William Kerr and Joseph Fuller at podcast studio in Klarman Hall on HBS campus (photo by Susan Young)

HBS launched the Managing the Future of Work project in 2017 to advance research that business and policy leaders can put into action as they confront the fast-changing nature of work today. The project focuses on six key forces: technology trends such as automation and artificial intelligence, contingent workforces and the gig economy, workforce demographics and the “care economy,” the middle-skills gap and worker investments, global talent access and utilization, and spatial tensions between leading urban centers and rural areas. Here, the project’s faculty chairs, William Kerr, the Dimitri V. D’Arbeloff—MBA Class of 1955 Professor of Business Administration, and Joseph Fuller, professor of management practice, discuss some of the complex issues they and other faculty members are addressing and the dissemination of the project’s research to global practitioners.

What inspired the Managing the Future of Work Project?

JOSEPH FULLER: It began as an extension of the School’s US Competitiveness Project and over time evolved into its own project. A unifying element is that we are thinking about this through the demand side: how employers think about it; how it’s viewed as a contributor to corporate, regional, and national competitiveness; and the active steps decision-makers should take to prepare themselves in the face of this change we’re seeing.

WILLIAM KERR: An important distinction is that the project is about managing the future of work. We’re not saying we know exactly where artificial intelligence is going to go, but instead we’re commenting on how leading companies can manage issues such as AI and their effects on their organizations. The idea is to take it from those macro trends and present information in a way that can help business leaders make their best choices. The HBS faculty have always focused on managing technological change, demographics, and work skills adjustments, but it’s been mostly individuals doing their own research. This project not only brings together those voices to create greater awareness about what is going on and transfer those insights outward, but also builds some synergies around the research being conducted and catalyzed at HBS.

What is the most critical challenge the project is addressing?

JF: The biggest problem is that the rate of change in terms of content of work has been accelerating, and the capacity of the traditional skill system—K–12, college, and other degree-granting institutions—hasn’t moved at the pace of technology or business competition. That means we have more employers who seek workers with higher skill levels than are currently available. More jobs are being defined as requiring a college degree because, yes, they are getting more complicated, but it’s also because employers have been relying on what we call the “spot market” for labor rather than creating strategies to grow their own talent pool, whether by upskilling their workers or collaborating with schools to embed the learning about the skills needed in their curricula and in work-based opportunities like co-op programs or paid internships. So that gap has widened, and we’re in the unprecedented situation of there being more job postings than unemployed people in that space.

WK: Add to that how quickly the technology and demographic forces are changing many parts of the workplace, and it’s clear that there’s a need to ensure that the middle skills workforce has the competencies necessary to perform their jobs well.

How have you shared the project’s wide-ranging research?

WK: We produce the Managing the Future of Work podcast about every two weeks. It’s an amazing way to reach not only students and other faculty but also the world at large—practitioners in HR and policy and leading CEOs. Another part of the project is the extensive research conducted for case development and the creation of primers for instruction about the future of work from undergraduate classes to executive education. We’ve also developed the second-year MBA course Managing the Future of Work and the Executive Education Leading an Agile Workforce Transformation program. Then there are the many published reports that can be broadly shared and disseminated.

JF: One publication getting significant traction that I’m excited about is The Caring Company, a first-of-its-kind study that looks at how caregiving responsibilities influence American employees, firms, and the broader economy. Related to this, the big factor in work that’s going to be a management and policy challenge other than technology is the changing demographics of the workforce in almost all of the advanced economies. These societal shifts are going to require us to revisit the paradigm of what work is about, as well as expectations in terms of hours, offsite work, career paths, and the ability to relocate geographically.

Speaking of demographics, why is global talent access and utilization a key focus of the project?

WK: There is a lot of backlash right now against globalization, and the issue of migration gets comingled with this. As you look at demographic changes in advanced economies, there’s going to be ever more impetus for bringing in talented foreign workers, and even foreign middle- or lower-skills workforces. A world where we are closing off global opportunities and avenues is going to favor the Microsofts of the world, which have the size, strength, and presence to navigate these environments. How do the small and medium-sized businesses compete to get access to this talent if they don’t have all of the opportunities and the toolkit that some big companies do?

What does the future hold for the project?

WK: Across the six topics, we need to develop greater depth and explore how these domains integrate with each other. I’d say, in baseball terms, that we’re at the end of the first inning. I don’t think these topics are going to go away any time soon.

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