The employees of the future and the need for more self-management. The employees of the future can, will and should take responsibility, both at a professional and at a personal level. They will increasingly take part in defining and identifying both the need for management and the need to create a work-life balance. This is particularly important where future workplaces will have to function irrespective of culture or geographical distance. The time when rank-and-file employees were subservient individuals who merely followed orders is long gone. For several years now, it has become accepted that tasks should instead be explained, put into perspective, motivated and made meaningful – but it has primarily been the manager’s responsibility to create the correct climate of understanding. However, this way of working may well soon become obsolete too. For more and more businesses, the employees themselves are playing an increasingly important part. “Along with businesses having to invest more in skills and highly-trained staff, it is only natural that the employees themselves should take greater responsibility for their need for management,” explains business consultant Klaus Veile of Sapiens Consulting. “This is not to say that managers will become superfluous. But employees themselves will to a greater and greater extent identify their need for management – and go looking for it. Fragmented labour market an incentive It is not only higher levels of training and skills among employees that are decisive in this development. Flatter organisational structures and the fragmented labour market that is developing in the wake of globalisation will also accelerate the need for a higher degree of employee self-management. “Some of those affected are staff whose manager is based abroad, or staff who have a remote workplace,” continues Klaus Veile. “There is an extra management challenge here, and it is a clear advantage if the staff themselves are in a position to demand the management they need in their daily work.” Common language and point of departure needed This development underlines the need for a common management language on the part of the organisations concerned, while at the same time employees must be equipped to accurately assess their own performance, skills and commitment to the specific task and the overall business aims. “It is important to be able to express the need for management in the proper terms, so that manager and employee can reconcile their reciprocal expectations,” emphasises Veile. “And the common point of departure might, for example, be direct management of only conduct and skills, combined with training in self-management, and diagnosis of management needs as a natural extension of this. In this way, staff can influence the management that is most effective for them and thereby achieve the greatest possible efficiency, combined with a good work-life balance.”
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 12:04:15 +0000
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