• Information overload. Today’s knowledge workers face an overwhelming volume of information and correspondence
• Interruption culture. Knowledge workers face interruptions every three minutes on average, leading to significant time loss for regaining concentration that total up to 3 hours daily
• Search time. Despite technological advance, we still spend between 1-3 hours a day searching for information
• Reporting. Compliance and reporting have grown significantly in recent year
• Unproductive meetings. Unproductive meeting time wastes about an hour a day
• Mass processing = knowledge-work drudgery. Tasks involving large amounts of repetitive activity, like tagging photos, handling mass inquiries or dealing with large volumes of text, should no longer be performed by human worke
• Discuss and agree among your team how to change information behavior, in particular how to respect others’ concentration time. Respect focus times in people’s diaries: Typically, 1-2 hours a day will be enough.
• egacy search tools (e.g., in Explorer or SharePoint) often fail to deliver useful results in an acceptable time frame, and their makers are aware of this shortcoming. Therefore, consider Enterprise Search with AI:
• Chat with your document. AI Summarizer tools like ChatPDF (as opposed to ChatGPT) and TLDRthis
• Delegate mass processing to AI: Intelligent Document Processing (IDP)
• Streamline reporting. Project-management software can be customized to handle reporting needs for collecting, consolidating, and analyzing Key Performance Indicator
• Enhance meeting efficiency. AI can summarize meetings, create minutes, and task lists. What it can’t do, however, is improve meeting culture.
• Let’s reclaim the time for meaningful conversations with clients and colleagues, the time to solve a problem instead of postponing it, the time to generate new business, to expand our network by attending an interesting conference, or any other productive use of our human time and human intellectual capacity.

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• Peter Drucker used the term “knowledge work” to describe the shift in the American economy from industrial manufacturing to service sector organizations.
• People were using their education and minds, not just their bodies, to produce
• The new knowledge workers were no longer employees needing direct supervision. Instead, they were independent, possessing specialized knowledge in areas outside of management’s expertise. Knowledge work was self-contained and portable. 
• Drucker recognized that knowledge worker motivation and productivity were the primary challenges facing us in the 21^st century.
• In many cases, contemporary knowledge workers no longer need access to organizations to be effective; the portability of Drucker’s knowledge worker (in the form of changing jobs) has morphed into the entrepreneur who can run her own business as a consultant.
• Drucker wrote a lot about this! He argued that, unlike manual labor, knowledge work typically was motivating in and of itself; knowledge workers needed little motivation to actually perform their work. However, the challenge was to align knowledge work with the organizational mission and to prevent siloing of specialized knowledge area
• some knowledge workers are reassessing the importance of work-life balance and resisting efforts to increase their workload. In response to the phenomenon of disengagement at work, some managers have increased their level of supervision, calling for more meetings and in-person gatherings. As a result, many knowledge workers feel that their productivity has suffered and that they are being micromanaged.
• While human connection is important, many knowledge workers are indeed more productive when they are freed from restrictive scheduling demands and constant check-ins. Knowledge-work productivity continues to be an area where we need improvement.

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• The rationale is that when employees are connected with each other, that connection drives greater innovation, collaboration, and engagemen
• In actuality, we’re seeing that productivity can drop when people are forced back, and many employees continue to reject the return to office, sometimes resulting in organizations losing their most tenured employees.

• Colleague Connection

   

  Imagine a time in your career when you worked with people you truly trusted and liked. More than simply enjoying each other’s company, you worked together to give and receive support. What you’re remembering is a strong example of colleague connection.

   

  Colleague connection includes opportunities for collaboration and interdependence with other employees, the social support that’s given and received, and the influence of these factors on team performance. This is arguably the one that most of us think about when we envision workplace connection. While it’s important (strong social support at work has many positive outcomes), it’s only one element in a larger conversation about workplace connections.

