Presentation to the Social Now conference in Lisbon, May 2022. In this I talk about the challenges hybrid work presents for communicators and leaders, and how we can overcome these to people can be productive and engaged.
Work is increasingly distributed. Distributed across place, across time. But also across different ways of working. Across different relationships between people and organisations.
In many ways that’s exciting. As we come out of the crisis phase we have an opportunity to radically rethink how work gets done, how we balance work and life more sustainably and perhaps even the nature of work itself.
We have an opportunity to make work better – for people, for organisations, for communities, even for the planet by making it more sustainable.
But for hybrid work to work – and to deliver on that promise and the ambitions we all have for the future – it needs to work for all workers.
Office workers, home workers, people who do a bit of each, frontline workers
Full time workers, part time workers
And diverse workers. A multi-generational workforce.
A workforce made up of people who may not directly work for your company.
And one that increasingly works with and is supported or augmented by technology.
So, in summary, hybrid work is here to stay, and it’s making a complex new world of work that bit more complicated. Work is distributed across place, and time, and across different contractual relationships. Old top-down ways of communication are no longer fit for purpose.
But as people who champion and roll out social tools in the workplace we can play a key role in managing that complexity, and in making hybrid work work – for people and for our organisations.
Enterprise social has to play an essential part in that shift to asynchronicity. But at the same time these platforms can elevate and streamline an increasingly fractured and messy employee – or should I say worker - experience.
But that means we need to put the work in – understanding how and where people work, and what they actually need. Communicating succinctly ourselves, and encouraging others to do the same. Helping people to filter and find what’s relevant.
And above all, being bold and ambitious champions for employee experience for everyone, wherever they’re working.
Thanks, questions