While employees and modern “influencers” celebrate the new freedoms and postulate sweeping increases in work efficiency, productivity and motivation, our consulting experience shows a more differentiated picture: On the one hand, companies are right to promote New Work, but on the other hand, it is becoming apparent that organizations are increasingly unable to effectively manage the many different challenges associated with New Work. In our experience, only a few organizations actively manage the implementation of New Work – and this results in a number of problems. For example, managers do not receive sufficient training in how to “lead” digitally, how to reengineer creative processes, how to be digitally empathetic, and much more. Questions about digital tools for interaction, opinion polling, and digital team building are still unsolved, too. And finally, companies are discovering that not all employees are self-motivated individuals striving for maximum efficiency, but rather struggle with self-organization. This can sometimes lead to “free-rider behavior”, i.e. the newly gained flexibility is not used in the interests of the employer.

We see that most companies lack a clear New Work agenda, this includes leadership development, a new culture, and “new rules”, as well as active management of new performance indicators and structures. While the benefits of a good New Work structure are great, the costs of a bad one are immense – it’s high time to address this!

Due to persistent demands from employees for more agile working models – coupled with current events, such as Covid-19 – a new reality has emerged. Today, remote work is an integral part of daily business. And that’s a good thing. For employees and companies alike, it offers a wide range of benefits and positive effects. Nevertheless, problems and challenges are becoming increasingly obvious, too: a lack of monitoring, a lack of relevant performance indicators for measuring success, massive investments in training and education for managers, and, for some companies, even declines in performance.

But how do you solve this dilemma? In our opinion: by actively managing the challenges, not by “letting them get the better of you”.

Want to tackle this together with us? Get in touch – we’re happy to help.