Managers need to embrace the uncertainty of the new workplace

Management consultants and gurus tend to exaggerate what they like to call “paradigm shifts,” but it’s hard to argue with the central premise of Julia Hobsbawm’s new book, Job requirements. “The scale of disruption we are experiencing now has not been seen in the workplace in a hundred years,” he writes at the beginning. About how chaotic and unpredictable the world of work has suddenly become since the pandemic accelerated change in habits combined with the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, it shows how far things have come in just two years since her previous book. Office nowhere. Hobsbawn, who has been writing and advising on the world of work for many years, was brave enough in the job to suggest – when others were predicting a quick return to normal – that things would not end where they started. , but she could not have expected either the pace or the extent of the changes taking place.

Helpfully, around the time the book appeared, Hobsbawm began a regular column – under the same title as this new book – and examples are everywhere to illustrate the development as it happened. At the same time, she makes it clear that she believes that managers who are already arguing that the shift to more flexible ways of working and the attitudes of younger generations of workers are not leading to culture development or increased productivity are wasting their time. The working assumption that you can put the flexibility genie back in the bottle would prove to be one of the biggest management mistakes of the post-pandemic economy, he writes.

I’m not saying they think it’s easy to solve. “To be fair, hybrid work is difficult to manage and a headache for managers precisely because it’s not universal,” he writes. Instead, managers will have to decide which jobs can be done flexibly and which ones require presentation.

Of course, flexible working is not the only issue causing turbulence. AI has a potentially much greater impact – particularly on educated knowledge workers. Describing the arrival of ChatGPT as a “game changer” for the white-collar world in much the same way that automation and outsourcing were to their blue-collar counterparts decades earlier, he says it “started an identity crisis that we’re only beginning to understand.”

This is perhaps not so surprising. Technology has already had such a far-reaching effect on what happens especially in offices that, combined with the prevalence of executive speak, many job titles are almost incomprehensible to all but those who own them. If AI doesn’t take jobs so much as replace them (as the more optimistic proponents suggest), then this anxiety will only increase. As such, it will only add to the sense of upheaval in the workplace – and headaches for managers.

Hobsbawm herself hopes these changes will create an “extraordinary opportunity”. This is perhaps because – as she relates – she did not attend university and instead of hoping that a degree would lead to success and status, she built a career through networking and risk-taking. But he believes leaders and managers will need to change their behavior to get the best out of employees who may not share an approach to work that matches their own. One particular challenge involves creating what one commercial real estate expert quoted in the book calls “superior workplace experiences” as a way to encourage workers to return to work. The role of free coffee in this should probably not be underestimated.

More seriously, employers need to realize that running the modern workplace will require soft skills in addition to technical skills. Just because it’s possible to track time spent online doesn’t mean it’s the best way to motivate people. Leaders must respond to this period of uncertainty primarily by embracing it. In fact, says Hobsbawm, they need to express uncertainty as much as belief.

Unlike those who propose a universal basic income, Hobsbawm is convinced that work will remain part of the fabric of society – although “the details are still up in the air”. We should look forward to hearing more from her on the front lines about what that detail looks like.