heterosexual 

. At home, in their own spaces, minorities spend less effort on the performance of ‘fitting in’ at work and can conserve that energy.

Work culture could be shifting to something more similar to the flexible, remote, and 

 of places like the Netherlands and Germany. But this will also play out according to a segmentation of the labour market. Professionals with stable jobs will be prioritising work-life balance and enjoying that, whereas for people in more vulnerable sectors – those who are perhaps younger and without so much negotiating power – pandemic insecurity will mean that competition has intensified. Still, this could also be a great time for restructuring and rethinking work. What are the most prioritised elements of work in our society and how can they be done better?

Good managers know that ensuring wellbeing is crucial to the maintenance of a productive, well-functioning company – emails coming in at 1am in the morning are not conducive in terms of productivity

There are perpetually blurred boundaries between work and non-work. Even through social media, young people have to present employable versions of themselves. In countries that typically work very long hours – like the US, South Korea, Japan, and the UK – the culture is not only to work over 60 hours a week in the office, but then also to go out with work colleagues. But work buddy drinking sessions are not 

 part of work – in fact, that’s where people network. Counting those hours, people were working over a hundred hours a week. And working from home, with even fewer boundaries between work and private time, means that some people will inevitably end up working even harder with the recession, competition, and economic survival in mind.

Companies need to be thinking of even better ways of supporting the workforce. At the moment, the majority is at the brink of burnout and mental health is suffering. If people are feeling the urge to put in long hours at the expense of their private lives, then leadership needs to be sending different messages around what it means to contribute to the company. There could also be more support for ethnic minorities and other disadvantaged groups. Good managers know that ensuring wellbeing is crucial to the maintenance of a productive, well-functioning company – emails coming in at 1am in the morning are not conducive in terms of productivity. Company cultures need to enable wellbeing, rather than falling into the trap of well-into-the-night working.

In terms of the education sector, moving forward, the roles of universities will have to evolve. Universities are not meant to be institutions that teach people how to do jobs. Their goal is to create socially-aware, creative-thinking individuals who have the thinking capacity to solve problems. Given the state of flux that we’re in, university education should be really about what kind of capacities and exploration it enables in people. Critical thinking and problem-solving will be in demand post-recession.

Alec Ross is the bestselling author of Industries of the Future and was formerly the senior advisor for innovation to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He was awarded the US Department of State’s Distinguished Honor Award for his service and is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Bologna. Prior to his service in government, he was a social entrepreneur and ran technology and media policy for Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign.

Vipula Gandhi is a managing partner at Gallup and a member of Gallup’s Global Management Committee. She leads the organisation’s business strategy, performance, and teams for financial services, professional services, and the healthcare industries. Her work helps people reach their full potential and equips them with world-class organisational practices.

Dr. Heejung Chung is a reader in sociology and social policy at the University of Kent, where she also directs the Welfare State Research Cluster. Her research specialisms include flexibility and work-life balance in labour markets, and she is a recipient of the ESRC Future Leaders Award.

Global

How is the gig economy evolving? What is the future of work-life balance? And how can managers drive performance remotely? In this part of the 2021 Expert Outlook, we speak to three experts about how people are adapting to the massive changes taking place in work environments.

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