• Leader Connection

   

  Think about the leaders you’ve had during your career. Hopefully, you’ve had at least one leader who provided access to opportunities and a reasonable degree of autonomy for how to complete your work. This leader was likely a strong communicator, providing clarity around expectations and giving useful and balanced feedback about your performance and potential. Research has found that 70% of the variance in team engagement can be attributed to a manager, making it clear that leader connection is a critical component of the workplace connections conversation.

• Employer Connection

   

  You may or may not have worked at a place where you felt like your values aligned with those of your employer, your work richly contributed to the goals of the organization, and you found meaning in what you did. If you’ve had an opportunity to work with an organization that met those needs, you likely felt a boost of employer connection.

   

  When there’s low employer connection, going to work can feel like the proverbial “clocking in.” Lack of employer connection can not only influence an employee’s job performance, but it can also influence the talent an organization attracts.

• Role Connection

   

  Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi researched and wrote about the idea of “flow”: the experience of being so absorbed in an activity that other things seem to almost fade away. While most of us won’t find a role where we spend the majority of our time in a flow state, we can definitely gather insights about what motivates us and find ourselves in satisfying roles.

   

  When we experience role connection, we have a clear understanding of what our job is, we’re engaged in what we’re doing, and we have insight into how we can advance. When we have role connection, we are lifted up by the work we do.
• Early results suggest that different employees have unique needs surrounding each type of connection
• Our connection preferences can also wax and wane depending on what’s going on in our lives
• Colleague connection may increase, because employees are milling about the same office and benefitting from random and serendipitous interactions
• But at the same time, leader connection might decrease, because employees feel their supervisors don’t understand their motivations
• Employer connections can also take a dive as the desire to work hard to see the company succeed is undermined by a feeling of betrayal.
• Focusing on only one pillar of the CLEAR connections model, therefore, is clearly detrimenta
• As such, it’s crucial that business leaders move beyond a one-dimensional view, and get clear on what workplace connections really are and how to leverage them to create the best outcomes for their employees and business.

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• Bien sûr, il en reste qui considèrent que ces arguments n’ont pas de valeur, et que l’on peut très bien être innovant avec des réunions en visio ; Ce qui compte, c’est « l’intelligence collective » et « l’esprit d’innovation », et le lieu n’a rien à voir avec ça.
• D’autres y vont plus doucement comme L’Oréal, qui a limité à deux vendredis par mois la possibilité de télétravailler. Ou alors, sans exiger, on attire les employés les vendredis en proposant un brunch gratuit (Sanofi).
• Et puis, certains hésitent encore car cette histoire de télétravail a aussi permis de réduire les coûts d’immobilier, comme chez Stellantis. Alors revenir au plein temps au bureau, ça coûterait peut-être un peu trop cher.
• Mais cette habitude du télétravail pour les jeunes peut aussi avoir ses revers. Un dossier du Monde du 9 octobre nous alarme sur ce qu’il appelle une « épidémie de solitude » chez les jeunes de 18 à 24 ans. Selon une étude de l’IFOP, 62% des jeunes de 18-24 ans se sentent régulièrement seuls.

• Finalement, l’entreprise, ses bureaux, ses machines à café, ses espaces où l’on peut se rencontrer « en vrai », est peut-être aussi, pour ses jeunes, et les autres, cet antidote salutaire à « l’épidémie de solitude ».

   

          

   

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• • Shrinking Organisations: tasks become more automated, flexible contracts replace traditional jobs. As organisations can source work more broadly, they will need less employees.

    Example from Banking - digital-only bank Revolut serves 25 million customers with 5,000 employees, compared to U.S Bank which serves 18 million customers with 77,000 employees.

  • There Will Be Many More Ways to Get Work Done: from independent groups of freelancers, to agencies, Guilds, work-matching platforms, or just good old-fashioned automation. 

  • There Will Be Fewer Formal Jobs: The nature of work will shift, with less emphasis on traditional, formal jobs.

