The tribulations of the COVID-19 pandemic have prompted broad rethinking around what we value, as people and as business leaders. The toll taken on humans during the pandemic reshuffled priorities around physical and mental health, working conditions, and a renewed interweaving of shared values and career goals.
Accelerated digital transformation, supply chain disruptions, and “The Great Resignation” have challenged the public and private sectors to reconfigure internal and external processes to find resilience in the face of a future left undefined.
It’s our collective opportunity to help illustrate that future now, by agreeing that the tectonic shifts sparked and spurred on by the pandemic represent a disruption of a status quo that no longer exists.
With vision, this moment can represent an inflection point for the human value chain, in which our business relationships, digital tools, policies, and practices are sustainably redefined.
The human value chain could be seen as the collection of tools and processes in technology, data management, or automation, which are leveraged to free resources for a higher-value people experience. That higher value comes from the human ability to collaborate, learn, and form communities.
Many employees look to organizations to respond to concerns about climate change, inequity, and good stewardship with action and investment.
“The Great Resignation” proved we’re in a new moment of how employees want to interact with their employer, and with each other. Only about half of employees—53 percent—who responded to the 2022 EY Work Reimagined survey say they believe their company has a sustainable employee experience (EX) allowing employees to thrive with new ways of working. A previous survey showed a majority of employees would consider leaving their job if not afforded work flexibility in relation to where and when the job is done.
Leaders should not think of this call for flexibility as an isolated consequence of pandemic lockdowns, but rather as part of a resetting of the psychological contracts that underpin relationships between employer and employee, companies and clients, businesses and governments.
Increasingly, we see employees putting a premium on EX, and how a company’s culture plays into it. A study undertaken by Forrester, commissioned by EY, SAP SuccessFactors, and Qualtrics, shows that 81 percent of employees believe that creating and sustaining positive culture is key to EX, compared to just 58 percent of HR managers. Organizations perform better when employees come to work with a sense of purpose, invested in the mission and shared values of their employers.
The importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues ties into how employees see themselves and their employers, while it is estimated that US$649 billion will be driven into ESG-focused funds worldwide by the end of 2021. The demands of the workforce—flexibility, value-driven employment—and the markets, in the form of adaptive supply chains and sustainable investing, have helped shaped the present moment of potential.
But there are risks.
First, we risk treating recent adaptations of organizations and individuals as short-term developments rather than a catalyst for lasting change. The workforce and the markets show that priorities have shifted, and there is no status quo to return to.
Second, we risk underestimating what still needs to be done to manage the transformations already in process. As employees demand more flexibility, organizations increasingly face more cross-border logistics and labor challenges. Part of the challenge also rests on global immigration and tax systems that were not structured to facilitate the economic transformation that is now unfolding. For example, the 2021 EY Tax Risk and Controversy Survey found that 45 percent of respondents had experienced tax risks resulting from having an increase in the number of mobile workers, especially related to permanent establishment and employee tax/social security issues.
Third, we also risk underestimating the importance and potency of ESG as a value-driver. Many employees look to organizations to respond to concerns about climate change, inequity, and good stewardship with action and investment.
This is also another area where innovative retooling of tax systems can encourage accelerated behavioral change in support of ESG responsibility. This historic pandemic has prompted changes that, in another time, might individually be seen in isolation. But the world should consider these changes of habits, priorities, and processes as evolutionary. This realignment in the public and private sectors, and civil society, stands to create opportunities to make our organizations and institutions more human-centered.
We can use this moment to recreate our systems and renew the human value chain in a world reborn.
The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organization or its member firms.