Imagining Workplace Futures Assignment Sample

Introduction

Future of workplace is expected to change and human employees, digital workforce are going to work side by side. Integration of advanced digital products and connecting different platforms is going to be common in future workplaces. It is evident that future workplace is expected to face a lot of changes. Automation and AI, experience of staff and even office spaces are expected to change in near future. After Covid-19, lockdown and isolation has forced many businesses to close office space and change their current ways of working. In this study the expected changes in future workplaces are discussed in detail.

Three principal HR challenges

Human resources (HR) are facing different challenges over the years such as challenges are common in organisational practices, employee participation and workforce process.

Quelling staff duress

Keeping remote work sustainable for longer periods of time is difficult for human resources and business are going through difficult period as job losses are continuing due to pandemic. In some cases stress of job security and isolating remote work has resulted into mental health crisis. Human resource leaders need to take solid steps to increase employee engagement, create social interaction and provide support to employees with mental health issues.

Poor communication leading to issues

Organizational practices refer to behaviours and actions of staff in organisation. It is just outside the core culture and it is divided into two main types such as internal practices and external practices. Internal practices involve inner workings of company that has an effect on employee relationship, interaction between employees and it is close to core culture. As opinionated by Rakova et al. (2021), organizations which are able to align best practices consistently are expected to gain major success as well. Internal communication that is communication between employees and technology both are all part of internal practices.  As emphasized by Muduli (2017), external practices refer to the ways organisations communicate with outsiders and it indicates interaction with customers and markets where businesses are operating, it also includes suppliers, vendors and partnership with others. Businesses such as ASV are likely to be affected by poor communication. Organisations are expected to be benefited by understanding customer requirements and efficient communication helps to promote transparency and trust in business as well as contributes significantly to sustainable business. Poor communication leads to late deliveries, loss of items and businesses are not able to plan inventory turns which indirectly lead to unhappy customers, poor reviews of products and services and failure of work relationships.

Layoffs needs to defensible and objective

Unemployment is record low in US and human resource leaders are well aware of this situation and workforce is downsizing as future remain uncertain due to recent health crisis. In this situation of economic downturn it is difficult for human resource leaders to discharging employees. Modern business environment is affected by volatile market and technological disruptions and dismissing employees is last resort for employees to keep business afloat.

Increasing employee stress leading to high turnover

Employee participation involves activities and measures taken to make sure that employees participate in initiatives together to reach a common goal. It is common in different disciplines, sometimes employee participation is used to examine relationship between satisfaction and participation. It is encouraged by taking various measures and results seem to reflect in more employee involvement in some aspects of business and improvement of organizational efficiency. In views of Horwitz et al. (2019), management of companies needs to actively encourage employees to participate and assist in improving business processes. Leaders need to make sure that employees’ viewpoints are taken into consideration. Employees need to come up with solutions to current obstacles and these suggestions need to be reviewed in meetings. There are some major issues present regarding employee participation in AnySpace Venture (ASV), these barriers are cynicism, bureaucracy, inability to balance work life and poor decisions. As opinionated by Markey et al. (2018), organisations face barriers to engaging employees to participate as they do not have a clear idea about this subject, some align it with job satisfaction and employee morale. Organizations are facing high employee turnover and increasing employee stress and satisfaction and these are significant challenges for human resources as well. This is likely to result in decreased productivity and raise recruitment costs significantly. Business ends up in spending more time training new employees and an increased number of employee turnover impacts employee morale in ASV. Employees are likely to suffer from dissatisfaction as they feel unsupported, underpaid, work life balance is affected and career growth is likely to be negatively impacted as well.

