The global economic downturn is forcing companies to make important and difficult choices about how to manage and motivate their people, with both immediate and long-term consequences.  The choices that organisations make now will impact on their ability to be fit for the future. How can you future proof your organisation’s people strategy?

Specialists in our Human Resource Services practice have developed a report entitled ‘Managing tomorrow’s people – how the downturn will change the future of work that explores the impact of the downturn on people management, the different options open to companies and some of the scenarios we believe will play out in this time of great change. Our scenarios are illustrated through three coexisting ‘Worlds’ of the future seen through the eyes of three fictitious companies in 2020.

G-Bank in the Green World
In our imagined Green World scenario, demands for greater transparency and social responsibility in business will be magnified by the economic crisis and will resonate with the desire for environmental responsibility already present in the green agenda. At G-Bank this impacts many areas of people management, particularly in relation to how people are rewarded.

Yao in the Blue World
In our Blue World scenario, there will be an increased focus on hard people metrics to measure performance and productivity as companies look at a long-term reality of having to do more with less. Yao, a global pharmaceutical company, embodies the performance and efficiency culture necessary for dealing with global companies larger than many individual countries, against the backdrop of the emerging economic superpowers of the developing world.

Data Honey in the Orange World
In our Orange World scenario, the opportunity for radical new ways of working will emerge through innovation in our Orange World scenario illustrated by Data Honey – a research and communications company. Data Honey takes outsourcing and globalisation of the workforce to an extreme portfolio working model where workers organise their working lives like individual businesses in a highly networked world.

In reality, different worlds of work will co-exist in the future.  The point is that the people management decisions made during the downturn and its aftermath will undoubtedly affect businesses’ ability to compete in any future scenario.  We can not play a role in creating our future if we do not prepare for it. 

To find out more, download a copy of the report:

• ' Managing tomorrow's people: how the downturn will change the future of work'