architecting the future of work and workforce...2021 © benori knowledge. all rights reserved page 3...

April 2021

April 2021

W h i t e p a p e r

Architecting the Future of

Work and Workforce

2021 © Benori Knowledge. All Rights Reserved

Architecting the Future of Work and Workforce

2021 © Benori Knowledge. All Rights Reserved Page 2

Content

03Executive Summary

04How COVID-19 Led to Fundamental Shifts in Work

08Three Types of Agility Organizations Need to Build

10Architecting the Future of Work and Workforce






The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to make some fundamental changes at

work, and in our own lives. In fact, reinvention is now an everyday affair, and for us to thrive through this

age of volatility, we need to reinvent some of the most basic ways we have been working, collaborating,

innovating, communicating and living.

While digital acceleration and technical expertise have always been in the foray and are likely to stick

around as core bullets in our resumes and job descriptions, future employers will demand workers that are

not only technically-adept, but also emotionally-adept. The future worker must be able to transition

through change with ease, manage their mental well-being, show resilience in times of uncertainty, take

up additional responsibilities in moments of crisis, practice and nurture empathy, and take decisions with

sound judgment. Soft skills, then, will play a key role in decades to come, and raising workers’ emotional

intelligence will be the key to organizational success.

Talent, digital & data are the three biggest forces that can help organizations stay ahead of the curve in

this age of disruption and the war for right talent is going to be there at the organizational level. The

COVID-19 pandemic has also taught us that the move to digital is here to stay.

Considering the uncertain timeframe of the current pandemic, with new strains wrecking the initial stability

brought by the vaccine, the world continues to be in a state of confusion, and disarray about what will

happen: Are we going back to the workplace? Will it be safe for me and my family? Is hybrid work here to

stay? What skills do I need to develop to remain relevant in my current job?

Having considered the diverse and erratic nature of this disruption, we have consolidated a five step

transformation agenda for reinventing the way we work:

Build cognitive, emotional

and learning agility at all

levels of the organization

Institute a culture of

lifelong learning

Prioritize soft skills training for

building adaptability and

resilience

Adopt digital transformation

across functions

Take full responsibility

for employee well-

being

12 3 4

5

Executive Summary





COVID-19 has not only disrupted the most fundamental frameworks in our daily operations but acted as a

catalyst for many changes that were already underway—in digital acceleration, cultural transformation,

learning and development, and capability-building. These shifts that were previously low on the C-Suite

radar are now the biggest organizational priorities, mostly due to one significant change enforced by the

pandemic: “the physical dimension of work1.” It has forced us to reinvent how we work, the skills we need

to build to thrive in our jobs, learn to effectively manage our career trajectories, and more. Soft skills that

were more seasonal in nature, offered only to high-ranking executives, are now being rolled out to all

levels of the workforce. Why? Because resilience, adaptability, managing change, and a growth mindset,

have become key to thriving through this age of continued disruption.

Source: LinkedIn

With remote work likely to stay, and grow beyond the pandemic, organizations are increasingly taking an

active role in bringing these fundamental changes in their operations and work culture, accelerated by the

following interventions:

How COVID-19 Led to Fundamental Shifts in Work

Exhibit 1

The World Economic forum has called for a global reskilling emergency2 based on three critical factors:

(a) as jobs are transformed due to large-scale digital revolution and adoption, more than 1 billion workers

need to be reskilled by 2030; (b) 42% of core skills required to perform existing jobs are expected to

change by 2022; and (c) in addition to high-tech and functional skills, specialized interpersonal skills will

be in high demand, including skills related to sales, human resources, care and education.

The impact of COVID-19 and the subsequent re-skilling emergency has also led to meaningful

employment opportunities, re-skilling of our current workforce and a revamped approach to work. In a

recent Benori survey, 89% of the audience confirmed that they feel the need to reskill themselves to

remain relevant in their current jobs.

Do you think you need to re-skill yourself in

the next 1-2 years to remain relevant in your

current role?

89%

11%

YES

NO

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6775619605525237760/





● Unprecedented Digital Acceleration: The rapid pace of digital acceleration and adoption is a

surprising change brought on by COVID-19, that not only assisted us in thriving through the pandemic,

but it occurred in less than a year, that otherwise would have taken at least 10 years to evolve. Digital,

as predicted by experts around the world, will be the key to thriving during the economic recovery and

the next normal that will follow. According to the Ernst & Young Life Science report Asia, 93% of

pharma companies in India were just beginning their journey in digitalization. The COVID-19 pandemic

has transformed the traditional interactions, with remote, virtual engagements as valuable alternatives,

to continue our scientific exchanges with the medical community. COVID-19 has acted as a catalyst

that has driven every company to actively identify ways to innovate and engage digitally. Digital

technology has become the default and, in some cases, the only means of ensuring business

continuity.