Discrimination leading to poor performance

Workforce process refers to analysing and forecasting supply and demand of workforce and it also includes management intervention to hire right individuals for right positions to fulfil strategic objectives. AnySpace Venture (ASV) needs to decide about their future objectives, roles of organizational leadership and workforce to achieve it, businesses need to understand current workforce and the ways it is projected to change because of attrition and current business trends. As opinionated by Ighravwe et al. (2017), organisations need to have detailed understanding of recent and future requirements of its workforce. Gap analysis is expected to help organisations to acknowledge the gap between supply and demand of workforce. AnySpace Venture (ASV) needs to make appropriate intervention and activities need to focus on closing gap in workforce which is key to meeting goals. Workforce processes face various challenges such as safety of workplaces, dealing with uncertainty, changing business culture and employee experience. Human resources (HR) departments of AnySpace Venture (ASV) have to deal with different issues such as harassment, discrimination and performance related issues. Discrimination refers to treating employee less favourably based on individual’s race, colour, religion, gender, disability and nationality. In many cases employees who are subjected to discrimination face health issues and financial loss at the same time it affects, morale of the organisations. Higher stress levels are expected to result in health issues as individuals remain concerned about discrimination based on race, religion and gender. In this situation developing chronic illness is common due to lack of sleep and changing eating habits.

Negative impact of human resource challenges

Pandemic has impacted employee in myriad ways and each employee is going through their own challenges. Human resource leaders need to not jump into conclusions as it is difficult to predict who is most stressed. Employee as different expectations under this condition and needs to be aware that portfolio of resources are available to provide assistance to them. Those who were hired during pandemic are currently going though different experiences that is always changing. In some cases these new hires are expected to respond less compare to employees hired before this pandemic. Business is not able to stop remote work completely and human resources need to support discharged employees by providing insurance coverage or transition services.

Relevance of the issues in AnySpaceVenture (ASV)

These issues are likely to make a significant impact on businesses such as AnySpace Venture (ASV) which is operating in a global business environment and create workplace challenges in near future for business.

Poor communication

Business such as AnySpace Venture suffers when they do not have constructive interaction, when popper communication tools and strategies are lacking. This has potential to create misunderstanding, hinder innovation and lead to reduced amounts of profit for business. Leaders in ASV need to communicate effectively as employees depend on them for feedback and direction of work and also look for positive reinforcement (Bakotic & Krnic, 2017). Ineffective communication makes it difficult for employees to work collaboratively and function as a team. Poor communication also affects AnySpace Venture’s culture and productivity. It creates difficulty for employees and fuels distrust and confusion and ultimately affects staff’s loyalty and commitment for business. Employees need to share ideas and poor communication inhibits them to work using all available resources.

High employee turnover

High turnover of employees is likely to impact business by affecting productivity in business such as ASV leading to expenditure in recruitment process, leading to losses in sales. This scenario not only affects productivity but also employee morale by creating extra work for remaining staff. In such organisations, businesses are expected to suffer due to lack of trained employees (Nanda et al. 2020). Decline in sales occurs as businesses spend more time training employees. Overworked employees face low morale and newly hired individuals struggle to accomplish tasks and businesses such as ASV later face difficulty in attracting and keeping talented individuals in the organisation.

Performance issues

Performance issues are another crucial factor which is likely to affect AnySpace Venture (ASV). There are several factors responsible for poor performance namely insufficient skills and capabilities, employee appreciation, lack of motivation and decrease growth in career. AnySpace Venture (ASV) is also impacted by factors such as knowledge, experience, awareness, values and needs in terms of job performance. These factors are expected to change over time as employees keep working for particular organisations. Businesses suffer due to poor performance of employees, which results in low profitability and productivity (Kalogiannidis, 2020).  It affects, quality of deliverables for businesses such as ASV, it suffers due to spending resources such as time and money on low performing employees which led to decline in profit margin.

Recommendations

Virtual work

Employees are interested in continuing virtual work and continuously shifting away from traditional work models. Human resource leaders need to be more flexible, worker centric and accept working from home something that is common. Government mandated lockdowns can force employee to go back to full time work from home experience. Companies such as Face book, Twitter and Shopify has already embraced this trend and Microsoft has made it part of permanent work culture.

