THE new sunday express MAGAZINE Voices Anand Neelakantan Sumeet Bhasin Ravi Shankar Neha Sinha Anuja Chandramouli Swami Sukhabodhananda Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment February 18 2024 SUNDAY PAGES 12 The New Worker What the future of the workplace entails for a generation chasing non-linear career paths with bots at the gates Workforce futurists called 2023 as the year of ‘quiet ambition’ where traditional ideals of job success were replaced with individual wellbeing and fulfilment, whether within careers or more personal matters “In the past we believed what we studied is what we pursued as a career. But who’s bothered about a single career anymore?” Nayanika sharma, four jobs at 25 years old I By Smitha Verma t’s been three years since Nayanika Sharma graduated. She has already dabbled with four different careers trying to find her foothold in all. Or none, as the day might be. For the 25-year-old, career isn’t about climbing the proverbial corporate ladder or earning a hefty pay packet. It’s all about “figuring out what appeals to the heart,” says the Gurgaon resident who has a BTech in Biotechnology from a private university in Himachal Pradesh. So far, she has worked as a content marketing specialist for a pet brand, worked with the administration of a healthcare vertical, has been a brand strategist for a PR agency, and is currently on a freelance gig as a backend operations person with Chalchitra Talks, a digital pop-culture platform. “The pandemic taught me not to think long-term.” Abhinav, 27-year-old who quit a regular job to work with a political party Then there is Abhinav (he uses only his first name) who, at 27, is working with a political consultancy for the “thrill of it”. After graduating from the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, Abhinav worked with a litigation firm for four years, specialising in Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) before leaving it all in June 2022 to work for an organisation handling a major political party in the country “Being from Bihar, it was difficult . to stay away from politics. I may not be contesting elections, but I am involved with strategy and party positioning,” he says. Ask him about long-term plans and Abhinav has no qualms in admitting that he has none at the moment. “The pandemic taught me not to think long-term,” he says in defence. Abhinav and Nayanika may look like a generation recovering from post-pandemic anxieties, living in an uncertain world where workplaces are still oscillating between hybrid, remote and ‘no work-fromhome’ policies. When entrepreneur and TikToker Marisa Jo Mayes popularised the term ‘Bare Minimum Mondays’ earlier last year, what she meant was to do the bare minimum amount of work at the start of the week to avoid burnout for the rest of the week. Something which many could now be using for the way they approach their careers. “Burnout is real. I felt it in just four years of IPR practice,” says Abhinav. To begin with, 2023 was a year of historic workplace transitions. When Infosys founder Narayan Murthy urged the young generation to put in a 70-hour work week to succeed and climb up the ladder, he would have gauged the way the wind is blowing, and made the remark. The world of work is changing fast with no absolutes driving it anymore. And, never before has the work world shifted with this alacrity as now where both employee and the employer are redefining conventional norms. Workforce futurists called 2023 as the year of ‘quiet ambition’ where traditional ideals of job success were replaced with individual wellbeing and fulfilment, whether within careers or more personal matters. Even though much of business began trickling back to normal by the middle of 2022, concepts like moonlighting, slash careers, quiet quitting and the great resignation dominated workplaces. In 2024, experts predict to see further development in many of the trends that have reshaped our working lives in the last three years. So what is the future of work? To many , it’s a competitive talent landscape with an exhausted workforce, where corporate honchos normalise both 70-hour and three-day work weeks in the same breath. It’s also a place where mass layoffs no longer make headlines, and cost-cutting has become the norm. It’s also readying itself for the rise and rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. So is it the death of the office as we knew it? “By and large, yes,” says Ram Nidumolu, Clinical Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the Indian School of Business (ISB). Nidumolu has written extensively about ‘beingfulness at work’ and even expanded this model of leadership with an Indian perspective as part of the curriculum at ISB. “Career and climbing the ladder as a way of life that governed professional work will largely be a thing of the past. Following your passions, finding meaning at work, creating and reinventing your purpose, collaborating a lot more with others, following the examples of others in social media, etc. will become bigger drivers,” he explains. Adaptive Work Cultures “The biggest change at the workplace in the next 10 years, won’t be pace, place or people. It will be about deriving meaning from the kind of work you do, and the way it is done,” says SV Nathan, author of The Heart of Work published by HarperCollins in 2022, a book that captures pivotal moments in the way we work. “A purposeful organisation is the future of work,” emphasises Nathan, who is also the Chief Talent Officer of Deloitte India, and serves “Even though 2020 brought in a big change at workplaces, yet, I would say 2023 was the year of disruption at workplace, largely due to AI.” Shudeep Majumdar, co-founder and CEO, Zefmo Media, an influencer marketing firm on the Talent Executive Leadership of Deloitte Asia Pacific. Nathan would know. The preface of his book reads: “... At the core, one’s work is influenced not so much by the mind but by what beats between the third and the seventh ribs on the left—the heart”. If there’s anything that has come to characterise the attitude of a certain type of a bored office worker, then it’s the increased risk of appetite-meets-pursuit-of-passion. Concepts such as the nine-to-five office or one-career-for-life are relics of the past. “Today organisations have adapted to the post-pandemic world. The only way not to go obsolete is identify talent early give them , responsibility early and learn to trust and , support. If you don’t recognise how the pandemic has changed the way we work, then talent will move out,” says Nathan. According to global consultancy firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the future of work revolves around “talent”. BCG Turn to page 2