The Big Question: Is the World of Work Forever Changed? – The New York Times

Old-school human resources departments are a thing of the past. Ghost soldiers dont want to share their work problems with a suit whose role is to pacify you on behalf of government. Work and personal life have been irretrievably blurred in the Zoom world. I predict a growing use of pastoral care agencies like Sarah McCaffreys Solas Mind, which provides mental health support to freelancers in the creative sector.

Lockdown life revealed how fragile we all are and how much we want to talk about it. The answer to office work in the future is clear: Employees should commute to the office for the same three-day week, then melt away to their newly treasured secret worlds.

Tina Brown is a journalist and author and the former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker magazines.

Covid disruption could be the turning point for adopting finally quality work-life practices proposed for decades. Flexible schedules, equal opportunity for women and minorities, a good balance between work and family, and socially responsible companies have long been on the horizon as distant hopes.

One driver is technology. Tech contributes to change by enabling work from anywhere. It transforms institutions and makes services more accessible, whether education online or health care through telemedicine, robotic surgery or home health monitoring. Labor shortages in poorly paid rote jobs make room for robots, such as the robotic restaurant in my tech-heavy neighborhood. Goodbye, wage slavery.

But tech wont create a workers paradise without bigger reforms. In-person face time is still an advantage for workers who can get to a workplace, which means that they need accessible child care and transportation, which have yet to materialize on a large scale. And a tech-dominated world carries troubling possibilities for control through increasingly sophisticated surveillance techniques, unless worker autonomy is protected.

Another potent driver of change is worker activism, led by younger top talent. Emboldened by competition for their skills and fueled by a mistrust of establishments, they protest undesirable customers, environmentally unfriendly products, rigid work requirements, discriminatory treatment and serial harassers. They seek greater participation in decisions, self-organizing to act directly rather than waiting for permission. They reinforce external pressure groups in holding businesses to ever-higher standards, and thus help corporate social responsibility programs and environmental, social and governance reporting become mainstream expectations.

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The Big Question: Is the World of Work Forever Changed? - The New York Times