Work Is Not a Place by Linda Nazareth

Author:Linda Nazareth [Nazareth, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2018-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

THE CONSTANT CURATION

Worker shortages, a ton of competition, taxes that are not getting lower, and technology spending that’s required just to keep up. Oh, and a bunch of stressed-out workers to manage, some of whom you may not even see that often—and some of whom may be robots. Who knows what kind of attitude they’re going to cop? Fun times, right?

As we saw in chapter 5, it may not be easy to be a worker in this brave new world, but being a manager isn’t going to be a walk in the park either. The coming years look to be a time of “constant curation” for North American businesses, at least when it comes to their workers. Continuously, managers will have to choose the right mix of technology and human beings to meet their needs. Attracting and retaining the required talent will be a challenge when everyone else wants crackerjack people too—and wants them at a time when the demographic trends are throwing a wrench in the works. Even more trying, though, will be the continuous need to effectively reassess the employee mix. With not all skill sets in demand, difficult decisions about how to retrain workers—or perhaps release them—will be a major issue in the years to come.

In this new, post-automation world, there will be an opportunity—and maybe an obligation—for business to be a leader. Certainly, some of the responsibility will rest with government (as we’ll discuss in chapter 8), but some, by chance or by design, will fall to the private sector. This will pose some interesting challenges and opportunities, but ultimately, the way business chooses to deal with the disruption will go a long way toward shaping the new world of work.

A TIME FOR STRATEGIC PLANNING

Having a plan in place regarding talent may not guarantee success, but it is, at the very least, the first step in creating the best possible future workforce. Strategic planning, particularly as it relates to human resources, is nothing new. These days, though, it is becoming critically important. We are headed toward a juncture where companies will need to make tough decisions about how to allocate resources between technology and workers, and decide exactly what workers their organizations require for long-term success. For large companies, simply engaging the human resources department in the process won’t be enough. Effective planning will require giving HR a much more proactive role.

Before we go any further, it’s worth taking a moment to determine exactly what we mean when we talk about “strategic planning.” Businessdictionary.com puts it this way: “A systematic process of envisioning a desired future, and translating this vision into broadly defined goals or objectives, and a sequence of steps to achieve them … in contrast to long-term planning (which begins with the current status and lays down a path to meet estimated future needs), strategic planning begins with the desired end and works backwards to the current status.”128 It is a good way to think of things. Ideally, companies should be thinking of

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