Managing the Future of Work - Harvard Business School

Managing the challenges posed by the changing nature of workManaging the challenges posed by the changing nature of work   

Multiple forces of change – demographics, technology, automation, globalization – are coming together at an unprecedented pace and scale. How can leaders prepare their organization and create the workforce of the future?

Featured Reports

Hidden Workers: Part‑Time Potential

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, & Francis Hintermann

13 MAR 2023

Part-time workers constitute a substantial segment of America’s hidden workers. They would like to work more but circumstances—e.g., caregiving responsibilities, health challenges, partial retirement—limit their hours. By learning about and accommodating the needs of these workers, firms can encourage part-time employees to take on more hours—helping ease the talent shortage and raise productivity.

The Partnership Imperative

Community Colleges, Employers, & America’s Chronic Skills Gap

By: Joseph B. Fuller & Manjari Raman

To revitalize the middle-skills workforce pipeline, U.S. employers need to engage much more actively with community colleges in three areas: curriculum aligned with industry needs, hiring relationships, and data-sharing on the supply and demand for talent.

Podcast

Why employers need to tune into worker preferences

29 NOV 2023 | MANAGING THE FUTURE OF WORK

Sander van’t Noordende, CEO of HR services giant Randstad, on navigating the new normal of talent scarcity, an aging workforce, and AI.

Featured Research

Hidden Workers: Untapped Talent

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, Eva Sage-Gavin, & Kristen Hines

4 Oct 2021

Increased reliance on technology and changing demographics have shaped the way that companies hire. Hiring processes are designed to find “perfect” candidates in an efficient manner, but in doing so systematically exclude several categories of qualified workers, including caregivers, veterans, the formerly incarcerated, those with disabilities, etc. These workers are “hidden” by traditional hiring processes. Companies who have hired one or more of these groups of hidden workers report that these workers are more loyal and perform better on several key metrics compared to traditional sources of talent. With many companies facing a talent shortage, hiring these hidden workers may be the solution.

The American Opportunity Index

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Matt Sigelman, Nik Dawson, and Gad Levanon

Oct 2022
|
Burning Glass Institute

The American Opportunity Index offers a comprehensive ranking of how well corporate employers promote economic mobility. The big-data analysis draws on five years' worth of data on the career histories, job postings, and salaries of more than 3 million workers at Fortune 250 firms. The Index focuses on jobs that are available to non-college graduates. The aim is to better inform workers' job and career decisions, to highlight industry best practices, and to provide employers with data to make their workforces more competitive.

Read the Wall Street Journal article

The Gift of Global Talent: How Migration Shapes Business, Economy & Society

By: William R. Kerr

27 May 2020

The global race for talent is on, with countries and businesses competing for the best and brightest. William R. Kerr combines insights and lessons from business, government, and individual decision making to explore the data and ideas that should drive the next wave of immigration policy and business practice.

Research Topics

Building the organization of the future

Engaging with the ecosystem

Reports

Building From the Bottom Up

By: Joseph B. Fuller & Manjari Raman

Hidden Workers: Untapped Talent

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, Eva Sage-Gavin, & Kristen Hines

Building the On-Demand Workforce

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, James Palano, Allison Bailey, Nithya Vaduganathan, Elizabeth Kaufman, Renée Laverdière, & Sibley Lovett

The Caring Company

By: Joseph B. Fuller & Manjari Raman

Faculty

Cases

Vodafone: Managing Advanced Technologies and Artificial Intelligence

By: William R. Kerr & Emer Moloney

19 FEB 2018

Vodafone was operating in the fast-moving telecommunications market where innovation and scale were key. Faced with an onslaught of technological advances-big data, automation and artificial intelligence-CEO Vittorio Colao reflected on how he should change the organization to incorporate these advancements to improve the way the functions work, how to incorporate machine learning and artificial intelligence that de facto improve productivity and slash costs and what can he could do to give back to society and make sure that new opportunities were created for the new generation.

Transformation at ING (A): Agile

By: William R. Kerr, Federica Gabrieli, & Emer Moloney

15 JAN 2018

In December 2017, Vincent van den Boogert, CEO of ING in the Netherlands, was reflecting upon the company's "agile" transformation, a reorganization of work which had been critical to respond to and exceed rapidly changing customer expectations. Launched in 2015 at the head office, agile had spread to the rest of the Dutch organization, from client services to the branch network, and permeated the overall company culture. It was now time to rollout the transformation to other units of the ING Group, but some questions remained: could agile be as successful in other countries as it had been in the Netherlands? How fast should ING roll out the transformation? How could they build on the experience acquired so far to improve their methodology?

Hot Chicken Takeover

By: William R. Kerr, Manjari Raman, & Olivia Hull

27 FEB 2019

By December 2018, entrepreneur Joe DeLoss's fried chicken company, Hot Chicken Takeover, has opened three restaurants in Columbus, Ohio using an unconventional employment model that helps people with criminal records get back on their feet. DeLoss is proud of the supportive employment environment he has cultivated, but wonders how to scale it beyond Columbus.

The Golden Triangle: Back in Business (A)

By: Joseph B. Fuller, William R. Kerr, Manjari Raman, & Donald Maruyama

08 FEB 2018

The Golden Triangle Region (GTR) is a three-county area in rural Mississippi that suffered a steep decline as manufacturing companies faced pressures from automation and overseas competition. Between the mid 1980s and late 1990s, several textile, toy, and tubing factories that accounted for a substantial share of local employment closed and forced GTR residents to make a difficult choice - leave their homes and communities behind for better employment opportunities elsewhere or stay and face a lower quality of life. GTR LINK, the local economic development agency, brought in a new leader in Joe Max Higgins, Jr in order to stem the flight of businesses from the region and offer locals the hope that they could stay and still enjoy a better tomorrow.