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The future of work we’ve all been waiting for is here faster than we expected, completely changing the way we start and run a business. Enterprises and established businesses are currently trying to reimagine their offices and corporate culture as cloud and hybrid work models become more and more in demand. Unfortunately, traditional organizational structures and a 9-to-5 culture are hard to get rid of once a company has been in business for years.
New businesses are not burdened by any existing legacy processes and policies that could limit future growth and productivity. Today’s entrepreneurs and startup founders have the opportunity to build their businesses from the ground up to take full advantage of future jobs.
So, if you were starting a new business designed to work for the future, what would it look like?
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Incorporate distributed teams into your organizational structure
Traditional companies have an established top-down organizational structure, and any freelance, contract, or gig workers are considered “other” or outside the organization. This structure is not viable in an age where the workforce is increasingly freelance, contractual, remote, fluid and distributed.
In addition to showing the work of each employee and who reports to whom, the organizational structure of a startup optimizes the flow of communication and information from the company’s management to all employees and team members. The future of work calls for a more flexible and inclusive organizational structure that integrates a fragmented workforce while fully considering the roles and channels of communication available between an organization and its team members working outside the company. Remote and distributed workers can help meet your company’s needs if their employer meets their expectations and satisfies their psychological needs for belonging and recognition.
Adopt non-linear work chain
When designing an organizational chart, you should also consider more decentralized decision making instead of a traditional hierarchy. As the work model gradually adopts a new concept of employment, start-ups and budding entrepreneurs must abandon the traditional top-down management structure and adopt non-linear or decentralized business model. Linear top-down management slows down the pace of work and limits the ability of team members to contribute innovative ideas.
Decentralized decision-making will be especially valuable if you outsource and allow the experience of people outside the organization to be added to the discussion.
RELATED: 4 Reasons Why Decentralized Business Management Is Thriving
Outsource
As companies strive to innovate at scale, software development outsourcing and staffing are becoming more common. In fact, having a large internal team is not at all necessary for future work.
Outsourcing development to distributed teams allows your company to remain cost-effective by quickly responding to the latest technology opportunities. By comparison, traditional companies that have increased their technical workforce over the past few years are now forced to downsize their teams as the overall market and technology landscape changes. In addition to avoiding the cost of constantly scaling up and down to meet your current needs, outsourcing gives you access to teams of software experts who can improve the speed and quality of your development cycles.
Consider remote and asynchronous work
The future of work increases the chances that you will end up hiring people from abroad, data shows 2023 Remote Workforce Report shows that 44% of firms are increasing international hiring. To take full advantage of the benefits, such as higher productivity and higher retention rates, you need to create appropriate distributed processes for your teams in different time zones and geographic locations that must work together to achieve results, despite the fact that they are not use shared office space.
Changing the work environment requires appropriate operational changes to maximize efficiency and productivity; you may want to implement asynchronous processes instead of traditional ones. With remote teams, work will not be done in the same place at the same time; you should establish asynchronous communication and coordination processes for remote workers because the future of work means that work can be done in different places at different times. Going asynchronous from the start means that workers don’t need to be online at the same time, as they can work offline and still get the expected results.
Related: How to be a truly asynchronous workspace
Create workflows for distributed teams
A recent training found that 72% of workers surveyed would not consider accepting offers from companies that did not offer flexible work options, as they would prefer a better work-life balance. As the future of work empowers workers to work from the most exotic locations, you should prepare your new startup for the future by creating a workflow for your remote teams that simplifies work-related communication to increase productivity.
Plan to implement clear and concise workflows that show how team members and managers collaborate to take advantage of remote work. A individual workflow is a tool that will allow your managers to keep track of all tasks and focus on important tasks. A more visual representation, such as watching teammates talk about overcoming work-related obstacles, will help others learn from and avoid repeating the same conversations all over the place, thereby increasing efficiency and improving teamwork.
Large organizations around the world are already implementing new ways to stay ahead of the competition. Fortunately, entrepreneurs have an advantage because they can develop a perfectly organized business to take advantage of the future of work. As businesses rely on outsourcing, asynchronous work, and distributed teams, the organizations best able to support these new structures will be the most successful.