The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated workforce shifts that had been gaining momentum before the public health crisis, thrusting employers and workers into a new era within months.
Joseph Fuller, a professor at Harvard Business School and co-leader of the School’s Managing the Future of Work initiative, recently answered reader questions on Instagram, as part of our ongoing “Office Hours” series.
Fuller’s research probes the "skills gap" and the paradox that many employers struggle to fill jobs while millions of Americans remain unemployed, underemployed, or have left the workforce. He has also written about the caregiving roles of employees and strengthening the education-to-work pipeline.
The following is a transcript of questions posed by Instagram users and Fuller’s answers:
Should we be worried about the current “worker shortage”?
"We should absolutely be worried about the current worker shortage, for three or four reasons. One is it reflects in part stagnation and actually decline of the workforce participation rate. We have a large number of prime working age adults, particularly males, who are neither in school, in employment, or somehow involved in the criminal justice system. They’re just not working.
We do a very poor job of teaching that in the United States—giving people a basic familiarity with digital technology.
"The second is that a lot of the shortage of workers is coming in the form of digital natives who can deal with the types of technologies that are going to be more and more prevalent in the workplace. We do a very poor job of teaching that in the United States—giving people a basic familiarity with digital technology that they’re going to need going forward.
"The final thing is that a lot of this shortage covers up the fact that there’s a significant population of lower-skilled, lower educational-attainment workers out there, many who speak English as a second language, who have worked in service industries that have been very, very badly damaged by COVID. They’re going to have a hard time finding work that accommodates their skills and pays them decently going forward."
Are there any companies standing out from the others in how they’re transforming work?
"Through COVID, the two companies that jump out at me as being most innovative in their work practices and in mobilizing people are companies of great size that have been hugely affected by COVID positively—namely, Walmart and Amazon.
"I know those are not always companies that people view favorably in terms of work, but in the last 10 years, Walmart has been an amazing innovator in the space in terms of skills development and upskilling its own workforce. Amazon has shown incredible resilience in scaling up its workforce and using technology to make people more productive and to enhance workplace safety."
Is automation a threat to jobs? If so, how should government, business, and employees respond?
"Automation is a threat to certain types of jobs. In fact, automation is almost always created by entrepreneurs and technologists in response to a shortage of workers or in response to a lack of productivity in the current work processes. However, automation also creates new jobs, jobs to serve that automation. Therefore, there’s a net-net effect in terms of job creation.
"One truth, though, is that many of the new jobs often have more technical or digital content than the jobs they replaced."
What do you think about the future of virtual internships?
"There’s a big future for virtual internships, not so much because COVID forced companies to engage interns virtually, but because the technology around virtualization of work is getting so much better.
Internships will be much more meaningful and substantial than they could have been when offered through a virtual mechanism.
"Interns will be able to do their work from remote campuses without relocating, during the school year, not just during holidays or summer breaks. Their ability to share, forward and retain confidential information has been enhanced. Internships will be much more meaningful and substantial than they could have been historically when offered through a virtual mechanism."
Aside from compensation, how can managers motivate and promote freelancers?
"Managers can motivate part-timers or gig workers in several ways. The first is to make them feel fully included in the group. The second is to structure the work carefully so they can be both productive and efficient. The third is to make sure they’re fully apprised of the purpose of the work. Make it meaningful to them."
How has your research changed pre-pandemic to now?
"The pandemic caused us to shift the focus of our research in the Managing the Future of Work project more toward questions of the long-term implications of the acceleration of certain trends in the workplace and workforce that were visible before COVID but have really taken off as a function of COVID. This includes everything from the growing prominence of the care economy and its impact on work, to distance work, to the acceleration of the deployment of digital technologies."
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About the Author
Kristen Senz is the growth editor of Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.
[Image: iStockphoto/vm]
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