The workplace in February 2022 looks drastically different than it did even a year ago and is likely to be reshaped even further in the year to come. In Tuesday’s ISACA Member-Exclusive Webinar, guest speaker Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer, Mansueto Ventures, parent of Inc. and Fast Company, provided her perspective on the shifting, pandemic-influenced work landscape in a session titled, “The Next Normal: The New Rules You’ll Need to Thrive.”
Mehta, a former editor and reporter at publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Fortune Magazine, spoke for an hour to a virtual audience of nearly 3,000 attendees.
Not only are physical offices becoming less of a focal point as remote work turns commonplace – “Companies in the knowledge workspace, if they’re not already reconfiguring their spaces, they’re going to do so very quickly,” Mehta said – but in this new environment, companies face an urgent need to become more dynamic, creative, sustainable and inclusive as part of the “next normal.”
For newly remote workers, one of the main changes is how they communicate and collaborate. As traditional offices and work hours are no longer the norm for many companies, asynchronous work – where employees might not be collaborating in real-time – puts more of a premium on effective written communication among coworkers, Mehta said. Since non-verbal cues such as tone of voice and facial expression will be absent from those communications, Mehta said enterprise leaders need to become more “intentional” in their team-building to set up their workers for success.
“Teams that have high degrees of trust really can create shorthand and they can speak in a way, even if it’s in writing, where people understand each other,” Mehta said. “I imagine in a dynamic world where we’re not going to be able to see each other over the water cooler or go take a walk and get lunch together, leaders are going to have to be much more intentional … and really think about how do we build up high levels of trust in the team and how do we try to make sure people are feeling cognitively empathetic when they are interacting with their coworkers.”
Technology professionals can be a big part of the solution. Citing a survey of CEOs about which C-suite members will be most critical in the coming years, Mehta said that technologists such as CTOs, CIOs and others in the ISACA community are becoming critically important to enabling organizational success.
Mehta said that “dynamic workplaces,” her preferred term for what has become commonly referred to as hybrid workplaces, can stoke creativity across the organization. Gone are the days when only marketers and designers were asked to be creative. In an era with fewer siloes and fewer rigid protocols, all employees should be thinking about new ways to innovate.
“The entire conversation around creativity in business has changed, and I think that’s for the better,” said Mehta, who said that creativity, when combined with analytics and purpose, can yield excellent results.
During the question-and-answer period of Mehta’s presentation, moderated by ISACA CEO David Samuelson, Mehta was asked about the oft-discussed Great Resignation in which many employees are feeling emboldened to leave their jobs in pursuit of new opportunities. Mehta said there might still be a needed course correction in the labor market, but in the meantime, companies need to create the best possible environment to incentivize their talent to stay.
“There’s no question that the pendulum, which perhaps had swung too far in one direction in terms of management holding all the cards, has now swung the other way,” Mehta said. “You really do see employees exerting their voices in ways they hadn’t. At some point we will hopefully reach some sort of equilibrium.”
As part of the event, 10 Diversity in Leadership scholarships are being made available through ISACA’s One In Tech foundation for ISACA members from underrepresented populations. Awardees will have the opportunity to continue connecting with Mehta through small-group mentoring sessions.
Editor’s note: For additional learning opportunities, visit the ISACA webinar page. The next Member-Exclusive speaker is in the works, so ensure you’re opted in to emails for upcoming information.