Radically rethink and reinvent work design 

Recent events have taught us that work can transition at light speed — and that agile organisations are better equipped than others to thrive and weather rough storms. Although leaders continue to prepare for the future of work by tracking predictable trends, establishing the agility to take on unforeseeable events has become a priority. Such agility calls for thinking about what work is, how tasks get done and who (or what) is best suited to perform those tasks. This means creating a new operating model that reflects the fluidity of modern work and working arrangements instead of relying on antiquated jobs created for a vastly different world.

In other words, sometimes you have to break down a structure to rebuild it sustainably. That’s the newest, cutting-edge idea in work design. Agile organisations realise that fixed, inflexible job architectures fail to capture the realities of today’s work, account for socioeconomic developments or meet the needs of the people who perform the work — many of whom no longer desire a nine-to-five career.

The status quo is no longer working — and it no longer has to, if leaders are ready to radically rethink the way work is performed.

Work has changed dramatically over the decades, starting simply as jobs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and developing into more complex careers in the 1960s and 1990s.

The early 2000s added gig work to jobs and careers. More work was delivered through flexible arrangements as full-time work began to give way to myriad new work relationships and rising automation. Then, in the pandemic’s wake, the constructs of traditional employment began to dissolve even more rapidly. Organisations the world over were unexpectedly forced to embrace greater flexibility and accelerated digitalisation.

What’s next? We’re beginning to think of work in unprecedented terms — focusing on the skills, networks, experiences and capabilities that underpin work. These can take on many different forms (jobs, assignments, gigs, etc.) and can be performed by a plurality of work options (employees in full-time roles, employees in agile talent pools, external gig workers, outsourcing, robotic process automation, social robotics, etc.). In other words, sometimes you have to break down a structure to rebuild it sustainably. That’s the newest, cutting-edge idea in work design. Agile organisations realise that fixed, inflexible job architectures fail to capture the realities of today’s work, account for socioeconomic developments or meet the needs of the people who perform the work — many of whom no longer desire a nine-to-five career.

Given this evolution and the demand for greater agility, we need a change in how we think about work design. Designing sustainable and resilient work requires deconstructing jobs and processes into tasks and activities. This allows us to redeploy tasks to optimal work options and reconstruct new, more impactful jobs and processes while clearly understanding the implications for skills and capabilities.

Redesigning work may help resolve common challenges facing organisations around the world and across industries:

Trends drive transformation. A confluence of changing priorities is creating challenges and, in turn, opportunities for organisations to evolve. Let’s look at some of the global talent trends calling for a new approach to work, paving the way for organisational redesign¹:

Add these talent trends to what’s going on in the world — including skyrocketing inflation and the prioritisation of environmental, social and governance (ESG) sustainability — and it’s clear that a new mindset is needed. Organisations must create the agility necessary to retain key talent, stay competitive, meet stakeholder expectations and bring their strategies to life.

Progressive organisations will embrace today’s challenges, seeing them as opportunities to prepare for a better tomorrow. They will change how they design work — bending the demand side of the work equation to match it to available talent rather than the other way around.

To keep the workers they need, leaders tend to fall back on conventional solutions — for example, paying more. Although pay remains a key factor in why employees stay, a newer approach is to ride the momentum of post-pandemic flexibility, offering more options around where and when work is done.

Some leading organisations are going further — deconstructing jobs into tasks and skills, pulling untenable roles apart, and delivering work in an increasingly agile way. By focusing on the skills and work that are needed instead of on fixed, legacy job descriptions, these organisations will tear down the rigidity of the traditional structure. In its place, they’ll build new, malleable organisations that can deploy the right talent working in the right ways in the right places at the right time and cost. These agile organisations will be able to adapt swiftly to whatever the future brings.

Leading organisations will also be more human centric. This means focusing on attracting and retaining the right people by offering flexibility that aligns with workers’ personal and professional goals and providing plenty of options around where and when work is done.

A major oil and gas company redesigned the work on its oil rigs to significantly improve performance and the work experience. Activities were centralised (through the use of sensors embedded in equipment so they could be monitored remotely), shifted (from permanent onsite workers to shared services teams for maintenance), augmented (through the use of AI) and eliminated (through the introduction of robotics). Automation also created new activities, such as electrical/mechanical engineering and data analytics. There was no reduction in headcount as talent was upskilled and reskilled from legacy to new activities.

By deconstructing jobs, redeploying tasks and reconstructing new jobs, the company realised a 45% improvement in profitability — just one example of the benefits of work design.

Redesigning work starts with transforming the way you think about work and jobs. Here’s how can you shift your mindset.

Work can be redesigned through the following process:

Traditional jobs won’t disappear anytime soon, but they will diminish in prevalence over time — so organisations that invest in work design now position themselves to reap significant returns for years to come. Modern work design has many benefits. It boosts agility, efficiency, productivity, attraction and retention, talent visibility, optimal adoption of technology, and organisation performance. The right work operating system, combined with clarity on current and future skills needed, can make a significant difference. It can reduce time-to-fill, offer insights into emerging and declining work, and establish a flexible, scalable structure that can adapt to evolving talent trends and the many changes in the world around us.

 

¹ All statistics from Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2022–23 Study unless otherwise noted.