Embracing digitisation

Digital first work has multiple implications and it is expected to shape future work culture for businesses. Human resource leaders need to ensure that adequate communication tools are there to support employees. According to global human capital trends Businesses need to invest in digital collaboration platforms to sustain this new kind of work culture (DELOITTE, 2021). Human resources needs to support hybrid work as Covid-19 restrictions still continues and employees are expected to be present at office however this trend of remote work is expected to continue.

Group discussion and training employees

AnySpace Venture (ASV) needs to find the root causes to remedy the issues of poor communication. Poor communication issues are faced by business as part of problems in its organisational practices. Organisational practices include preparing business plans according to strategic statements of business, communicating expectations regarding performance and setting targets for each department, communicating any expectation regarding performance targets as well as updating and reviewing work format. As opinionated by Wu et al. (2017), businesses need to chase their employees regularly. This can improve communication, discussing projects and receiving feedback from leaders. Businesses can take steps such as conducting employee surveys and schedule interviews to better communicate. ASV need to create strategies for employee training programs which are likely to be useful for new employees and proper documentation of internal knowledge is required to strengthen communication. AnySpace Venture needs to provide training videos to educate employees, it helps employees to keep them up to date and aware of current information. Businesses such as ASV needs to make sure that communication tools such as email, phone and in person meeting are used according to requirements and strategies regarding internal communication is helpful to make communication effective. As opinionated by Ali et al. (2021), businesses can install intranet software’s such as Workplace, SharePoint, Blink and Jive to remedy poor communication, these tools are effective to streamline business processes and it helps employees to share ideas. AnySpace Venture (ASV) needs to have an open-door policy and encourage employees to speak freely which motivates them and boosts communication.

Flexible work environment and motivating employees

AnySpace Venture (ASV) needs to reduce the rate of employee turnover to ensure that its resources such as time and money are spent to improve the profit margin of business. Organizations need to provide rewards to employees who are able to provide relevant solutions. In views of Khan et al. (2020), employees need to share ideas and speak freely about issues at meetings and be part of a problem-solvingteam. ASV needs to take various steps to reduce employee turnover such as being flexible to make such that employees are able to maintain work life balance. AnySpace Venture (ASV) can be one by providing remote work opportunities to employees. Other stringent policies such as enforcing strict attendance policy are also required to be implemented by AnySpace Venture (ASV) to reduce turn over. Organisation such as AnySpace Venture (ASV) can offer training and development opportunities to employees to reduce turnover numbers. As opinionated by Kurniawaty et al. (2019), providing salary and benefits to employees and it is also effective to decrease turnover rates which help businesses to ensure long term success and profitability. Employee turnover is an important issue for AnySpace Venture (ASV) as the cost of selecting, hiring, training employees is high and finding replacement is expensive. High employee turnover also damages morale of remaining employees and it impacts negatively on productivity. Therefore, AnySpace Venture (ASV) needs to hire skilled employees who are capable of handling work and dismiss those who are not able to handle the tasks. AnySpace Venture (ASV) needs to give reward and recognition to those employees who are doing excellent work which is likely to reduce the rate of turnover.

Splitting tasks into manageable segments

AnySpace Venture (ASV) can take significant steps to ensure that performance of employees improves and employees can improve their performances by properly conducting time management. Business need monitoring progress is vital to the changes that have been made to better performance and bridge the identified gaps and helps to make this process effective (Hr.nih.gov, 2021). Employees need to prioritize tasks and set up clear goals to achieve these tasks. Using the right tools and delegating work to others also helps to improve performance and improve organisation of the work station. Improving Performance is key to AnySpace Venture (ASV) success, since it is directly linked to its profits and this directly impacts productivity. Employees need to make sure that there are no distractions present and try to take steps to limit distractions. Splitting tasks into manageable segments also helps to reach big milestones easily and allocating time to each segment helps to accomplish that activity within time. Multitasking and prioritizing also helps to improve performance as well (Rodriguez & Walters, 2017). In AnySpace Venture (ASV) employees need to be able to handle multiple tasks such as communicating with clients, contractors, reviewing projects. Multitasking is likely to improve quality of work and all the tasks are expected to be completed faster this way. Setting clear goals is key to accomplish tasks and improving performance and these need to be done based on strength and weakness.

