At SWAYworkplace, we believe the Future of Work is in our uniquely human capabilities like creative problem solving and collaborative work. With AI taking over our repetitive tasks, we have more time to do the work that makes us valuable. Now we need the skills to communicate that value through digital mediums.
The Future of Work no longer requires skills you learned in school—technology moves too quickly for that. Instead, we’re expected to become fluent in new software quickly, build trust over video instead of expensive, corporate-paid dinners, and collaborate with teammates at all levels of the company hierarchy.
These “soft skills” are flexible and make up the Future of Work: they can be applied to any industry, allowing you to pivot your career when the unexpected arises.
These five skills will take you far in your current workplace and make you a critical part of any team in the future.
Emotions may be the most misunderstood component in the World of Work. We believe they hold us back and make us less efficient, but the opposite is true.
Understanding your emotions is the key to building resilience, channeling stress, keeping you motivated, and helping you stay focused. If you develop your emotional intelligence, you’ll unlock productivity and become a better teammate in the office.
One of the big misconceptions about remote or flexible workers is that they only want to work in their pajamas watching Netflix. While the forced remote work environment of 2020 may have dissolved that perception, building a routine now lands on the individual and requires a new degree of personal responsibility.
Our workplace culture is experiencing a crisis of trust. Many professionals are still uncomfortable working remotely, missing the easy trust-building exercises of staying slightly later than everyone else at the office or grabbing a coffee for the boss on their way in. With remote or flexible work, you need to earn trust through actionable work, managed expectations, and clear communication.
The world of work was forced to change -- some of us have been waiting for this change for a long time, while others want everything to go back to the way it was before COVID-19. Every day, we learned how to adjust to make room for homeschooling or alternating video calls with our partners. Looking forward, some may never return to the office full-time, and businesses have accepted that, yes, employees can be productive when working from home.
The future of work is here! Through 2020’s “crash course” in flexible work, we've gotten over that initial loneliness of working from home and demonstrated the efficiency of remote work. 2020 taught us to communicate better and set boundaries, while managing family needs and fear for the future.
For the past few months, all offices have been tentatively pushing back their in-office start date. Some companies decided early on that no one would be back on-site before January 2021, while others suggested September… and then October… before admitting we simply don’t know when it will be safe for in-person office work.
In the flexible workplace, it's up to you to manage your personal energy effectively and work the hours that work best for you. Of course, while virtual or home schooling, sometimes those hours may be dictated by your child's schedule, but you can still have some control over your energy levels by asking yourself a few questions.
Flexible workplace environments are here to stay. After seeing how well work-from-home arrangements worked in an emergency, many employees requested to remain at home permanently or return to work with a flexible arrangement. Where you work ultimately shouldn’t matter, only that your work gets done.
As we continue our journey through COVID19, we are all seeking a return to normalcy. But for many, working remotely opened a whole new way to work, providing flexibility for your family, time saved commuting, and maybe even a new workout routine.
Anticipating the return to school and childcare will be a slow rollout, some employers are allowing staff to continue working from home through the end of the year or permanently. Put your boundaries in place now to ensure success in the coming months as we "reimagine" our new normal.
The world of work is changing every day. While school closures made the COVID transition to remote work far less than ideal, many employees may want to maintain flexibility once childcare is back in place.
Flexible workplaces actually perform better in the world of work because each component has been streamlined to provide the most benefit to the worker and the company, while ultimately improving the customer experience through balanced and engaged employees.
Over the past few months, all employers were forced to combat the virus with a work-from-home structure and allowance for flexible schedules due to the lack of childcare. But when the world returns to normalcy (and your children have their usual routine for school or daycare), what parts of this flexible workplace do we want to continue?
The optimistic metaphor “every cloud has a silver lining” feels like a weak attempt to apply a cliché to the wound felt around the world. Every facet of life deeply challenges us as we endure an uninvited and intense change in our day-to-day. There is no daily practice more acutely disrupted than the routine of work.
Modern companies try to incorporate work/life balance in different ways: some have fun treats like a cold brew tap or Friday lunches, while others allow employees to play ping pong throughout the day. But do any of these practices actually equal balance?
Career and personal life “balance” rarely equals 50/50, and many employees feel liberated when they let go of making balance happen.
Work/life balance doesn’t exist, or at the very least looks different for every person. While one person may have an entrepreneurial mindset driving them to fill their free time with work, another may only want to work during his or her child’s school hours. Either person can accomplish the tasks their job requires, but their schedule will look different.
In last month's blog, we discussed the existence of invisible bias towards women in the workplace which ultimately creates invisible barriers leading to fewer women in leadership roles across most companies. As a next step, we need to evaluate the physical nature of the prevailing model of work, the current standard for where and how we work.