● Revamped Operating Models and Infrastructure: All established frameworks, based on “the

physical dimension of work” have become outdated in the post-pandemic world. With the rapid move

to digital, existing operating models and company infrastructures have to be reinvented and revamped

to adapt to the new remote nature of work. The C-Suite is working towards transitioning to new models

for doing business, that might be a permanent shift away from traditional models that worked in the pre

COVID-19 world.

Exhibit 2

What model of work do you prefer going forward?


Source: LinkedIn

27%

11%

62%

Work fromHome

Office

Hybrid

● Hybrid Work Culture: As non-essential workers shifted to

working from home, 85% of the respondents in a Mckinsey Global

Business 800 Executives Survey3 suggested that their businesses

have somewhat or greatly accelerated the implementation of

technologies that digitally enable employee interaction and

collaboration, such as videoconferencing and filesharing. And,

across all sectors, 38% of respondents expect their remote

employees4 to work two or more days a week away from the

office after the pandemic, compared to 22% of respondents

surveyed before the pandemic. A recent Benori survey on the

future of work and workforce also reported that about 62% of the

audience5 would prefer to shift to a hybrid work culture. It has

been predicted that roughly one-third of the workforce, in urban

locations and with future-ready infrastructure, will be the driving

force for the sustenance of the hybrid work culture.






Source: LinkedIn

● Re-skilling and Nurturing Cognitive Agility:

Covid-19 has made the re-skilling of workers

more urgent than ever. Even before the

pandemic, many companies lacked a cohesive

re-skilling strategy. At the start of 2020, only 1

in 5 talent leaders6 said they were providing

training and re-skilling opportunities to workers

even though 9 in 10 said it was their

responsibility to do so. In fact, the future of

work is expected to demand7 more

technological, social, and emotional skills.

Exhibit 3

9%

4%

13%

74%

Culture of lifelonglearning

Focus on soft skills

Digital acceleration

All of the above

How can organizations build a more resilient

workforce?

● Managing a Remote Workforce: Organizations have lost the ability to directly monitor employee

productivity and are fully dependent on technology to effectively track and evaluate performance. HR

functions are in need of rapid transformation, both in terms of rethinking a cost-effective way of

managing remotely and finding the right technology that supports the change. A survey by Salesforce

Research on the Future of Workforce Development showed that 70% of managers believe formalised

workforce training programmes will benefit employee productivity, while 69% believe that they will

boost preparedness for future disruptions and innovations. Today’s organizations can use several

methods to address the skill gaps including hiring and re-training its existing employees for core and

non-core functions based on the required competencies.

● Navigating Complexity in a Remote Environment: The remote work environment has further

complicated the nature of managing and navigating complexities. To ensure easy navigation,

organizations need to innovate and build new interactive models of working with AR-VR technologies.

It is estimated that these dimensions of work will play a key role and we will see significant

improvements in the next few years.

Source: LinkedIn

Exhibit 4

What skill do you need most to be an

effective worker during and beyond

today’s crisis?

14%

6%

63%

18%

Digital

Collaboration

Resilience and adaptability

Critical thinking







The pandemic has been an important wake-up call for organizational leaders, to comprehend

what is needed to thrive through disruptions, develop strategies that are aligned with both

employee and organizational well-being, and become truly agile—cognitive, emotional and

learning—that are likely going to be the cornerstones of success in the coming decades.

Emotional Agility: The pressure is higher than ever for organizational

leaders to not just manage and nurture their own emotional intelligence, but

responsibly protect, nurture and advance emotional agility of the whole

organization. In fast-changing conditions, the skills that play the biggest role

include practicing empathy, responding with care, create and maintain

authentic relationships, build trust and inspire each other—for the collective

advancement of the organization.

Three Types of Agility Organizations Need to Build

Cognitive Agility: The COVID-19 pandemic tested the cognitive agility of our

workforce and the verdict has clearly been delivered. As urgent calls for mental

health safety soared through the past year, the need to nurture and protect this

ability has become a key part of boardroom conversations. A key growth

impetus for both personal and professional well-being, employers need to re-

evaluate and offer adequate support for its employees to adapt to the

change—and create new frameworks of how to think and respond to fast-

changing situations, using critical thinking as an essential tool, employing

creativity even in non-creative jobs, exercise sound judgment and make high-

impact decisions, all in the face of rising uncertainty.

