The talent crisis to come: flexibility and inequality

No two lockdown experiences have been the same. Now employers must pick up the pieces.

Professional life before March 2020 was based on working nine to five, or more, in an office.

Change was underway but it was tediously slow. Individuals who needed a more flexible way of working typically went freelance or started a business in their own image.

This is a huge issue for organisations as we emerge from lockdown.

Technology, agility and human flexibility have enabled private sector organisations to continue to operate through the crisis.

The flexibility genie cannot be returned to an office, nor can it be constrained 9-to-5. It’s unlikely that professional life will ever be the same again.

Lockdown inequality

Employees have managed home working alongside the competing priorities of home schooling, children, parents and partners.

Lockdown in the countryside has been a different experience to a city tower block. Family homes with a garden are a different experience to house shares.

It’s no surprise that women have reportedly taken on a disproportionate burden during lockdown according to research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the UCL Institute of Education.

This isn’t working from home in any normal sense. We’ve been forced to stay at home and work during a crisis.

The instinct for survival has got us through but we’re knackered and fed up. It’s not sustainable.

My view is that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse this new found flexibility and way of working. It has huge implications for the future of work.

Public sector communications

Professional communicators in the public sector haven’t missed a beat.

Employees have worked harder than ever to provide front line services. This is also unsustainable.

Many have faced the additional anxiety of having to continue to work from an office or in a front line role.

There’s also an issue of morale and motivation.

Furlough tension

We are heading into a recession. Organisations are already cutting people. But this is only part of the story.

As the furlough scheme unwinds organisations need to find a way of managing the morale of different groups. Staff on furlough have had a very different lockdown experience to those who have had to work.

The creative and professional services industries are at the forefront of the issue. Our product is our talent. We already knew this of course but 100 days of lockdown have reinforced the point.

Organisations are people

An organisation really is the sum of its people. We’ve learnt that employees don’t need to be bound by location or space.

There are no easy answers. As we’ve heard many times before this is an unprecedented situation.

Workplace diversity and flexibility is a pillar of the Wadds Inc. manifesto.

Any solution should start with employee engagement and an open minded approach to how talent is organised and managed in the future.

More flexible approaches to managing a workforce are inevitable in the creative and professional services sectors.

That’s a good thing. It will improve the health and wellbeing of our talent and the quality of our work.