The workplace of tomorrow ,is going to be radically different than what we have seen so far. Nobody would have imagined how businesses will transform overnight and thereby, the places of work too. I am trying to predict the workplace of tomorrow based on my imagination and insight. If it comes true, you can give credit to the teams with whom I worked in my career , as they instilled this wisdom in me and if it fails, I take responsibility for it, as I failed to assimilate knowledge over the years ,from my teams.

1. Work from anywhere : Work from home has become the norm in the days of the lockdown in most organisations today. In tomorrow’s organisation, work from anywhere will be the norm. This is because organisations will realise, that if majority of their employees are able to connect online, it does not matter where they work from. In the past, many old age leaders felt insecure allowing employees to work from home, since they were not sure how productive they would be. However, thanks to Covid, work from home was thrust on organisations ,as the only alternative and most organisations and employees have willingly and effectively adopted it.

2. Offline to Online : While most of us have got used to fulfilling most of banking needs online due to internet banking and mobile apps, it will be seen that ,most business transactions will move online. People will prefer to buy everything possible online. This would mean that physical infrastructure will have to give way to a robust IT infrastructure. What we have seen in the days of the lockdown is that, the internet speeds are impacted due to heavy overload as the service providers were not ready for this catastrophe.

3. Interpersonal to intra-personal behaviour : All organisations focussed a lot on building teams and thereby developing interpersonal skills of their team members. This is likely to give way ,to focus on individual behaviour, which I have termed as intra-personal behaviour. How do I behave when I work alone at home and still have to deal with other teams online. This would mean conscientiousness and self discipline. Employees and their managers have to trust each other and focus on deliverables rather than the time spent by the employee at the workplace.

4. Manufacturing will get robot driven: We will see a radical transformation in the shop floors of production units. We may see more robots and automation , take over manual labour. This would mean that human beings have to move up the value chain and focus on quality, productivity and innovation. The minimalisation of human interface in production lines , will see improvement in quality, productivity and consistency. This does not mean that human interface will vanish from shop floors. It means that human beings will add value to what robots can never do even in the future.

5. Remote Servicing : An interesting development will be that ,servicing will become more remote ,than it is today. Most service centres will provide remote diagnostics and will be able to service products remotely. Even today power plants are monitored remotely and even troubleshooting and repairs can be done remotely through connected devices. In the digitalisation era, it may become possible for all products to be monitored and serviced remotely except for possibly replacement of parts. Even that may change ,with modular design where consumers may be able to replace parts themselves based on artificial intelligence and remote service guidance.

6. Paperless organisations : One of the positive outcomes for the future will be ,that organisations will truly become paperless. Everything will be transacted online. From the offers of employment to employees to purchase orders to suppliers and invoices to customers, the entire value chain will be operated with the aid of online -connected technologies. This will not only ensure efficiency and effectiveness, it will also eliminate waste and non productive processes within organisations.

7. Boundary less organisations : One of the dreams of organisations is to dissolve the stringent boundaries between functions within the organisation, which actually come in the way of delivering value to customers. In the future, we will see that such needless boundaries will not only disappear within the organisation but will also vanish between organisations. All institutions which add value to a customer or supplier, will form a continuum and thereby produce more, with less, in the future.

8. Social equity : The transformation of workplaces in the future will have a positive outcome ,in terms of social equity amongst employees. Employee value addition will be clearly measured by outcomes and not by efforts and time spent. This means that people contributing the same or similar outcomes are likely to get paid similarly. This will become necessary rather than obligatory ,as it will be otherwise very difficult to monitor remotely ,how employee performance can be differentiated.

9. Employment types : Organisations will no longer have all employees on their rolls. It will be a combination of full time employees, part time employees, consultants, gig workforce, contractual, interns and short term employees. While all these categories may exist in most organisations of today, the proportion of full time employees to others may reverse. This means most organisations will try to operate with a basic minimum number of employees on their rolls. The rest of the workforce may consist of, all or most of the above categories of employees.

10. Work-life-balance : The line of demarcation between workplace and home, is going to diminish further. While this will bring in flexibility both for the organisation and the individual employee, it will have its repercussions ,in terms of relationships both at the workplace and at home. Family and marriage as institutions will be under strain and hence psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists , counsellor and coaches will have a bigger role to play in maintaining harmony at the workplace and at home.

If all or any of the above predictions come true, I may be lucky as I will survive as a student of management. However, if all of them bite the dust, then I have to start writing on philosophy in the future.

Being a born optimist, I believe that the changes in workplaces will benefit organisations and individuals, as long we prepare for it and train our employees to embrace the change.

S Ramesh Shankar

7th April 2020