How to build a sustainable workforce and improve job satisfaction

Organizations and individuals are hyper-focused on sustainability, and rightly so. But one of the resources that has not traditionally been part of that focus is the workforce. It’s imperative to find ways to sustain the people and teams working for businesses of all types, around the world. If growth comes at the expense of the well-being of our teams, our success will be short-lived.

Almost two years since the pandemic upended work – funneling some people into new remote work models and forcing others into fraught essential onsite jobs – we can see that our old work models are strained. Many non-executives don’t want the old models restored, whereas executives tend to be more eager to return to the old models.

These different feelings about returning to work highlight a broader disconnect between the two groups. To deliver what employees want, executives need to have conversations with members of their workforce and recruits to understand what motivates them. But most executives report that they are making plans for post-pandemic work approaches with little to no input from employees.

Some employees are inspired by the new ways of working they’ve discovered; others are burned out by the extra pressures they’ve endured. Some have simply realized, in the face of vast illness and death, that they want more out of life. They don’t want to fit their lives in around commuting and working; they want work to accommodate their lives.

The "great resignation" is a sign of that mindset shift. People are quitting their jobs in droves. More than half (57%) of all knowledge workers responding to a Future Forum survey say they are open to looking for a new job; the proportion rises to 71% among those who are not satisfied with the degree of flexibility possible in their current job. Businesses of all types report difficulty filling positions. The situation does not apply just to knowledge workers. Those who work in manufacturing, retail, and hospitality are also eager for new, flexible models of work.

There’s potentially a big upside to all of this. We have (inadvertently) created an opportunity to design a more sustainable way of working. We can and should supersede the great resignation with the great recalibration: let’s remake jobs so that they meet employees’ needs and desires and boost their quality of life, while building businesses of the future.

This new way of thinking is good for employees and it’s good for organizations that embrace it. They’ll gain the ability to attract and retain talent – talent that really wants to be there, even if “there” is a digital connection.

Here are some key steps toward a great recalibration:

The pandemic has taught us that workers don’t need to be under a manager’s thumb to get work done. The pandemic has also given workers an appetite for flexibility, self-determination, and self-navigation. There’s an opportunity now to reconstitute the future of work. Organizations that seize that opportunity can create new work models that make them employers of choice, able to attract, retain and sustain the best talent.