With the normal office environment blown up by COVID-19, a lot of us wonder what the future of work will look like. Will we ever go back to the 9 to 5 workday, five days a week? Will we stay at home? Many of us have become quite used to working from our homes and have become comfortable with video calls. How long will this last?
We reached out to someone who has written the book on the future of work (see The Future of Work: 7 Trends You Cannot Ignore). Let us introduce Ian Khan. Khan lives in the Greater Toronto Area and calls himself a futurist.
What is a futurist?
Everybody has this question. I can say is what a futurist is not. No futurist is a prediction machine. A futurist is someone who can look at data, at the evolution of something—say, a technology, or economics, or health care. They can put all that in a metaphorical blender and make an interpretation of all that data. I tend to look into technology, especially emerging technologies and their impact, and try to help organizations understand what they are doing and where they are heading. My organization has a future readiness score that helps businesses, government organizations to understand where they are with respect to future readiness with a KPI [key performance indicator], a metric. What you cannot measure, you cannot optimize.
What is the future of work?
We’re in the process of learning more about that ourselves, quite honestly. Last year, when this pandemic started, a majority of companies and people just shut down, physically and mentally. They had no idea on what is going to happen next. Some industries did not know if they would be able to work remotely. Take accountants, for example. They never thought they were going to be able to work remotely, but here we are. Many industries have now found a way to work remotely. It’s just a matter of pushing ourselves to learn new things and to test our abilities to do things differently. The future is going to be a hybrid work environment, or call it blended or virtual. Different industries will find a different balance. Before the pandemic, many companies were already virtual and they were just doing fine.
What has this done to accelerate the trend towards digitization?
Before the pandemic, many industries were hesitating to go the extra mile, and digitization was one of those extra miles. We’ve seen during the pandemic from many statistics what has been done in the two to five years before the pandemic. In the last few months, there has been a rapid acceleration in the adoption of technology—overcoming roadblocks they may have had. For example, they are asking, “How can we do things better?” How can we use video conferences?” “How can we do remote working to a much greater extent?”
This hasn’t happened in the last few years. It’s taken decades for us to become this industrialized society, to make this structure of work. You go to work in the morning, you work at a company. There’s a facility for you; you come back. That has been how work has been structured in modern society. Then the pandemic comes and challenges everything. You cannot go to work anymore. You’re not going to be able to leave your house. You’re not going to be able to meet people. How will you adapt what you are doing—your bottom line, driving revenue, earning a living … doing whatever you need to do.
For the first few months, it was terrible. We were paralyzed. We couldn’t think of what to do. I held a bunch of livestream sessions, bringing different groups of industries together and having debates. This was in March, April last year. The pandemic was young. We were asking, how do we come out of this pandemic that’s moving in on us? We did that for 5 to 10 months. Nobody had answers. Some people declined to take part in those live streams. It was too early. They didn’t know what to say and discuss. But the discussion served a purpose. When you talk to people, when you engage with different industries, there’s a common understanding, a realization. We’ve actually done a lot. We’ve made progress. We’ve adopted digital technology, started using collaboration software—not just Zoom calls but collaborating on different platforms.
Can you address Zoom fatigue?
There was some “Zoom fatigue” several months into the pandemic. There was uncertainty about this new setup. I think that’s over now. There’s no more Zoom fatigue. It’s now just part of life.
Adapting to change may even be getting boring. We’ve done really, really well with change. There is a lot to do—still mountains be conquered, but in terms of technology adoption, we have done really well. Yes, there are pockets of industry still struggling. Small businesses that closed because of restrictions open to a complex maze, with different situations in different cities. In the U.S., there are different regulations in different states. In Canada, it also varies.
What is the future of work for those professions that cannot work from home, like nurses, front-line workers, factory workers, construction workers, etc.?
There’s a large number of professionals who cannot work remotely all the time. I have a friend who is a robotic surgeon, and he has to be physically near the patient and save lives during the pandemic. Elective surgeries may be delayed because hospitals are attending to the pandemic, and that caseload is building, but people still need surgery. Surgeons need to be in the operating room. We have a big problem in manufacturing industries. Not all factories are automated—they don’t all have robots. There’s still a lot of manual work to be done. Factories are being shut down.
