How To Make The Future Of Work Work For Everyone

Companies don’t make up companies; people do. I’ve written in a previous Forbes article, “The success of companies lies in the engagement, productivity and happiness of the people who work there.” I’ve highlighted companies that are showing how taking care of your employees is good for business.

To further prove employee wellbeing is good for the bottom line, new research shows that Fortune 500 companies that put talent first and invest in their people report 50% higher profit margins and growth.

“Dignity at work has become so clear since the beginning of the pandemic, where we really understand what it means to create respect within a workplace,” says Alison Omens, president of JUST Capital, a nonprofit that measures and ranks companies on the issues Americans care about most. “Work is something that brings everyone together. We all know what it means to work hard, to want to take care of our families, to be part of our communities, and then show up in that way. The connection both to good jobs and having dignity in the workplace is really fundamental for business leaders to think about.”

At the same time the workplace is changing, workers’ values and needs are also changing—with rapid advances in AI and automation, five generations working together for the first time ever, distributed teams, and more. Here are some insights from the leaders who collaborated on this new research about how to make the future of work work for everyone.

Put Processes In Place To Listen To Your Employees

Leadership that truly listens to what their employees want and need rather than makes assumptions is vital for a successful business, especially in times of disruption.

Start by creating open lines of communication, such as town hall meetings and employee engagement surveys, to find out what matters most to employees. Managers who have their fingers on the pulse of their employees’ daily experiences are important drivers of workplace culture and employee satisfaction, so train managers in people leadership and reward and track their time and effort with those who report to them in their performance reviews.

“What we found in this research is that it’s important to ask employees how they feel about the workplace by asking them to prioritize what matters most to them,” says Dr. Angela Jackson, founder of Future Forward Institute and author of the upcoming book The Win-Win Workplace: How Thriving Employees Drive Bottom-Line Success. “Questions such as, ‘How is your commute?’ ‘How can we help you?’ or ‘Which benefits do you actually need?’ We saw companies who asked those types of questions and then who operationalized that data, benefited from employee thriving percentages increasing and a correlation to an increase in the bottom line.”

Centering employee voices is especially important in this era of generative AI where other research finds more than 30% of workers could see at least 50% of their occupations tasks disrupted by AI. “There’s a conversation right now about upping productivity by eliminating jobs,” says Omens. “Centering employee voices is such a key part of thinking about how frontline workers can really advance this work in ways that make their jobs better, more productive and more fulfilling, as opposed to just thinking about this as a cost-cutting measure.”

Invest In Ongoing Learning

We’re in the age of continuous learning. The half-life of skills is now 2.5 years for technical skills and less than 5 years for leadership skills. That’s why companies who offer opportunities for upskilling and ongoing learning will help their employees grow and be more resilient at the same time they help their businesses stay competitive.

“You have workers who certainly have responsibilities to be prepared for the future of work,” says Stuart Andreason, executive director of programs at The Burning Glass Institute, an organization that advances research on the future of work. “You have employers who are responsible for making sure that their business is going to run. And that comes with being prepared and having a workforce that’s productive and ready for the future of work that they’re investing in.”

Employers who promote the ways in which they will help their employees grow their skills may be better able to attract and retain talent—such as by providing tuition reimbursement, management training, or certification programs. Dr. Jackson notes that even if an employee doesn’t plan on staying at an organization for 10 years after their employer has invested in their upskilling or training, those companies that do double down on investing in employees often see ‘returners,’ or people coming back to the organization.

“When we think about what employers can do for a modern workplace, investing in training so that an employee can thrive is deeply connected to a business’s success in the future of work,” says Dr. Jackson.

Redefine How You Measure Success

Workers and consumers may be pushing for companies to no longer make the bottom line the only or the biggest measure of success, but also to track the wellbeing of their employees, environmental impact, and community impact. Case in point: We’re seeing a rise in the number of companies who are becoming B corp certified, meaning they’ve met criteria for environmental and social performance and accountability.

Of course making money matters, but the future of success metrics may be moving towards taking a more holistic view of how businesses are also tracking employee wellbeing and social impact.

“This is a chance to use data as a flashlight,” says Andreason. “Many of the things that are happening in human capital analytics can really be informative, but thinking about the business strategy that sits behind all that information is the next step for many organizations.”