The Shifting Power Structure at Work with Rebecca Ryan
In Season One of 12 Geniuses, futurist Rebecca Ryan joined the show to talk about the future of America and how changes in the country can be embraced in positive ways. Today, she and Don reconnect to talk about the future of work, particularly about the ways that the pandemic has significantly disrupted what work looks like. Rebecca discusses the implications and importance of working from home and why she believes there's been a power shift away from employers and toward employees.
Rebecca has spent her career consulting with large and small organizations to prepare them for the changes to come. Rebecca has authored a book, “ReGENERATION: A Manifesto for America’s Next Leaders,” detailing these changes and how we can prepare ourselves to remain relevant and competitive in the world to come.
Resources From This Episode
Find out more on Rebecca’s website
Connect with Rebecca on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Don MacPherson:
Hi, this is Don MacPherson, your host of 12 Geniuses. Rebecca Ryan is a futurist who was a guest on Season One of this show. Today, she joins us to talk about the future of work. She discusses the implications and importance of working from home. Rebecca also talks about why she believes there's been a power shift away from employers into the hands of employees.
This episode of 12 Geniuses is sponsored by the Think2Perform Research Institute, an organization committed to advancing moral, purposeful, and emotionally intelligent leadership.
Rebecca, welcome back to 12 Geniuses. You were a guest on the show in Season One and at that time we were talking about the future of American. Today we are talking about the workplace. When you factor in the pandemic, labor shortages, remote work how do you see the future of work unfolding?
Rebecca Ryan:
If I were to put a thousand dollars on a couple of slots on a roulette wheel in Vegas, I would put a chip on the fact that the dynamic has shifted to favor employees more than employers, and I think that that's healthy. It's healthy for the economy. It's going to be healthier, I think, longer term for employees overall. The second thing that I would put a bet on is that remote and hybrid work is not going to be a stepchild to in-office work.
And just a tiny little pet peeve, I hate that people are calling “return to the office” “return to work,” because what have we been doing this entire time during the pandemic? We've been working. Let's stop conflating the office with work. And the third thing that I would put the long money on is even greater stratification between winners and losers in the war for talent. Because I think before COVID, most people were trying to attract talent with one carrot only, and that was the compensation carrot, and it was just ginning up salaries.
You and I have studied humans in the workplace long enough to know that that is only one factor of many. And so what I think is going to happen is there's going to be an enlightenment among employers who, they themselves have been working remotely and understand that it works, and can see that it is a huge competitive advantage, and can see that helping employees live their whole lives, not just work their lives, is something that is a competitive advantage for them.
If they can truly give meaningful paid time off, truly offer flexibility, these are things that just make the workplace more humane. I think there will be a lot of benefits that will go to those organizations who figure out how to have a humane worker experience, and I think it will be more widespread than it was pre-COVID.
Don MacPherson:
I want to ask you about the first point that you made, which is an advantage or a power shift away from employers to employees. Do you see that as a longer-term trend, or is this kind of a shorter-term position that the employees are in right now?
Rebecca Ryan:
I think there have been gates to this recovery coming back from the pandemic. I hate even using that language because I don't think there is a back to go to. I think we're at a phase change. Back to school is going to be another gate. We're going to see what happens after children are back in school because that affects working parents. I think 44% of the workforce is working parents. So that's going to be an interesting thing to watch.
And another gate is going to be, at what point workers who have a lot more options now than they had before, and I'm thinking especially about low-skill, low-wage workers — you see signs in Detroit Lakes for $15 an hour at McDonald's and a $300 signing bonus. That is some of the Wild West of this, but it's also such a tell that we think that money is what's going to bring you in the door. And again, kind of going back to that idea that it's never just about the money.
Again, we're just trying to use that overused carrot for every single issue that we're having, when what we might need to do is just a grand rethink of how work gets done and who we need to do that work and the kinds of employees. I think it's going to be interesting as we go into the fall and the winter to see what happens with the hospitality and the service industry and low-skill, low-wage workers. And then there is all of the people who've used some time to upskill.
Those people with rare and valuable skills are the ones who always have the most options and who will have exceedingly more options as we learn how to do remote work in a way that works for everybody. I think there are certain strata of the employer cake, if you will, the employee layer cake, that are all going through some jiggling and some reorganization. I really feel like I'm living through the biggest economic experiment of my life, because we won't know for five and maybe 10 years how all of this is going to shake out.