Implementation action plan

Table 1: Action plan

(Source: Created by author)

Contribution of recommended strategies to business objectives and goals

AnySpace Venture (ASV) needs to employ strategies which help them to meet business objectives and goals. It needs to reduce turnover rate and increase profit margin and productivity. As opinionated by Abbas (2020) poor employee performance is likely to affect productivity of businesses therefore it needs adequate measures to ensure bad performance does not lead to loss of profit for business. Lack of communication affects AnySpace Venture (ASV) objectives and goals that lead to customer dissatisfaction. Employee’s turnover is costly for business therefore AnySpace Venture (ASV) need to have stricter policy regarding to decrease turnover rate and promote employee engagement by acknowledging employee efforts, provide adequate training to new employees and hired skilled professionals who are able to assist AnySpace Venture (ASV) to reach it business objective and financial goals. Internal practices influence, the ways work is organised, systems, processes, work habits, hiring and selection process, orientation, training, development. AnySpace Venture (ASV) needs to evaluate employee performance as it is a part of Organizational practices and it includes managing employee goals, objectives, performance evaluation, recognition and conversations regarding performance. As opinionated by Sabuhari et al. (2020), performance evaluation is expected to help employees to work on feedback and improve their performance. AnySpace Venture (ASV) needs to make sure that its external practices reflect core culture which is likely to create a positive effect on organisations. This requires good communication skills in employees which is key to successful collaboration with outsiders such as suppliers and business partners.

Recommendations for improving our organisational effectiveness

Organisational effectiveness reflects employee engagement and organisational performance and these factors are key to business success (Johnson et al. 2018). In some cases, both employee and management are cynical about employee engagement and it indicates negative viewpoints in individuals with self-interest at its core, it impedes genuine effort. Bureaucracy is another barrier to ensure employee participation, focussing on predetermined rules and regulations without considering appropriateness of its current situation is likely to be an issue for organizations.  Effective communication is essential to reach organizational achievement and businesses such as AnySpace Venture (ASV) are expected to face uncertainty and poor productivity due to lack of communication, therefore it is essential to improve communication. Employee performance impacts organisational performance directly as employees who are able to meet deadlines and increase sales are able to create customer interaction n which positive in nature, as lack of performance can come across as apathy towards customers which effects AnySpace Venture (ASV) reputation negatively and reflects negatively on organisation’s performance as well. In views of Rizky et al. (2019), employee performance needs to be revered regularly and ASV needs to provide both formal and informal feedback to employees. ASV needs to communicate their expectations clearly, and take steps to motivate employees to perform better. AnySpace Venture (ASV) needs to hire employees who are apt for specific work; they need not hesitate to ask employees to leave who are not able to perform according to their needs. High turnover rate affects productivity negatively as employee strength reduces and overwork makes rest of employee morale down, AnySpace Venture (ASV) needs to provide recognition and rewards to motivate employees to perform better and offer flexibility to increase employee engagement.

Conclusion

Covid -19 has created an unprecedented situation in business and business ladders believe business performance levels are going to take time to reach pre covid-19 level. According to HR leader’s pandemic has made re-skilling more difficult even before pandemic skills was a significant issue and after pandemic employees require more skills to accomplish their jobs. Improvement of workforce in future requires employees to have skills, businesses need to have different tools which help them to achieve success by fulfilling objectives and assist them to increase productivity which positively impacts organisational performance and profitability.

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