  • Workers Will Demand Better Work Conditions: 75% of Generation X have no plans of going full-time for their whole lives, according to a recent poll. Workers will demand better equity, more flexibility, and greater autonomy, leading to fewer bosses and offices in competitive industries.

  • Work Will be Managed With Diverse Work Contracts: not necessarily jobs, but projects, contracts, for different durations and remuneration.  In HR terms, more attrition - or Churn, baby, churn.

• Five Pathways Towards a Digital Golden Age of Work

  1.    Decentralised work infrastructure for effective work-matching:  Currently our career data is controlled by a few centralised digital landlords who charge fees for us to use our own data e.g. LinkedIn. Decentralised verifiable career wallets will allow individuals to manage their data and choose which work-matching platforms to use. Being able to find people who are good fit for your business, or for workers to find suitable work vacancies is a big improvement. It is hardly the Golden Age but a fix for the terrible infrastructure or plumbing we have now in the World of Work.

  2.    New Teams and Collaboration Models will Flourish: As jobs are deconstructed and unbundled into tasks, they will be rebuilt into new teams of people with mutually beneficial skills. Some new collaborative models and some old models renewed e.g. Digital Guilds and platform cooperatives. These teams will gradually pick-off chunks of work that are currently mainly done in-house by organisations.  For workers, some more flexibility, possibly more equity and autonomy.

  3.    Lifelong Career Investment for a Dynamic Workforce: We cannot predict what skills will be needed by in the labour market in a few years time. But one things for sure, studying for 20 years then working for the next 50 without further training will not be feasible. Successful societies will re-train and re-skill their adult populations.

• 4.    New Mechanisms for Financial Security: If full employment is unrealistic for most countries, we need new mechanisms that replace what the JOB provided, e.g. financial security, meaning, and purpose. During COVID-19, mass payments were made to families, hinting at the potential for a universal basic income or similar systems. With less income from jobs, last week we shared the latest research on Universal Basic Income. (You can still vote on whether you think it is a good idea). We might also need Universal Basic Services too, with states providing more diverse public services.

  5.    More Support for Entrepreneurialism: Lifelong Learning Budgets, Universal Basic Income and Services all cost public money, where will this come from? Well these smaller organisations making more profits with less people will be asked to pay more taxes, that’s a given. With less formal jobs and less interest in having a boss and working in an office 5 days a week. More people will develop their side hustle, start businesses and find other ways to pay the bills. This has become easier with Digital Platforms. We have groups of Solopreneurs using Shopify or Etsy, or Playbourers (play and labour) making a living entertaining or providing insights.

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• Bien qu’excellentes pour accomplir ces missions, les IA peinent dès que le contexte bascule dans l’instablilité. Dans un contexte économique et stratégique, ces disruption inopinées sont appelées « cygnes noir » en référence à l’ouvrage Le Cygne noir : La puissance de l'imprévisible (2007), du philosophe et statisticien Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Ils ont pour caractéristiques d’être imprévisibles, rares et à fort impact, et bouleversent les équilibres du marché. L’irruption pandémique de 2020 en est
  un excellent exemple.
• Objectif : évaluer le potentiel de l’IA pour prendre des décisions au plus haut niveau d’une entreprise, en la confrontant à des humains dans un environnement simulé représentant l’industrie automobile américaine.
• Le défi principal consistait à maximiser la valeur boursière tout en évitant de se faire licencier par le conseil d'administration virtuel du jeu. Les résultats de GPT-4o étaient ensuite comparées aux deux meilleurs étudiants et aux deux cadres ayant obtenu
• Les résultats sont sans appel : GPT-4o a surpassé les humains dans presque tous les indicateurs de performance. Grâce à sa capacité à traiter des masses de données complexes et à concevoir des produits avec une précision quasi chirurgicale, il a réussi à anticiper les signaux du marché et à affiner ses stratégies mieux que ses homologues humains. En seulement quelques tours, l’IA a atteint un niveau de rentabilité et de part de marché que les étudiants et cadres les plus performants n’ont atteint
  qu’après plusieurs cycles.
• Là où les meilleurs étudiants ont adopté des stratégies prudentes, évitant les contrats rigides et minimisant les risques d’inventaire, l’IA est restée confinée dans une logique d’optimisation à court terme. Elle a continué à maximiser agressivement la croissance et la rentabilité, ce qui l’a rendue vulnérable aux chocs de marché, entraînant des décisions qui, dans un contexte réel, auraient été désastreuses.
• La principale faiblesse de l’IA ? L’incapacité à anticiper l’imprévisible et à ajuster ses stratégies avec la flexibilité d’un dirigeant humain.
• Dans l’expérience, la gestion d’événements inattendus, comme les effets de la pandémie de 2020, a révélé une faiblesse structurelle de GPT-4o : l’incapacité à sortir de sa logique algorithmique pour envisager des scénarios extrêmes et inédits. Autrement dit, l’IA a été incapable de pensée « out of the box ».

