The Future Workplace: Purpose, Fulfilment, and Wellbeing

2020 brought infinite challenges to businesses. From requiring profound pivots, workforce, and workplace changes to policy changes, the list is long. It somehow altered the human workstyle too. The pandemic has enabled businesses to reset priorities and develop new operating models that are tough to adapt. 

Imagining the future workplace can become a strategic exercise, as it enables organizations to gear themselves up for winning in tomorrow's talent markets. Yet, developing a futuristic scenario must consider upcoming realities ready to have takers.  As norms continue to evolve, organizations must adopt a people-first mindset that prioritizes empathy, resilience, and empowerment.

The future workplace will build and extend upon the ‘digital workplace era’s achievements and developments. Investments and innovations of the past 3-5 years seem to be meeting user demands and expectations. Most people need to leverage technology to undertake their work, leading to perpetual innovation. This is to meet an ever-increasing demand for new functionality.

The rise of the ‘digital native’ as the dominant demographic in the workforce is one of the key factors that can redefine the future workplace. Come to mind next are the fundamental shifts within technology. Over the past years, we have seen extraordinary transitions from major software providers towards the as-a-service model. The provisioning of enhanced functionality immediately available to the workforce sets this apart. And then, the emergence of ‘evergreen’ operations with up-to-date platforms, creating proactive change to management, integration, and support systems.

Tomorrow’s workplace 

Tomorrow’s Workplace starts by imagining what life will be like in the future. Recognizing how we define work itself is rapidly changing, as are the workforce’s actions and behaviors. We have seen this changing speed up in the last 12 months as we adapt to the worldwide pandemic. Working remotely will drive different needs and requirements for how we work and live, or live and work.

Real-time intelligence, smart systems, and adaptive environments are here to make our lives easier and efficient.  This will place a greater demand on artificial intelligence solutions, machine learning, and intelligence at the edge. The complex relationships that are forging between people, machines, and the environment in which they operate together, will change how we live and work forever.

To remain relevant, we must align to the needs of businesses and people to keep in step with the pace of accelerated change. The interconnection between workplace components and the underpinning technology solutions is more pronounced than ever. This means we need to consider how the whole workplace will work in concert with itself.

Employee Purpose, Fulfilment & Wellbeing / Being Human

Employee Experience (EX) is a 2-dimensional way of looking at humans. Now we care about the entire Human Experience (HX) and our people to have a better lifestyle, leading to enhanced productivity. 

The concept of work itself is changing along with the workforce’s actions and behaviors. The work style and the employee wellbeing will become a major focus for organisations to attract, retain and motivate people.

Organisations see early investments in automation and intelligent systems that accelerate growth, reduce costs and provide the operating flexibility to keep driving innovation and support the need for more rapid change. Yet, they should capitalise on this to shift their focus to delivering moments that matter for their people and customers.

As early automation investments pay off, greater focus will be necessary to secure talent from a smaller (but richer) talent pool. Embedded sentiment analysis and AI will help organisations focus better on their people. Like, promoting employee purpose, autonomy, and wellbeing.

Defining Workplaces & Workspaces

Solutions delivering a positive experience is the mantra for organizations to be ready for the digital workplace era. At the least, we need to reflect on the experiences we see in our personal lives whilst going beyond that to meet the new Workplace expectations. Being curious, inventive, and finding new ways to make the complex appear easy must underpin our workplace strategy.

Understanding people and how they perform work allows us to provide the right tools and deliver enhanced experiences. This provides personalised services that allow people to be better at what they do.

Organisations must have people and their experiences at their core. We all live in an experience-driven era. Seeking positive experiences with the technologies and services we use each day is more important than ever. These experiences need to be seamless as people move between the Workplace and the Workspace.

Experiences can basis the data-driven intelligence and automation that provide more computing power. Be it predicting applications and the services people need or connecting them across the globe to collaborate better.

The goal of the Future Workplace!

The future of Workplace capabilities must emphasize the principles of experience, employee wellbeing, and purpose. As we move towards the future world of work, we must not forget the end goal. The evolution of the workplace can combine technologies, and service capabilities but the aim must be clear. Aim of delivering outcomes to our people and organisations. When we enhance our broader workplace services, it must be to strengthen our commitment while exploring the ways to bring the change.