The workplace of the future, says Karen Golden-Biddle<\/a>, Questrom Professor in Management, is one that enables people to realize their potential. Artificial intelligence could take on those boring, repetitive tasks, giving staff more time to create new products. A company filled with leaders capable of managing diverse staffs\u2014with diverse points of view\u2014would cultivate better ideas. A hiring system that removes unconscious bias would bring more perspectives into research and development. In this future, human capital is treated with the same reverence as financial capital: people are no longer tools for employers to wield.<\/p>\n \u201cHuman capital is about the development of people inside organizations, so they can bring forward their best talent for both themselves and the organization,\u201d says Golden-Biddle. \u201cToo often, we create systems that smash that creativity rather than open that up, introduce change models that only let people implement something that\u2019s already been decided and rule out any kind of creative action.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s so much potential everyday creativity out there that companies are just not tapping.\u201d<\/p>\n Golden-Biddle chairs Questrom\u2019s management and organizations department<\/a>, which was recently restructured and renamed\u2014from organizational behavior\u2014to better prepare graduates for this future. The department\u2019s goal is to develop leaders armed with skills they can apply in a series of critical areas; Golden-Biddle calls them levers, the resources that organizations and employers can use\u2014from building trust to using the psychology of team dynamics\u2014to create processes and systems that enable staff to realize their potential, and be more productive. It follows a trend increasingly seen in human resources departments, which are moving from being functional groups that process benefits to key players in developing and implementing a company\u2019s strategy.<\/p>\n \u201cFueled by data from HR analytics, human resources today, in addition to doing the basics well, is focused on talent\u2014including diversity and inclusion\u2014culture, leadership, and change management in the context of global competitive realities and the work of the future,\u201d says Fred Foulkes<\/a>, a professor of management and organizations and faculty director of the Human Resources Policy Institute<\/a> at BU.<\/p>\n Although much is made of the data-driven, tech-enabled office of tomorrow, the future of work is, perhaps surprisingly, human. It\u2019s a future centered on relationships\u2014the kind that allows people to feel better, know better, and, ultimately, do better for themselves, their organizations, and society.<\/p>\n \u201cResearch shows that employees are motivated when they are in control of what they do and how they do it,\u201d says Kristen J. McCormack<\/a>, a master lecturer and associate chair of management and organizations, \u201cand when they are provided the opportunity to improve their skills and themselves in order to achieve mastery of their craft, be it software development, product design, or teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n Companies that don\u2019t get with this future, Golden-Biddle says, won\u2019t survive.<\/p>\n \u201cUnless organizations bring out, for example, the creative ability of individuals in their everyday jobs, innovation won\u2019t happen, collaboration won\u2019t happen, they won\u2019t achieve their strategic goals, and, more importantly, they\u2019re not going to be a desired place to work.\u201d<\/p>\n In January 2018, GeekWire<\/em> reported<\/a> that Amazon had won two patents for a new kind of wristband: not a travel-sized Alexa or a budget-priced smart watch, but what appeared to be an ultrasonic employee tracking device. Amazon refuted early reports questioning its motives: it wouldn\u2019t use the wristbands to count the minutes employees spent in the bathroom, but simply to do away with handheld scanners in its warehouses. Current and former employees of the company told the New York Times<\/em><\/a> they were skeptical: \u201cCritics say such wristbands raise concerns about privacy and would add a new layer of surveillance to the workplace,\u201d said the Times<\/em>, \u201cand that the use of the devices could result in employees being treated more like robots than human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a strong assumption that by investing in monitoring technology, you will get greater productivity from your workforce,\u201d says Michel Anteby<\/a>, an associate professor of management and organizations. \u201cBut there is no hard evidence of that.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2018, Anteby studied the impact of increased surveillance on airport workers. He and Curtis K. Chan, a PhD student in Harvard\u2019s organizational behavior program, looked at monitoring of airport security personnel and found a cycle of coercive surveillance in which managers employed an increasing number of cameras and other devices to deter employee theft and control staff. The study was conducted at a large urban airport where staff were given a security screen before starting a shift, regularly tested with fake x-ray images of banned items, and watched from multiple angles by cameras that fed back to a central operations team.<\/p>\n Anteby found that staff felt constantly watched, but also that their work mostly went under the radar\u2014until they did something wrong. Because the only attention they got from bosses tended to be negative, employees started figuring out new ways to go about their jobs unseen and unnoticed. That spurred management to wonder what they were doing and increase surveillance. The results were published in Organization Science<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s been attempted is to monitor employee behavior, but it creates unintended consequences,\u201d Anteby says. Among them, ever-increasing distrust on both sides and a much more transient workforce. \u201cInstead, managers should employ systems that would encourage good behavior, rather than capture bad behavior.\u201d He gives the example of call center employees. As anyone who has been on hold knows, their calls are often monitored or recorded for quality and training purposes. \u201cCall center managers will sometimes step in after a call and say, \u2018What you said here, this was very helpful.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Golden-Biddle says that heavy scrutiny ultimately won\u2019t enable human potential or build human capital, because \u201cit requires a level of trust,\u201d she says. \u201cOrganizations don\u2019t learn or innovate when people feel they aren\u2019t trusted.\u201d<\/p>\n She encourages leaders to move away from strategies like time monitoring or employee rankings and toward policies like unlimited vacation.