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• Our definition of an operating model is simple but comprehensive: An operating model represents how value is created by an organization—and by whom within the organization.
• A capability represents a discrete set of objectives, processes, technologies, and talent that collectively generate value for an organization.

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• A McKinsey study found that companies which invest in their digital workplace can see a 20-30 percent increase in workplace productivity.  
• As reported by Deloitte, workers who have appropriate access to digital tools were 17 percent more likely to espouse a positive workplace culture. 
• Another McKinsey study shows that employees who use appropriate tech are 87 percent more likely to state these tools increase collaboration. 
• Gallup states that employees who have access to suitable technology are 30 percent more likely to be engaged at work. 
• And FlexJobs stated that 73 percent of employees believe digital tools have enabled better work-life balance through hybrid workplace practices and other reasons. 
• The tech at employees’ disposal, from onboarding to alumnus and alumnae, has a very real impact on the overall perception an employee will have about a business,
• In basic terms, you cannot begin to engage your employees or build a work culture if you cannot reach them, or if their working day is made harder because of cumbersome tech.

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• Now, we’re seeing the market progress toward AI agents, Bersin said.
• All AI systems are going to start talking to each other, and you’ll be able to conduct transitions in core systems and across systems.”
• Workday and Oracle are among the HCM firms that recently unveiled new agentic AI capabilities.
• 87% of HR managers planned to increase their HR tech budget this year. The No. 1 priority? Employee experience.
• But we don’t want 20 agents,
• many of these agents will learn to “talk to one another under the covers,”

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• Drive improved performance management

   

  Lean on generative AI tools to boost productivity — and to ensure employee potential never goes untapped. By analyzing the connection between employee activities and outcomes, you can pinpoint specific areas for workflow and process improvements and enable employees to concentrate on activities that stand to add the most value.

• Boost manager effectiveness

   

  Ninety-six percent of people managers agree that improved access to people data would help them make people-related decisions with more confidence. Putting the right insights into the right hands at the right time is critical, especially considering the multitude of micro decisions made about people that have the potential to have a big impact on business goals.

• Amplify recruitment and talent acquisition strategies

   

  Worker scarcity is a real challenge, worse in some industries than others but impacting everyone. Recruiting new talent takes time—a resource many organizations can’t afford to waste. Thankfully, generative AI is poised to optimize talent acquisition, streamlining the resume screening process to efficiently identify top candidates and finding key skills and qualifications that match specific job requirements to ensure a faster and more objective screening process.

• Position HR as a strategic partner

   

  By providing more immediate access to business-critical insights, generative AI shifts the availability of crucial data from days or weeks to mere seconds—driving more informed, fact-based decisions across the organization. Bringing AI to managers and to people data positions HR as a strategic partner in accelerating AI and creating increased productivity.

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