By | Naga Siddharth | CHRO | Psychometrician | Author
As a futurist and a HR leader, I am often asked on what are the shifts expected after the present crisis is overcome. Here are a few of my thoughts.
- The near term is going to lead to job security issues in organizations. It’s important that organization leadership take a stand – could be that we might cut salaries, but won’t have job losses, or we will protect those who survive, but might need to look at job losses. Clarity will be paramount for employees to commit their psychological disposition to work and create value for organizations.
- Many leaders and founders have been extremely lucky and hardworking in life. They have hardly seen failure and not getting what they want. This has been a shake up of sorts for them. They are beginning to see and realise that life is beyond achievement. This might mean there is a need for psychological and emotional support for such leaders across organizations.
- Unnecessary spending will go down. India is a country with job security ingrained in a large part of the milieu. People are going to be looking for value – much much more than lifestyle and social benchmarking. While things might not be sharply minimalist, simple living could take over.
- Empathy is bubbling up. Countries that have had poverty all along and rest of the society acting like the underprivileged didn’t exist, have shown that its possible to share a little, to ensure people don’t go to bed hungry. The truth that it was “intent” that makes all the difference has come into collective consciousness.
- Natural empathy is also leading to a lot of sensitivity. An aspect of life often disregarded by individuals who felt it was antithetical to mindless achievement orientation. Civilizations are going to look at reducing causing unnecessary pain to fellow sentient beings. Vegetarian diets, movement of zoos to natural reserves, basic kindness to each other. All of them are going to grow.
- Social conditioning that has led to hierarchical behaviour are definitely going to reduce. In ideal scenarios, it is possibly going to lead to an inversion of the pyramid. This is going to beget kindness and care from both sides. Purely intellect driven supremacy has a good chance of getting redeemed.
- Belief systems that are internal compass based are going to be accepted by larger numbers.
- The “shoulds” and “oughts” are going away. Control tendencies of corporations that would never agree to work from home have now been addressed adequately. Work from home is going to become a definite value proposition for employers.
- More wfh will mean one big thing. Real estate costs are going to get, well, real. This in turn will bring in the much needed calmness in society. Reasonable costs will reduce the pressure on companies to over perform.
- More people, many more people are going to go off grid. Solar, wind energy, water harvesting and crops for self use will become widespread. Combined with the technological prowess of such individuals, the farming community at large will benefit greatly. Much more equity for farmers is just after the horizon.
- Cleanliness levels, sense of hygiene, quality of food served – these will probably become quite assertive asks by customers everywhere.
- Practices, traditions, rituals would possibly get investigated with an “insider” mindset instead of outright rejections or an “outsider” mindset. In a way, openness to experience will increase as a trait in society.
- Dependence on alcohol and similar psychotropic substances are likely to go down, and alongwith it, will increase the demand of employees for structured work timings, meaningful engagement with managers and companies that can provide both these would find it much easier to attract and retain extremely sharp talent.
- For those looking at building long term businesses, this would be the right time to invest on assessments and develop specific competencies of influence, relationship building and solution thinking for the new world. The world beyond the shift.