And for people who are waiting for certainty, I just want to say, get off the sidelines. There is no certainty. Let's create the kinds of workplaces and the kinds of teams that we want and don't be beholden to the old ways of doing things. This is a huge opportunity for those people who are creative enough and friendly enough with risk who are willing to try something different.
Don MacPherson:
One of the thoughts that comes to mind when you talked about the lower-wage and lower-skilled jobs that are not being placed right now is automation and immigration. These employers are going to have to provide product and services to their clients and to their customers. And if they can't get people in the seats, there is going to be innovation in terms of automation, or there has to be some sort of immigration reform. That's my mind, anyway, and I'm just curious if you agree with that.
Rebecca Ryan:
Think about the last time you went to an airport compared to going to an airport five years ago. Now there is all paperless check-in. You don't have to see a gate agent unless you are having a problem printing your boarding pass, or unless you have a special service or you need to gate-check a bag. You can do it, almost all of that, without seeing anybody. I do think we've probably made a massive shift in bringing more automation to low-skill jobs. And that is predicted, and that is something that I think can be healthy for the economy.
But then how do we oxygenate the economy? How do we take those folks who have low-skill, low-wage jobs, and how do we either increase the value of what they do or how do we increase their value? I think what we're going to see longer term is an increase in the minimum wage. It won't be federal, because the federal government is last to do these things. But in most major markets, there is a $15 minimum wage already. I remember during the Obama administration, they were like, "We're going to get to $10 an hour." Well, that doesn't work in King County, Washington. It doesn't work in Chicago. It doesn't work in most of the major cities. We're going to see a higher minimum wage because that's what's going to be required.
I would hope that, at some point, we start to see a significant investment in our human capital, whether that is requiring two years post-high school, extending high school so that you leave with certified qualifications — that you're certified to do things, whether it's what Google is doing now, offering free online training for specific areas where it needs talent at very high wages.
I think this post-high school educational area is just ripe for shakeup. But then as it relates to immigration, I am anxious to see how this all shakes out. We're recording this on August 4. There are 6.8 million jobs that are still open. I don't know enough about what kinds of jobs those are, but the history of this country was being a place, you know, “give me your tired, your poor,” and it's part of what has made this country great.
It would be nice to see some significant immigration reform for all levels of that employee layer cake, as I said, because we need more high-tech workers, and we need more people in the middle and more people at the lower ends.
Don MacPherson:
Let's talk about working from home for a moment, because there are all sorts of implications to that. There's something that I think I first heard a year ago, which is a “digital nomad,” and I just talked with somebody a couple of weeks ago. He just got hired at Minneapolis. I said, "Where were you prior to this?" And he says, "I was in eight cities over the last eight months." He just went one month in these different cities. And he wasn't a young man. He was in his 40s.
This is something that is pretty interesting, pretty compelling, meaning a Facebook or a Google can hire anywhere now. And not just within the US borders, but outside of our borders. So what do you see as some of the larger implications to working from home?
Rebecca Ryan:
I think the reason it worked and it worked well, so productivity was at least on par with pre-COVID and in many places it was up. Why? I think two things. One, it reduced friction, the friction of having to do a daycare drop-off and then getting yourself to work. They say that commuting by car to work is the single daily activity that is most injurious to happiness. So just taking that out of the mix for most people was a net improvement. For most people. Not for all, but for most people. So less friction working from home.
And the second is autonomy. This is a story that I don't think is being told enough. When you go to an office to go to work, you're entering a psychosocial space, which often makes an employee feel like they have less autonomy. Why? Because they're being watched. Their co-workers are watching them. Their boss may be watching them. Others are watching them. Those things kind of chip away at that feeling of autonomy, or if you feel like you can be disrupted at any moment. Somebody could tap on your shoulder and take you out of your flow.
The work-from-home piece that I think should be the headline is it gave a lot more people more autonomy. And that is the thing that knowledge workers crave. And we know that knowledge workers create a lot of value in the economy and are typically the places where there's a lot of growth in the economy. If you do require people to return to an office, my question is, how can you maintain autonomy?