Learning Agility: While functional and technological expertise will continue to

take up key real estate in future job descriptions, the sustenance of jobs will

require employees and employers to nurture learning agility—practicing a

growth mindset, instituting a culture of lifelong learning and learn quickly.

These skill sets will determine how quickly employees can adapt to change,

take on important responsibilities, bring clear thinking and judgment, and

become future leaders.





Q&A with Pramath Raj Sinha and Mohit Thukral

In our recent webinar8 on the future of work and work force, we interviewed Pramath Raj Sinha (Founding Dean of

Indian School of Business and Co-founder of Harappa Education and Ashoka University) and Mohit Thukral

(Founder of Vivtera and global business transformation visionary and leader) to get their thoughts on the most

critical growth aspects for both organizational and cultural development. Here is an extract from our conversation:

Q: How can we democratize skill-building

programs as not everyone will have access to

universities or professional development

courses?

Pramath Sinha: The technology-based learning does make it

much more accessible, not only from the point of view of reach

and access, but also in terms of cost. There are concerns about

digital-divide, whether people can actually access the content

online, because they may not have a device or bandwidth—but I

think that’s changing very rapidly. A lot of innovation is happening,

with people trying to create content or products that are readily

accessible over low-cost devices and as bandwidth improves. The

cost is very interesting because once you create asynchronous or

recorded content, then the marginal cost of offering it to

somebody just becomes zero. That’s why a lot of content is

available for free and I think technology is going to be a great

enabler there.

At Harappa, we have launched courses in vernacular languages

and that’s another access point where most of the training is

available in English, but you can quickly move to local languages.

I think people are also concerned that how can you learn

completely online and that’s true that online may not seem to be

as effective as in-person but to me online is like books—just as

books have completely revolutionized and democratized

knowledge, I think online will do the same.

Q: As companies move over to a hybrid model,

how can you monitor performance and get the

best out of your employees?

Mohit Thukral: This is going to be the biggest challenge and

there is obviously a lot of work happening on design and

measurement, in terms of how you measure output and

performance. In the last year, customers have adapted to the

disruptions caused by the pandemic. The company we acquired,

‘Arise’, it monitors, trains and manages performance remotely and

people deliver to the outcome that they are supposed to be

delivering. So, you have to build a very good technology platform

for measuring some of that. And the supervisors who do remote

monitoring have to have different techniques of managing that

and looking at the outcomes that are getting generated. So, I think

tools and technology have to get stronger because most

organizations don’t have strong operations management, ERP

tools and technology to do remote management, and look at the

efficiencies and effectiveness of these. So, it is going to take

some time, it is going to be a bumpy ride but there will be people

who will try to game the system. Different tools will need to be built

where you include many checks and balances, similar to the ones

we have done in the past for the office environment.

Q: There is a new focus on micro learning,

Just-in-Time versus Just-in- Case and on the

transferability of skills. How do you think these

focus areas will playout, in India especially, for

workers in more precarious situations?

Pramath Sinha: It is difficult to plan strategies for our companies

and come up with product roadmaps for whatever we offer to our

clients and customers. It is difficult to plan our own lives in terms

of jobs and careers when we know some jobs will completely go

away. There has to be something that keeps us whole and

grounded and rooted through this very shifting set of

circumstances. And what really grounds you are the foundation

skills that you develop throughout your life. But first and foremost,

you have to understand what those are. Somebody has to make

you aware that these are the things that will hold you in good

stead throughout your life. We need to make everybody aware

that regardless of what happens, these foundational skills will help

you hold your ground in case job shifts occur and if you are in a

precarious situation. And of course, there are things that you can

learn Just-in-Time. Each one of us has to learn how Just-in-Time

works and how foundational aspects will play a role. The

combination of these two will give you the confidence to address

‘come what may, I will be able to manage’.

Q: What are going to be the top three key

success factors for organizations going

forward?

Mohit Thukral: The one big factor will be hiring the right talent

along with fostering the right culture. Companies now have the

ability to hire talent from across the country, even across the

globe but the challenge with a hybrid model is how do we enforce

collaboration? Organizations need good talent to drive their

growth but also need an inclusive and collaborative culture to

retain that talent.

Digital is here to stay, and organizations will need to be more and

more agile. COVID-19 has accelerated digital, and India is on the

verge of being a $1 trillion digital economy. Companies who fail to

jump onto and ride that wave will find it challenging to thrive.

