Five Key Principles for Designing an Equitable and Effective Future of Work

Designing for equity leads to greater work effectiveness, regardless of whether leaders seek to redesign hybrid, digital or essential workplaces. To guide leaders as work continues to rapidly shift, here are five foundational principles that can serve as a framework to drive equity and effectiveness drawn from emerging research and the pandemic experience.

1. Create a Culture of Trust, Connection, and Purpose. Ask for and respect worker preferences. Give employees more autonomy and control over their time. For essential workers, that means working with their input to provide a stable schedule and giving at least two weeks’ notice so they can plan. Knowledge workers increasing productivity under trying circumstances during the pandemic has proven clearly how giving them more control over time, manner, and place in when and how they work is good for both employee health and company productivity. Recognize that authenticity and social connection, whether virtual or in person, is critical. Define the purpose of the organization and make sure everyone is clear why and how their work matters.

2. Have a Plan. Design with Intention. Ask workers what they want and need though anonymous surveys and build together from there. Those currently in leadership positions, surveys show, are more likely to want to return to the old ways of working that brought them success. Some may even be designing new ways of work to ensure they fail. Don’t. And recognize there’s a big difference between embracing change, with experimentation and agile adaptation, and allowing it, as if it were a gift. This is a time for re-imagination. Remember the magic words: "What would it take?" And go from there.

3. Managers Must Learn to Manage in a New Way. Give managers training to focus on tasks and performance outputs, not inputs like time and attendance, to manage a flexible workforce with caregiving demands, to tame excessive work demands, to build the soft skills of social connection, and to better define roles and communicate clear expectations. Recognize that this is hard. That managers are already exhausted and need resources and support. Transformation won’t “just happen.” But it’s worth it. Most managers,research shows, have tended to reward attendance, long hours and input, even when that same research found that digital workers were more productive. But that phenomenon, what social scientists call proximity bias and masculine “ideal worker” facetime cultures, has left many women, people of color, and caregivers out. In a hybrid setting, without training, strategies, and norms, that bias could turn digital workers into a second-tier workforce. Using data and helping managers shift mindsets and learn new skills are key to creating equitable cultures of psychological safety as well as productivity.

4. Prioritize Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Fairness. Systematic, evidence-based approaches to hiring and retaining employees, assigning tasks, and growth assignments and promotion can break down the confirmation bias—leaders favoring those who think, look and act like them—that is so rampant in workplaces, and build the best, most effective workforce. Research has found that men taking breaks to schmooze male bosses explains one-third of the gender gap in office promotions! And that men are far likelier to be given career-enhancing assignments and women, and women of color in particular, expected to do the less glamorous "office house work." Disrupting those patterns with new systems to promote equity should include practices like blind résumé review, structured interviews, reviews, using data to ensure promotions are based on clear performance metrics and expectations, expanded and virtual mentoring and networking opportunities, and assigning tasks intentionally, not just to the person who happens to be walking by the boss’s office at the moment. If what gets measured is what gets done, make leaders accountable for diversity, equity, and inclusion metrics and reward them. Gartner Human Resources finds this “consequential accountability” can close gender and racial and ethnic disparities an average of 13 and 6 years, respectively, sooner than organizations without them.

And as work moves into the next normal phase after the pandemic shutdowns, organizations must prioritize re-hiring the women and caregivers who’ve been forced out of the workforce because of the lack of care. Research shows having at least two women candidates in a pool of finalists increases the chances of a woman being hired by 79 percent. Some organizations, like Amazon, Hubspot, JP Morgan Chase, and others offer or have ramped up returnship programs, while others are working to create them with organizations like Path Forward.

5. Get the Basics Right. Fair pay. Fair hours. Living and equal wages. Safe working conditions. The right to organize. Pay transparency. Work-life boundaries. Systems that ensure respectful cultures—in person and virtually—free of harassment where all can thrive. Track worker care responsibilities—73 percent of U.S. employees are caring for a child or loved one after all. Support benefits and practices that promote wellbeing and quality of life. With the Great Realignment and technology continuing to rapidly change the way we work, it’s time for companies to support universal, portable benefits, and public policies for paid leave, health care, and investments in care infrastructure that enable workers to do good work—and live good lives.