You're hearing places like Google and Facebook saying, "Well, maybe these oceans of open spaces where everybody gets a three-foot desk and there are no walls, maybe that's actually not good for productivity." McKinsey released a report recently in June that said one in three workers found their mental health getting worse going back to the office. There are a whole bunch of things that we need to attenuate for.
UC Berkeley just came out with some research. They talked about “pandemic cave syndrome,” the idea that we all retreated to this pandemic cave, and that tends to feel safe for people, when you can control your home environment. For me, I know where my coffee's coming from every day. I have my favorite chair that I sit in. Those things are very comfortable. And then when you take people out of that for a large amount of time, every single day, and say, "Now work here," it changes things.
Don MacPherson:
Let's talk about winners and losers and stratification and equity. What does the future of work look like? Because when I think about this, I think it's great for skilled people and it's great for those who can work from home, but it's not so great for those lower-skilled and lower-wage workers or people who may not be able to work from home. We already have social problems related to equity and related to the stratification and wage gaps and things like that. But it could even get further exacerbated. What do you think?
Rebecca Ryan:
The first thing is some of that is a normal part of a healthy economy, right? I mean, there are always winners and losers in a free market economy. And just because something is a problem doesn't mean that the market overall isn't working. I want to start there. Now, let me put on my diversity, equity, inclusion hat. I am inspired by the number of employers who really have had a gut check about getting activated about Black Lives Matter through the George Floyd murder, was such a clarion call around the world.
I have heard whispers and I've seen unpublished reports, private reports, about the number of employers who are really looking closely at what they play women versus men, and making sure that that gets leveled up, and looking closely at what they are paying people of color versus white people, and making sure that that gets leveled up. I'd like to see every employer do that.
But here's, like, another option. You talked about people who can't work remotely. Well, maybe the people in that situation can't work remotely, but could the employer move to be closer to the employee? I think about ZIP code analysis. You all know where your people live, right? Does it make sense for you to be 40 minutes by car in a really inexpensive suburb where you got a killer rate on a lease? Because guess what? Those rates are probably available in other places, as well.
Maybe you can't have people working from home, but could you do something to make the office easier for them to get to. Or set up a satellite office in a suburb or any area of town where there is a pool of people who are underemployed and who might flock to your jobs? I just think there's a real stasis that set in, where we fix place and work, and those have to be together. We should be able to think more creatively about this. And from a commercial real estate perspective, I feel like there's a lot more flexibility now than there was pre-COVID.
We know that there's one five-letter word that has the greatest impact on your ability to retain great people, and that word is “trust.” If you're right now listening to this and thinking, “how are we going to attract and keep people?” you should first be asking yourself: What are the behaviors that I'm doing that are deepening trust with my people? And what are the behaviors I'm doing that are not deepening trust with my people?
Millions of people either are or know somebody who is really suffering from anxiety, from depression, from a mental illness, or they're bumping up against something that they haven't had to bump up against before. There is a huge opportunity for those of us who have teams and who have employees to tell people, "Take the time that you need. Let me know how it is for you. We're not going anywhere, right? You're a valued part of this community. You don't have to tell me what's going on, but we have employee assistance," or whatever the case is.
My sister, Sarah, works for a large health care organization in Arizona, the largest actually, and she said there are two things that they're noticing right now. One is the number of suicide attempts coming into the emergency room, and the second is on the employee side, the spike in people who are reaching out for those employee assistance benefits, whether that's therapy or just someone to talk to. There is an invisible tax on many workers right now.
And if you want to build trust, you're going to hold the space for people who are going through a hard time right now, and you're going to extend what you can to them from a benefit and a grace and a compassion perspective.
Don MacPherson:
Rebecca, I always love our conversations. Thank you again for joining us, and thank you again for being a genius.
Rebecca Ryan:
Thanks, Don. Howdy to all the other geniuses. And let's not forget those listeners who, they are geniuses, too, for listening to this podcast.
Don MacPherson:
Thanks for listening to 12 Geniuses. During next week's interview, we check in with Giadha Aguirre DeCarcer, CEO of New Frontier Data. Giadha is a cannabis expert who helps businesses and politicians understand the trends and latest research influencing that industry. She's going to help us understand how the industry continues to evolve, as more states and countries legalize both medical and recreational cannabis use. Giadha's episode will be released Aug. 24, 2021. Thanks for listening, and thank you for being a genius.