This is the future of work, learn to live with it

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the workplace and Kenya is no exception.

The world has quickly been shifted to a future we thought was so distant. Our business-as-usual situation has changed to survival mode to ensure businesses run, a sense of team is maintained and employees engage as normal.

However, the normal is gone. As we talked about agility as the skill of the future, the future happened!

Within a short time, the agile ones are now using Zoom and Hangout to run meetings, while President Uhuru Kenyatta is holding virtual Cabinet briefings.

I have seen a question on how we should pay board allowances, if at all. Simple, was there a meeting?

Were governance protocols observed for running a board meeting? Yes? Then pay the allowances. We now have a redefinition of a workplace versus a place of work.

While there are some who have previously worked from home, or telecommuted, or teleworked, this has become an imperative.

The pandemic has forced even the public sector to quickly and urgently implement a work-from-home formula, or WFH.

FOCUS ON DELIVERABLES

The fast implementation of WFH has led to quick decisions, including re-allocation of resources to make it happen.

This, for instance, means issuing out laptops instead of desktops and having Wi-Fi access or enough bundles to sustain work and communicate with colleagues and deliver as expected.

A laptop is no longer a status symbol for senior staff; that regime ended. No. It is a necessity if an organisation is to achieve its work in this pandemic-disrupted season.

But working from home in a society like Kenya, where this has not been the norm, has raised a lot of concerns and confusion for both workers and leaders.

In the office the employee requires a chair that won’t lead to health issues, a comfortable desk, adequate lighting, and a room that has minimal interruption, but do we have these conditions at home?

If you live in a one-bedroom house with relatives and your family and everyone is competing for space, how would this work?

Some recommended essentials include discipline so as to be productive. One should maintain a routine of regular hours to focus and work. This will no longer be an eight-to-five situation.

Managers, this is the time to focus on deliverables and targets that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely, or simply SMART.

Such performance objectives have been a theory in workshops and seminars, but today this must be the focus, the norm.

SUSTAINABILITY

An employee will have to learn and schedule rest periods to avoid impacting on their health by sitting for too long.

Let your brain relax, catch some lunch or a cup of tea. We will not have physical socialising but e-socialising with colleagues, coupled with virtual meetings.

Human resource professionals have for the last four years or so discussed about work, future of work, technology disruption, and Artificial Intelligence, among others.

The use of technology to enhance productivity always took the lead. But in a Covid-19-disrupted world we have new realities.

The tools of work have suddenly changed. WhatsApp is almost an assumed way of formal communication, Zoom is now the meeting place, Skype is still in use, and recruiting through LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media platforms is now a norm.

A mobile phone is now an imperative as a tool of work, so do you provide your employee with the mobile phone or do you provide airtime and internet bundles as they use their personal phones?

What is the implication of one using one’s personal phone for official business?

Most senior and middle-level managers have been carrying two phones: one is personal and the other for work. Is this sustainable?

POLICY GUIDELINES

How can HR professionals ensure that work is done, confidentiality maintained, proprietary information protected, cost managed and still have an employee use his or her personal phone for official work?

Policy guidelines must be redefined to meet the changing landscape of work.

Approximately, one-third of the global workforce (36 per cent) works more than 48 hours per week, according to an International Labour Organisation (ILO) research paper on the future of work.

In Kenya, generally, we do a 40-hour work week, save for a few who do 45 if they work five hours on Saturdays, such as bankers.

Other sectors are organised into shifts that have different job designs to meet their goals. Hospitals employ job shifts and rotation, for instance.

When working from home in a disrupted time such as this, employees will not do eight-to-five, 40-hour weeks. How will employers manage this?

The government has already declared sectors and workers that are considered essential, and who will continue to work as normal — including going to their offices — while the non-essentials work from home.

How do you ensure equity in a situation such as this? Initially, employees will be paid as usual, but over time this will demand a different view in managing hours of work and compensating for the same.

EMPLOYMENT CONTRACT

Short hours, part-time, flexible working arrangements, and fixed daily working hours for a fixed number of days will all impact on the classic standard work-week as we know it.

As an HR professional I knew this time would come, but did not think it was to be so soon.

During the Centenary ILO celebrations of 2019, the theme was ‘Future of Work’, and how to govern work became a critical area of discussion.

A 2018 brief by the Global Commission on the Future of Work indicated that the national governance of work is achieved through interaction of labour market institutions within an overarching system.

These include international labour standards in national law, labour administration, collective industrial relations, individual employment relationship and minimum wage.

The employment relationship promotes productivity in organisations through employment stability and so contributes positively to overall economic performance.

The contract of employment is the central legal document that governs employment relationship. This includes the presumption that a worker is under the control of a single employer.

In a disrupted Kenyan labour market, will your current contract of employment remain fit for purpose, and if not, how can HR professionals contribute in modifying the regulatory model?

BENCHMARKING TRIPS

We now run on permanent and pensionable (largely) in the public sector, fixed-term contracts in private and development sectors, and contracts and consultancies in others.

In a disrupted world of work, the models will have to change. More freelances, hourly workers, and few-days-in-a-week workers will arise.

There is no sound of a plane in our skies, except a helicopter hovering for surveillance. No travel at all.

There are workers that oversee multiple countries in the course of their work and now they cannot do so.

That means staying home and employing all the essentials of working from home.

Yet we have millennials majority of whom, at 57 per cent according to a 2018 Deloitte Survey, want to travel and see the world. For now, though, all planes are at the hangar.

HR professionals will have to innovatively design ways to keep this current workforce engaged, excited to work and motivated in the absence of travel.

We may for a long time not see any benchmarking trips by our public sector counterparts either. It is time to benchmark locally with our own homemade solutions to situations.

SALARY REDUCTION

Some firms have already announced pay cuts as high as 80 per cent in the current economic circumstances. We shall be seeing more of this as a presumed economic recession looms.

Employers, both big and small, will face challenges paying their employees and might need to hold candid conversations on pay cuts until stability returns.

Trade unions should be alive to these realities and advise their members accordingly.

I strongly recommend pay cuts, as opposed to lay offs, because this way, we shall ensure families have a sustained source of livelihood.

This way we will also ensure that current employees continue to have not just work, but decent and meaningful work.

Covid-19 has lifted the lid off what the future of work was meant to look like. A future of rapid changes that require agility, creativity and innovation.

So much will change and we may never go back to the world of work as we have known it.

Ms Wainaina is an HR professional.