Beyond the Job: Developing New Work Models | Deloitte Insights

The traditional notion of a job continues to be challenged as work becomes less predictable, more fluid, and affected by rapid disruption. In his article, From Workforce to Work-task Planning, Dave Ulrich discusses the practice of deconstructing jobs into tasks and activities and then using this information as the basis for workforce planning. John Boudreau and Ravim Jesuthasan emphasize in their article, Work Without Jobs, how unpacking jobs into more discrete tasks can provide firms with more options to deliver work in real-time. And in this new article by Susan Cantrell of Deloitte, she shares insights on how firms can organize work beyond the constraints of the traditional job to increase agility in meeting work demands. One recommendation provided is to “organize work by creating very broad commitments to problems to be solved, outcomes to be achieved, or new sources of value to be created, essentially providing guardrails for workers in terms of the broad “what” of work but giving them the freedom and autonomy to choose the “how.” There are many insights and informative charts in the article (about an 11-minute read) that emphasize how firms can execute this approach in practice. Although jobs won’t completely go away, these forward-thinking views about the future of work will require firms to rethink various talent practices traditionally organized around jobs.