The third one is data. Data has become extremely abundant, and

as we move into a digital world, the availability of data is only

increasing. An example is the data being shared across the

country regarding COVID-19 vaccinations. Healthcare data can

now be shared with healthcare payers and professionals, in

compliance with certain regulations, to help increase the rate of

vaccinations and simplify the monitoring of health and wellness

across the country.





Disruption has always been a part of work, business, and life, to some degree, and even though we stand

at a unique moment in history, maybe the situation is not so unique at all. A sense of panic has been

generated over our current and future jobs, growing uncertainties and their implications in our lives, and

more, leading to a barrage of emotional responses that could have been checked, and addressed, without

pressing the panic button. Even though 75 million jobs are expected to be lost because of automation, at

the same time, digital innovation is expected to create 150 million new jobs over the next few years. In

fact, major disruptive discontinuities have always had a net positive outcome for the world as such, and

success will be determined by when and how we respond to disruption.

While the next 10 years will see many changes in our traditional frameworks of working, it is equally

crucial to develop the future workforce along the same lines. With the vast amount of new information

coming in every hour, our capacity to embrace, and adapt to change is increasingly growing thin. Learning

and development of employees needs a new model that helps them nurture cognitive agility—an

imperative that is being adapted for tomorrow’s workforce as well.

In line with the fundamental shifts that we have experienced in work, the interventions that have forced us

to reimagine and reinvent our fundamental frameworks, and the three key agility agendas for

organizations to take advantage of, we have outline three clear strategies, in terms of Culture, Learning

and Skills, that can help today’s organizations develop effective strategies that keep up with the speed of

transformation.







Future of Culture

Organizations need to institute essential shifts in work culture that

address the re-skilling emergency and build a cohesive workforce that

will drive organizational success in a post COVID-19 world. The primary

focus areas for developing a work culture will include (a) learning how to

manage a remote workforce effectively, (b) build technologies that

support the new work culture, (c) find new ways to bring back the coffee

machine chats into remote work, (d) nurture connections between and

across teams, and (e) manage the overall well-being of employees.

Future of Learning

As disruption and reinvention continues to be a significant part of our

present and future, success will be determined by going beyond technical

skill sets, and focus on soft skills, for all levels of the workforce. Human

Resources and L&D functions will play a significant role in developing and

nurturing cognitive agility of the workforce, with a prime focus on soft skills

such as building resilience, managing change at both personal and

professional levels, practicing a growth mindset, communicating effectively

in a remote environment, and making lifelong learning the foremost agenda

of a typical employee.

Future of Skills

While organizations prioritize nurturing and building soft skills for the

present workforce, job descriptions and employer expectations are likely

to change in the long run. Educational institutions need to (a) move

away from purely theoretical knowledge-based education to a skill-

based education that encourages ‘learning by doing’, thus teaching the

art of survival; (b) offer hands-on training over classroom sessions and

lab visits, and collaborate with industries to offer more internships to

help manage expectations around future work scenarios; (c) train

students in soft skills, incorporate peer-to-peer learning to help the youth

learn to embrace change, grow resilience, communicate effectively and

become better collaborators; and (d) transform the teaching experience

to include changes in assessment patterns, and develop new paradigms

and frameworks for teacher training.






References

1. McKinsey article on the future of work after COVID-19

2. World Economic Forum article on global reskilling revolution

3. McKinsey article on 800 executives envision for the post-pandemic workforce

4. McKinsey article on the analysis of 2,000 tasks, 800 jobs, and nine countries

5. Benori’s poll survey on preferable model of work dated March 17, 2021

6. COVID-19 has made reskilling workers more urgent than ever

7. McKinsey article on the future of work after COVID-19

8. Benori’s Webinar Recording: Architecting the Future of Work and Workforce

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/the-future-of-work-after-covid-19?cid=other-eml-nsl-mip-mck&hlkid=19e2f28295f4421aa9c98691423c1571&hctky=11148447&hdpid=c34431cd-9bf1-49ec-bcaa-d6226c178a67

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/reskilling-revolution-jobs-future-skills/

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/what-800-executives-envision-for-the-postpandemic-workforce

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/whats-next-for-remote-work-an-analysis-of-2000-tasks-800-jobs-and-nine-countries


https://www.fastcompany.com/90600017/covid-19-has-made-reskilling-workers-more-urgent-than-ever

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/the-future-of-work-after-covid-19?cid=other-eml-nsl-mip-mck&hlkid=19e2f28295f4421aa9c98691423c1571&hctky=11148447&hdpid=c34431cd-9bf1-49ec-bcaa-d6226c178a67

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw7Xon-UZfM



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