The Future of Work: Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization 
is a book concerning the recent trends, mainly related to changes at a rapid pace due to shifting attitudes, behaviors, social trends and advanced technology.
Jacob Morgan, a 3x Best-Selling Author, Futurist, and Leading Keynote Speaker on the Future of Work, Employee Experience, & Leadership, explores and analyzes the key factors influencing employee experience and offers the tools for the businesses to survive and thrive in the future of change.
The central idea of the book is that business leaders need to adapt and embrace change to stay competitive.
FIVE TRENDS SHAPING THE WORLD OF WORK
The future workplace will reflect social and technological trends and evolving views about what employment might mean in the near future.
The factors that determine the way people work include:
1. Social media and the Internet have changed how people behave in their professional and personal lives. For example, people now feel more comfortable sharing information about themselves online than they used to share offline in previous decades.
2. New technologies drastically change work. As cloud-based technology improves, workers will take tech-related decisions into their own hands; they will be able to choose the programs they’d like to use at work. Employers can access much more data and use that data to their organizations’ advantage.
3. By 2025, millennials will make up more than 50% of the workforce. This new generation holds starkly different ideas; they expect companies they work for to share their values and to focus on sustainability and collaboration.
4. Thanks to technology, connection and mobility are growing exponentially. People now can work remotely with no loss of efficiency.
5. Improved transportation systems ease the way for a business to recruit talent and conduct business around the globe.
THE COG
Most companies fail to treat their employees like the smart, competent people they are and persist in giving them roles better suited for robots. Not surprisingly, many of today’s unengaged workers want to quit their jobs.
More than 40% of employees often think of quitting.
“Why aren’t there more people who get excited to wake up in the morning to go to work?”
Jacob Morgan
Why are people so dissatisfied?
Employee engagement remains shockingly low in most workplaces.
Only 13% of employees felt proud of their companies and connected to their places of work.
“We have to focus on building companies for people.”
Jacob Morgan
Today engagement is important. Engaged employees care about and enjoy their work and feel connected to their working environment, the people and the company.
SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF THE FUTURE EMPLOYEE
Future employees wish to work for organizations that offer:
1. Flexibility –Employees expect from their company a more elastic time schedule, the option to work in an environment outside their company, and managers who prioritize the results and achievements of the employees and not the time spending.
2. Self-orientation – Staff members want to shape their career paths and customize their work, rather than allowing managers to decide their future roles with the organization.
3. Transparency – Today’s employees, are quick to share information, communicate and collaborate, and they expect to do the same with their colleagues and managers.
4. Communication and collaboration – Email the today main mode of communication, will be replaced in the future workplace by new collaborative platforms which are more effective and efficient.
5. Leadership – Companies should not reserve opportunities to lead just for managers. Employees active in internal collaboration platforms will be empowered to become leaders.
6. Nonstop learning – Due to the rapid change in technology and social trends change, future employees should be encouraged by organizations to learn new skills and familiarize themselves with new technologies.
7. Peer-to-peer education – Collaborative social platforms will enable employees to share knowledge and teach one another on a variety of topics.
“It is no longer about what you know; it’s about how you can learn and adapt.”
Jacob Morgan
THE FREELANCE ECONOMY
There is a massive wave of people who define themselves as self-employed workers and use their skills and expertise to find work, not at a single company.
Organizations find it cheaper to hire freelancers than to work with full-time employees.
Are freelancers are replacing traditional employees?
More than 60% of American companies will hire freelancers.
Workers and businesses must learn to thrive in a free agent economy, where freelancers market their skills broadly and work with multiple companies at the same time.
Contracting with freelancers allows businesses to take advantage of talent around the globe no matter where they live or work.
THE ZOOKEEPER IS TODAY’S MANAGER
The trend is moving slowly from dictating to respecting employees and treating them as assets, practicing employee engagement, inspiration, giving employees a voice, and creativity.
“Although some people imagine that it’s hard for things to change, we should instead imagine how hard it would be for things not to change.”
Jacob Morgan
TEN PRINCIPLES OF THE FUTURE MANAGER
Management styles have remained virtually unchanged for the past 150 to 200 years. Most companies use outdated management strategies.
“The future of work doesn’t see the employee as a cog, a manager as a slave driver, the organization as a gang and work as drudgery.”
Jacob Morgan
Managers of the future have to challenge their traditional ideas and to find out what kind of manager they strive to become.
1. Must be a leader. They must inspire or engage employees in their working tasks, think besides the rules and norms, set challenges, and build confidence.
