7 principles of the future employees

From “The future of work: Attract new talent, build better leaders, and create a competitive organization”, Morgan, J. (2014).

Written in 2014 but still valid nowadays, the Morgan book provides clear and useful guidelines to bring the employee performance to the highest levels by empowering him/her inside the organization. In this post, the 7 principles of the future employees are presented and summarized.

1. Flexible environment

It is based on the premise that what employees produce is more important than the time they are in the workstation: the outcomes are more relevant than te incomes.

For that reason, the employee might be able to work anytime and anywhere.

2. Customize the work

The employees have to be able to configure their own path in the Company. There are three possibilities:

Based on Voice, giving the employee the opportunity to be heard.
Based on Self-Organization, allowing the employee to choose the project in which prefers to get involved.
Based on Choice, responding to dinamically changes of interests and passions.

3. Share information

This change of behaviour will drive the company from competitive to collaborative. Avoiding the hoard of information means:

Engagement by all the employees.
Possibility of getting feedback.
Increase the sense of ownership.
Opening lines of communication.
Enabling innovation channels.

4. Become a leader

Empowering the employees to become leaders in their field. Besides, with todays tech tools new channels can be opened to hear the employees proposals.

5. Collaborate and communicate in new ways

Jump from traditional communications (e.g., email) to collaborative platforms (e.g., Slack, Trello). Rely on new technologies to getting closer.

6. Always keep learning

The employee must have the ability to learn and apply this acquired knowledge to new scenarios. The adaptation to changes will bring new opportunities to the company.

7. Learn and teach at-will

The employee has to learn from other employees at the time that teach others. This exercise will boost skills like autonomy, communication, adaptability.

This 7 principles need to go hand by hand with the following:

The proper management mind-set aligned with all the principles.
The use of the technology as enabler.
Future perspective: laying the foundations.

As we can see, all these concepts may bring the company to a new operating paradigm. Changes are happening, slowly, and sometimes boosted even more by external phenomenas (see Covid-19 and teleworking) than by the companies own aims. Anyway, employees the essence of a company and the key for it success.