If you look at many of the jobs with computers—the desk jobs—all of them have really benefited from the productivity tools, remote sharing and cloud utilities. But when the job calls for delivering things and physical tasks, those jobs are still suffering. Robotic surgery has not advanced to the point that a surgeon can be at home and perform surgery. We have military drones. The drone operator can sit at their desk and fly a drone, but somebody still has to fix that drone and situate it. I don’t think everything will be automated in the future so that we’re all sitting at home. It’s not possible.
What about bosses who say they can’t lead their workers anymore? How does leadership and management have to adjust?
I definitely feel the mindset change in leadership. Leaders are under pressure. The traditional mindset of managing a company and monitoring people is under threat. The remote working situation has changed internal dynamics. Remote workers are working from home. They may be working longer hours. They may be unable to disconnect. They may feel they are constantly working. There are psychological effects of the pandemic that management now needs to handle.
Some companies have called back their workforce and plan on resuming operations. I think leadership has to adapt to what the pandemic has created, which is a different form of leadership. We can’t lead the same way we did 30 years or 50 years ago. In this last year, many things have had to change. Because the needs of the workers have changed. Their perception, their requirements of doing work have changed. Maybe they don’t want to work in a company where they have to work from 9 to 5 anymore. They may not want to spend two hours every day commuting. They may take this opportunity to find a different career. Workers of the information age have that choice now. Management will have to decide if they want to meet this worker halfway—give them what they want, change the work conditions, because they still need the talent. There is a shortage of talent in many industries. It’s hard to attract new talent. Companies have a lot of investment in time, money, energy into training [workers] and they don’t want them to leave. So, leaders will have to make some decisions. In a post-pandemic world, leaders will have to be more people conscious, really know who is working for them and why certain people, or a certain generation, is working for them.
They will have to know what kind of talent they are attracting and retaining. Are their employees just there for a paycheck, or do they really feel part of the organization, the mission and the culture? I talk a lot about this in my Future Readiness framework. We have a big pillar called “People” and why the future of an organization depends on how people are treated. We go into retaining people, attracting them, rewarding them, acknowledging success and failure and really, really working with them to see what works best for the organization. Leaders have to go back to the drawing board. They have to realize that corporate policy has to change—because the world has changed. They will find the friction in different elements of the workforce.
How will this affect our downtowns full of office high-rises?
Our cities [Toronto and San Francisco] have both been shaped by people doing 9 to 5 work. Their skylines would look completely different if we didn’t all have 9 to 5 work schedules. The 9 to 5 schedule is impacted right now and it will be impacted at least over the short term. I don’t see us fully returning to 9 to 5 this year or even in 2022. There will definitely be a percentage of the workforce that does not want to do 9 to 5. Having said that, there are many who want to get out of the home. They want the 9 to 5 because it gets them focused. For them, it’s business as usual—they’re productive, they’re doing all the things they need to do to keep their jobs, their careers. Of course, it’s dependent on the industry. Financial services, for example. It is very time sensitive. The stock exchange opens and brokers start to work at that exact time. Some industries cannot afford to not to do 9 to 5. They have to do 9 to 5. But whether they’re doing it from home or from the workplace? It’s hard to predict. It may take another six to eight to twelve months before that type of workplace really comes back. With the vaccination rollout, cases going down, that’s definitely helping the 9 to 5 come back in many industries. There’s always going to be a pushback from some people, a tiny minority. They still want to work from home, be around their families. They like the downtime. They will end up changing careers to a huge extent—find other alternatives to their workplaces or work out an arrangement with more flexibility.
An organization’s leader will have to figure out the best policies for employees across the board and how to enable keeping workers, and at the same time, getting what the organization wants. Look at the IT industry. I was working with a global telecommunication company not long ago and their biggest problem now is they have too many projects and not enough people who can execute. It’s a good problem to have. They don’t have a choice but to give the talented people they’ve hired flexibility so they don’t leave and go somewhere else to get it. These are valuable employees with degrees, credentials and expertise. They have choices. They can knock on the doors of Google, HP or Microsoft … whoever is hiring. Their qualifications dictate to a great extent in certain industries what they end up doing and their choices. A person in a manufacturing plant or a process engineer can’t really do that. The process engineer has to be in the plant, turning levers, pressing buttons, making sure everything is running.
