Now is the time to reinvent work, according to Dr Nicola Millard, Principal Innovation Partner (formerly known as a futurologist) at BT, opening the 2024 SPDS Annual Conference in St Andrews.

“We are in a period of opportunity to reinvent the ways we work,” she told the SPDS Conference, adding that she believed work was in serious need of reinvention for three reasons: to improve people’s experiences of work, to improve productivity and to protect the planet.

Making predictions about the future of work is nothing new. Millard pointed to a 1921 quote from American mathematician Charles P Steinmetz, who predicted that by 2023 “there will be no long back-breaking drudgery and people will work for no more than four hours a day”. While that projection might not have quite come to pass (not yet anyway), Millard revealed that the human brain can only tolerate deep work for four hours at a time, suggesting Steinmetz was onto something.

“It’s right to question the ways we work,” she added. “Why do we work 9 to 5, Monday to Friday?  The roots of how we work today were forged in the late 1800s. There’s no reason in an age that is not industrial, where many of us are knowledge workers, that we shouldn’t question how we work. We need to question everything.”

With that in mind, here are seven key trends Millard highlighted that are already reshaping how we work now…

1. The 100-year life

We are living and working longer than ever before. Millard cited the work of London Business School professor Lynda Gratton, co-author of The 100-Year Life, who has been exploring how longer lives will force us to reshape how we think about careers. “If you are working into your seventies or eighties, our assumptions about work-life need to change and become less linear,” said Millard. In a longer, perhaps ‘messier’ career, retraining opportunities will become critical for people at all ages – something HR leaders need to carefully consider.

2. Hybrid is here to stay

While headlines suggest a ‘war’ between employers and employees over the appropriate amount of time to spend in an office, Millard said the data showed that hybrid working was here to stay for knowledge workers (44% of companies work in a structured hybrid model, compared to 28% requiring full-time office attendance). “The data says the sweet spot for productivity is around two days a week in the office,” she said, adding that arguing over the number of days in the office was the wrong approach. Instead, employers should be thinking about how to deal with issues like digital overload and making hybrid meetings a better experience for those not in the room.

3. Technology is impacting our wellbeing

While bosses might worry about lack of connectivity impacting productivity, in fact it’s the opposite: being constantly connected is damaging people. “We are always tethered back to the office via our devices,” said Millard. “The problem with work isn’t connection, it’s disconnection. There’s no off switch.” Techno-overload is problematic for concentration (as constant distraction undermines deep work) and detrimental to personal wellbeing. The pressure to be constantly available can make people feel overwhelmed and insecure. It’s an issue HR professors must take seriously.

4. The new purpose of the office

How can you avoid your people ‘coffee badging’, heading into the office briefly (and therefore tapping in), only to grab a coffee before heading home to get some actual work done? “If we want people back in the office, we need to think about what the office is for – and how to measure it,” Millard advised. “Offices are platforms for collaboration, communication and creating community.” That means rethinking office design to enable those three Cs, gathering data on how people are using the space, and tweaking facilities, resources and office layout accordingly. On solving the issue of hybrid workplaces often being empty on Fridays, Millard suggested closing the office entirely (helping lower carbon emissions) or opening it up to local community groups (enhancing social cohesion).

5. The end of meetings culture

When it comes to productivity, we need to “eliminate the time vampires”, said Millard. And the ultimate productivity killer? The meeting. She shared research by Microsoft which tracked the impact of a meeting-heavy day on people’s brains – “after four hours you can literally see the brain dying”. Before arranging one, question whether it really has to be a meeting, she advised. Some work previously thought of as better done synchronously, for example ideation, can be better achieved asynchronously. If it has to be a meeting and is going to be hybrid, moderators should be trained in ensuring everyone is included. “Hybrid isn’t about office or home,” Millard said. “The common ground is the digital platform and that is what we have to get used to.”

6. Opportunities in the metaverse

While the true metaverse (a virtual world in which people can interact with each other and virtual objects using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)) does not yet exist, Millard pulled out opportunities in VR and AR that could positively impact training and development in particular. Using AR, for example, a clinician in a remote hospital guiding a paramedic through a procedure, can help raise productivity. “If you combine this with AI and machine learning, we are helping people to do stuff that they would not be able to do outside a classroom previously, so it’s increasing efficiency,” said Millard. She added that in the future using holograms could make hybrid meetings less painful for the people not in the room.

7. Symbiotic AI

For those concerned about being displaced by AI (in particular generative AI), Millard offered some reassurance: “It will change a lot of our jobs and there will be jobs eliminated, but there’s going to be lots of jobs created as well.” Rather than being scared of technology, we should think of AI as cognitive technologies that complement our brains, enhancing individual productivity. “It’s about figuring out how human brains and AI can work together,” said Millard. “It’s not human versus machine, it’s human plus machine: symbiotic AI. In the future of work we need to work with these machines, not against them.”

Millard had a powerful closing message for HR professionals: all this is too important to be left to the technologists. HR needs to act as a bridge, thinking about how to design better jobs and win hearts and minds. “The future of work is up for grabs,” she concluded. “We have an incredible opportunity to create a future that works better for people, for productivity and for the planet.”

Dr Nicola Millard with SPDS President, Sharon Faulkner

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Blog by Katie Jacobs, an award-winning freelance journalist, writer and editor, who specialises in writing about the world of work. She was previously Editor of HR Magazine and Senior Stakeholder Lead at the CIPD.