communication style to cultivate productive participation during team meetings.
Create structured team building: Develop games and activities that let you to get to know one another.
Utilize employee resource groups (ERGs): ERGs can be a source for data collection and ides for inclusive activities.
Be intentional about talent development: Schedule one-on-one meetings (outside the performance review process schedule) to discuss and plan team members’ goals, interests, and career development areas.
Increasingly Digital
Because people are more and more active on their digital devices, they tend to remain connected to those devices more often. A surge in digital platforms and ecommerce has led to exponential growth in digitization across a number of industries. It will definitely influence how people work, as I explain in the following sections.
Considering the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on digitalization
The COVID-19 pandemic was a major contributor to the surge in digitization. The slowdown/shutdown of major economies forced people inside and onto their devices for ordering food and household items, staying connected with family and friends, and even attending events. The pandemic crisis accelerated the rate of digital interactions between consumers and customer service, leading to a shift in product offerings. Across the globe, digital or digitally enhanced product offerings increased ahead of the normal curve thanks to the pandemic-boosted demand for goods and services. And this trend won’t subside as companies look to capitalize off it.
The shift in this demographic trend isn’t just focused on one locale or region. Between 2018 and 2020, double-digit increases in digital offerings impacted the globe:
Global digital acceleration: 38 percent
Asia-Pacific: 24 percent
Europe: 26 percent
North America: 40 percent
This uptick suggests that companies have focused on how they deliver their products through digital platforms as opposed to increasing overall product development. It also implies that digitally based products have increased and will continue to abound in the marketplace.
These industries most impacted by this digital offering trend experienced double-digit growth in digitization:
Healthcare (think about the rise in telehealth/web-based video conference doctor appointments)
Pharmaceutical
Financial services (think about how more banks widened their digital platforms for service and about the increase in nontraditional banking such as CashApp, Venmo, Chime, and cryptocurrency)
Professional services
Hospitality and restaurant industries
Consumer goods manufacturing and the automotive industry also saw consistent (but smaller-scale) growth.
Core internal operations such as back-office procedures, production, and research also experienced an increase in digitization and supply chain. Companies also noted that their responses to COVID-19-related changes were 20 to 25 percent faster than expected. And companies moved remarkably quickly to transition to remote working, averaging 11 days to make the shift. Digital connections clearly made this speedy transition possible.
Examining automation’s and artificial intelligence’s impact on talent and DEI
Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are replacing human tasks. This move changes the skills people need to succeed in the workplace. PwC’s Future of Work report indicates the following:
37 percent of workers are concerned that automation puts their jobs at risk
74 percent of workers are ready to learn new skills or retrain
60 percent of workers think long-term employment won’t be an option for the future
73 percent of workers think technology can’t replace the human brain
The automation and AI impact on DEI may make its greatest influence on the first step to working: the screening and selection process. Here are some areas where automation and AI can assist with DEI:
Using data tools’ algorithms to screen employee information to help managers create diverse interview panels that reduce implicit bias
Using AI and data science to match high-potential applicants with job roles regardless of demographic information (such as race, gender, sexual orientation, name, ability, and age)
Writing unbiased job postings with gender-neutral language
Offering fairer salaries by analyzing market data to recommend more equitable pay ranges
DEI practices within AI are crucial. A study by AI Now found that only 15 percent of AI researchers at Facebook and 10 percent at Google were women. It also revealed that less than 5 percent of the staff at Facebook, Google, and Microsoft were Black, when the Black workforce in the U.S. is approximately 12 percent of the overall labor force. This lack of diverse engineers and researchers may result in the continuation of AI bias on a large scale. For example, in 2015 only 18 percent of computer science majors in U.S. universities were women, down from 37 percent in 1984. This decrease indicates a pipeline problem with education, hiring, and promotion within the field. Companies must ensure they build diversity, equity, and inclusion — not bias — into the root of AI systems.
Increasingly Underskilled
A major trend shifting the workplace demographic is the growing skilled worker shortage. Skilled workers include electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians, construction managers and workers, carpenters, and so on. Closing this skill gap with technology, more specifically automation and artificial intelligence, is on the horizon, which means workers skilled in the technology that creates and produces these solutions are needed as