<\/p>\n \u201cIf organizations have systems or processes that enable employees to simply be part of a machine, they\u2019ll leave,\u201d she says. \u201cWith human capital, it should be capitalizing on people\u2019s talent, not how many of something they can do in an hour. Human beings are more complex than that.\u201d<\/p>\n Another way companies can earn the trust of their employees is to be trustworthy. One of the levers Questrom teaches its students about is ethics. The goal is to ensure that when they become leaders, they don\u2019t limit the moral potential of their employees.<\/p>\n Facebook has learned this lesson the hard way. The social media giant has been slammed by regulators, the press, and the stock market for its management of a data handling scandal. In 2018, the Federal Trade Commission started investigating reports that political consulting company Cambridge Analytica had been harvesting data from Facebook accounts without permission, using it to build sophisticated voter profiles. The scandal wiped billions off Facebook\u2019s share price. Adding to the company\u2019s embarrassment, it later emerged that employees had raised concerns about Cambridge Analytica\u2014but been ignored. In April 2018, Business Insider<\/em> reported that Facebook employees were reacting with their feet: quitting or pushing for transfers to other departments.<\/p>\n In a study published<\/a> in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes<\/em>, Kristin Smith-Crowe<\/a>, an associate professor of management and organizations, found that even being in a business environment can make us more unethical.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we think about business, it tends to crowd out other thoughts,\u201d says Smith-Crowe, an expert in behavioral ethics.<\/p>\n \u201cIn their pursuit of the best business decisions, people may lose sight of relevant moral concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n In corrupt organizations, she says, employees who express disquiet are labeled disloyal or said to be lacking in vision. She advises leaders to promote ethical decision-making through their own actions and warns against using the threat of shame to keep people in line.<\/p>\n \u201cThis can be effective to a point, but people may also rebel against such coercion. Assuming appropriate formal ethics systems are in place, including sanctioning, organizations are likely to see better results in the long term by focusing on positive messaging rather than threats.\u201d<\/p>\n At Questrom, students in the new MS in Business Analytics<\/a> program will soon be able to take a class in people analytics that will unite ethical considerations and big data. But the lessons will stretch beyond the management of information.<\/p>\n \u201cMorality is grounded in social bonds and immorality is more likely to the extent that we don\u2019t think about the people who may be harmed,\u201d says Smith-Crowe. \u201cKeeping in mind the potential for direct harm in human terms can expand a decisionmaker\u2019s focus to include moral considerations.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all about relationships; it\u2019s just the fundamental way that we relate to each other. My sense is that when people are in a more ethical environment, there\u2019s trust, there\u2019s an easier basis for cooperation and connection.\u201d<\/p>\n Conversations around fairness create a natural opening for discussing how organizations can better reflect the society around them. And while this effort is deliberate in specifically seeking out and bringing in more women, people of color, LGBTQIA people, and others, the end goal is experiential diversity\u2014more varied experiences, and lessons learned from them, from more kinds of people, from more backgrounds.<\/p>\n \u201cDiversity and inclusion are very much a part of building human capital,\u201d says Golden-Biddle of the curriculum she and her management and organizations colleagues have developed. She adds that it isn\u2019t much different from the way entrepreneurs build financial capital with diversified investments.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the challenge is we\u2019ve got to recognize difference more, and figure out how to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n In a 2016 study<\/a>, Evan Apfelbaum<\/a>, an associate professor of management and organizations, investigated two different philosophical approaches to improving race relations: multiculturalism and colorblindness. He found majority white groups preferred colorblindness, ignoring cultural differences within a group in favor of a kind of assumed homogeneity. Majority black groups, however, preferred multiculturalism, recognizing and acknowledging that cultural differences among members of a group, as well as the cultural differences themselves, are beneficial to that group. In a 2018 study<\/a>, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science<\/em>, Apfelbaum found that exposure to multiculturalism increased participants\u2019 belief in the notion that racial group differences are valid, biologically based, and immutable. \u201cThese findings raise the ironic possibility that well-intentioned efforts to portray the value of differences may reinforce the belief that fixed, biological characteristics underpin them,\u201d the authors wrote.<\/p>\n Apfelbaum and his coauthors acknowledge previous research showing that multiculturalism is a more effective way to promote equality and reduce bias than colorblindness. They conclude, however, that organizations may not have to favor one over the other.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a best approach, but determining what\u2019s best requires consideration of the context,\u201d says Apfelbaum. \u201cWhat is the goal of the approach? What are the concerns of those targeted by these efforts versus the majority group? How credible is the organization\u2019s reputation in the area of diversity, inclusion, and equality? I don\u2019t believe there is a single one-size-fits-all approach that works across all contexts.\u201d<\/p>\n He says it\u2019s a lesson in tradeoffs. When considering whether to embrace a philosophy of colorblindness or one of multiculturalism, organizations need to recognize the downsides of each. \u201cEffective management requires viewing these two approaches as dynamic and evolving values that are tailored to situations and people in place and time,\u201d he says. \u201cThe idea of a static, cookie-cutter approach is convenient, but idealistic, because ultimately these are issues grounded in people, groups, and behavior that are multifaceted, complex, and continuously changing.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"superhero](\"\/questrom-magazine\/files\/2019\/09\/gettyimages-962559824-170667a-resized.jpg\")
<\/div>\nBuild Trust<\/h2>\n
Play Nice<\/h2>\n
Diversifying Your People Portfolio<\/h2>\n
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