It depends on the industry as well. When you’re talking about downtowns—San Francisco, Toronto or any major city—there is a problem of empty office space that will continue for some time—at least the next couple of years. Many companies have let their space go. I don’t see 100 percent occupancy returning for the next two to three years.
Do you think the workspace itself will be more fluid? Workers with “hot desks” instead of permanently assigned desks and offices?
People genuinely like a routine, having a base, a sense of belonging, so I don’t see companies going 100 percent to “hot desks.” It might happen in some jobs, like sales. It depends on the structure of the teams within an organization. But I don’t see a lot of that happening. There is definitely a new design of workplaces going on, with socially distanced workstations. There’s an entire new technology stack of sanitization equipment that can be now installed, including UV and hand sanitizers. There’s a growth industry in new products and services.
I want to have my own private desk where I’ve got my own food, coffee, pencils and pens and that sense of belonging.
Do you see any trends towards homes being designed to be workplaces?
Not yet, but I’ve heard a lot about residential properties needing a redesign. I believe the home environment has to change. We do not know what other pandemic-type events will hit us—when, and the speed at which they will happen. We do know that something like this pandemic could happen again, and our everyday life will be disrupted. We’re good at adapting to something like that now. We know we can work from home. We know kids can have a virtual education. It was just a matter of switching to Zoom.
It has been a challenge for some people working from home—people with small families, for example, and also for families in general. If both parents are working and the kids are in school, there could be four or five people at home who are either in their bedrooms or huddled in different spaces they’ve created—different work desks or in homes that are ill-equipped for work, with no clear-cut demarcation of areas where you can study or relax. Sometimes you want to be structured. Sometimes you want to be at the desk and work and not be on a couch to study and work. I think that structure needs to come to residential properties. I’m hearing how design will tend to go more towards having dedicated spaces for work, more structured office areas or work or study areas within homes. There may be smaller cubby type units within homes like you see in libraries where you can be in your own space, make your calls. Kids could have their own dedicated space, too. Imagine three kids, each of them on a Zoom call with their school. It’s impossible to have them all in the same room. Homes have to evolve to handle these situations. But in in the big cities—San Francisco, or Boston, Toronto, New York, for example—you can’t really add extra space to our apartment or make more rooms. It’s already tight. It will be interesting to see what kind of urban design architects come up with. I imagine new buildings and developments with dedicated virtual office setups for the family or virtual schooling systems.
Finally, do you think of the strain working from home is putting on our technology infrastructure? Can you talk about the Internet and 5G?
I think of bandwidth. Speaking broadly, across the world, not everybody has broadband access that is overloaded with streaming content. It’s true that the Netflixes of the world are using up a lot of bandwidth, but there’s the available bandwidth that has also grown. Telcos are rolling out more bandwidth, reaching out to more areas. Companies like Starlink let you install a dish antenna to get satellite signals for your home for $100 or $200. You’ve got dedicated bandwidth available at your home. That’s a big, big breakthrough from the days of waiting for the telephone company to add a line for you. That is especially welcome in rural areas where there was no broadband. 5G is still at a very initial phase in its rollout. It’s going to be a few years—maybe 10 years—before 5G technology is being used across the world. Even then, we’ll have some communities who won’t have it. 5G is great. It promises a lot of speed and capacity. I have written books on it. Some of the issues we have now, like latency, go away with 5G. I’m confident that 5G will solve the bandwidth challenge. But I think in North America, in general, Internet speeds are not a problem. Internet access is expensive in many parts of the world and it could be much cheaper. Telcos should be pressured to roll out faster services.
Mr. Khan, thank you very much for your time today and the insight you have provided. Do you have any final words for engineers specifically?
I’m an engineer myself (instrumentation technology). I’m very excited about the incredible things that engineers are doing right now. From software engineering to hardware and sensors to innovative companies (like Tesla). There’s so much happening right now that I think we are in a golden era of engineering. Engineers have access to tools such as machine learning and artificial intelligence and other incredible technologies and manufacturing processes that [they] didn’t have before. I’m excited for those who are considering engineering as a career—those in universities and studying to become engineers. I think it’s a great career choice right now.