Last month, Mercer unveiled their Workforce 2.0 report on global talent trends, surveying 14,000+ C-suite executives, HR leaders, employees, and investors on how modern businesses are changing.

In part 1 of our Mercer report blog we talked about when automation can be misleading and rising culture problems.

For part two, we’re using their findings to zero in on trust, equity, and what human centricity really means.

Anchor to trust and equity 

In 2024, 69% of those surveyed believed their employers would do the right thing for society, down from 78% during the pandemic.

C-suite executives should be mindful of the knock-on effect these decisions have within their workforces, particularly as it pertains to distrust of corporate motives. Trust that employers will do the right thing for employees also fell from 80% to 69%.

So what’s eroding this trust:

• Broken promises — both on promotions, raises, and career opportunities as well as stakeholder commitments to sustainability and ‘Good Work’ principles
• Failing to take a human-centred approach to organization design also impacts trust.

In all these cases, there’s a sense that employees feel they are not being told the whole truth and aren’t being looked after in times of trouble, the core test for any organisational value.

Employees who trust their organisations are twice as likely to report they are “thriving” at work, aided by:

• Working for an organisation with a purpose they can be proud of (45%)
• A sense of belonging (40%)
• Feeling valued for their contributions (37%)
• Employees with psychological safety are 5.5 times more satisfied with no plans to leave.

What actually keeps you from working?

In Mercer’s findings, 42% of employees said too much “busy work” i.e ‘tasks that don’t add value’ was the main block to productivity, and they found one-third of their work to be is mundane and repetitive.

Now, any particularly AI-keen executives may already be thinking there’s a simple solution – automate it!

Mercer’s report found that 53% of execs believe that AI and automation will bring a 10-30% productivity boost to their organisations over the next three years, with 40% seeing an even greater upside.

The flexibility conversation

The ongoing hot potato of remote working is still being chucked around. Mercer found that businesses are increasingly analysing work arrangements trying to assess how to incentivize hybrid workers to come into the office.

Organisations should be wary about return-to-work mandates, especially if they want to simultaneously maximise their digital capabilities. Establishing culture and community is obviously easier to do within an office space, but the logic of your communications needs to be robust and consistent. Otherwise, employees won’t be convinced, especially if they’re hitting their targets from the comfort of their sofa.

Exploring new rewards systems will serve organisations well – in 2024, 46% of employees said they would be willing to forgo a 10% pay increase in exchange for additional well-being benefits.

In the future new reward systems could open up an agility and dialogue to facilitate the solutions that transforming companies need.

Cultivate a digital-first culture

As might be becoming apparent, there’s a disconnect between the corporate direction and the feeling of on-the-ground employees.

Two-thirds of executives say that they organisation needs to be more digital and 31% see technological disruption as the biggest short-term threat to their business. But on the flip side, one-third of employees feel overwhelmed by too many tech tools, even citing it as the top four reasons for employee burnout.

The way you invest in and deploy technology needs to be strategic and aligned to your business goals. As exciting as these opportunities can be, they won’t garner the results you’re after if they’re not tailored to your specific workflows.

Think of automation like trying to fill a role; you wouldn’t hire someone just because their CV worked on paper. You would talk to them and game out exactly how they’d fit in at the office. Your technology investments need to have this type of care, otherwise you’ll have another useless automated personality hire.

Conclusion

Organisations are under immense pressure to integrate tech and AI further into their processes, even just to keep up with the current market.

In the rush to automate, how it all feels to your colleagues on the ground can be easily forgotten.

These are the people witnessing the real time impact of these wider forward-facing decisions – they must reskill constantly, adopt new workflows and keep pace.

There is also the undeniable dark cloud of job security fears, which hovers above, threatening to rain down a shower of lay-offs.

The combination of these two factors, the need to reskill and the fear of being replaced by the very thing that they are reskilling in may make your people feel like they are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

In the wider picture we can see this tension bubbling away –  there is a clear drop in trust, with people not believing their companies would do the right thing, and they are reporting feeling overwhelmed by  and untrained on new tech.

No matter where your transformation journey takes you, your colleagues will be needed to make it happen. It’s easy to say “we have human-centric systems” but it has to be built into the reality of the humans you actually work with.

We say go ahead with innovation, but bring everyone along with you, widen the conversation and deepen the training. Show employees what they must gain from new tech, and consult them on how it can best be integrated into their work life.

Comms teams are best poised to bridge this gap between urgent bottom lines and the reality of their execution. Messaging needs to affirm these connections at every opportunity to formalise the intentions and quell any sentiment of people being left behind.

Because miscommunication and misuse of tech serves no-one, not least your bottom line.