2. Follow from the front. Managers must lead the way for their employees to succeed and engage in the company’s aims.
3. Must understand Technology. Managers must be up to date to the latest top trends of the technology and adapt to their future impacts on the world of work.
4. Lead by example. Managers have to be involved in how to provide knowledge about the new process or technology.
5. Embrace Vulnerability. Expressing vulnerability and a human face helps people connect at work.
6. Believe in Sharing and Collective Intelligence. The whole company and especially the managers should focus on the wisdom, experience, ideas, and knowledge of their teams or the company as a whole.
7. Be a Fire Starter. The future managers are obliged to challenge their practices and conventional ideas about their work and be curious and innovative.
8. Practice Real-Time Recognition, Feedback, and Engagement. Using the collaboration platforms managers and employees can receive real-time recognition, feedback, and engagement.
9. Conscious of Personal Boundaries. Employees and managers should create their own balance and avoid being overly connected and face serious physical and mental health issues.
10. Adapt to the Future Employee. Managers should be aware of the role the future employee plays in bringing a new perception of the future of work.
The MANAGERLESS COMPANY
Successful companies, supporting the idea of running a business without managers, known as holacracy, follow similar guiding principles on decision-making and self-organization:
· Workers make big decisions as a group.
· Employees have the freedom to choose to work on projects that interest them.
· Workers propose new ideas for projects.
These organizations may lack managers but still, have leaders. They allow people to assume leadership roles organically. Organizations without managers give team members the freedom to work without someone supervising their every move. This grants workers the opportunity to experiment and explore new ideas.
“Work is an experience that is designed by both the organization and by all of the employees who are participating in it.”
Jacob Morgan
THE ORGANIZATION OF TODAY
The relationships of employees with companies have changed drastically. Loyalty has shifted to projects, managers, or teams. The future workforce wishes for an adaptable work environment, career path opportunities, and the chance to develop important skills and work on meaningful projects.
Self-starting opportunities are more available now than ever because of reduced technology costs and the ease of raising money.
FOURTEEN PRINCIPLES OF THE FUTURE ORGANIZATIONS
It is impossible for today’s companies to continue to run their business in the way they are. The future organization has fourteen principles to follow:
1. Become globally distributed, yet smaller teams
2. Create a connected workforce
3. Becoming Intrapneural
4. Operate like a smaller company
5. Focus on creating a place of want instead of a place you need
6. Adapt to change faster
7. Innovate anywhere, all the time
8. Run in the cloud
9. Have more women in senior management roles
10. Be flatter
11. Tell stories
12. Democratize learning
13. Shifting from profit to prosperity
14. Adapt to the future employee and future manager
TECHNOLOGY AS THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM
Leaders must encourage the use of new technologies, ranging from social task management platforms to video conferencing tools, to facilitate collaboration and make people share and work together. Smart application of technology helps employees navigate their day-to-day tasks more efficiently, thus encouraging engagement.
Managers can ensure that employees embrace collaborative platforms by creating inviting, supportive workplace environments and by using these platforms themselves.
THE SIX STEP PROCESS FOR ADAPTING TO THE FUTURE ORGANIZATION
How can businesses embrace workplace practices that reflect changing trends?
1. Leaders should question and challenge everything.
2. Create a special team and charge it with studying the trend of change in the working environment
3. Define how the future of work will look like at your organization.
4. Share that vision with your employees and the public.
5. Allow employees to experiment with new ideas.
6. Implement any changes – such as moving toward more flexible work rewards – across the entire company and commit to them.
RETHINKING WORK
Successful businesses aren’t afraid to overturn the status quo and embrace innovation as a regular practice. They lead change and challenge about future work with input from their employees, managers, and organizations.
The leaders of firms that will survive in the future will understand that coming to work should involve more than picking up a paycheck. They will appeal to staff members’ wants and not only their basic needs. Businesses of the future will attract employees who share their values, not just people who need jobs. Organizations will retain staff members by providing personal and financial benefits – leaving workers happier, more fulfilled and empowered.
CONCLUSIONS
Jacob Morgan’s, The Future of Work, takes an in-depth look at the future of work today by stressing the importance of technology and the role it will play. He looks at the five trends shaping the big picture of the future workplace, followed by the principles of the future employee and manager, as well as fourteen principles of the future organization and the impact of technology.
Jacob Morgan focused on the Future of Work from the three main following perspectives: management/leadership, organization, and employees. He discussed in detail and used excellent examples to make his point that these three important areas are interconnected and vital for everyone to address to thrive in the new workplace.
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