For example, Asda has declared that hybrid working has become permanent at company’s headquarters, since COVID-19 limitations were lifted. Employees at Asda House in Leeds and George House in Leicester may pick where they work, according to the company’s statement. Employees at Asda, on the other hand, “have the freedom to work from home when it is more productive, such as jobs that need planning or research,” according to the company.

Asda’s strategy is similar to that of Nationwide, which will allow its 13,000 office staff to “work anywhere.” Three Nationwide offices in Swindon are shutting, and 3,000 employees who work there may either relocate to the nearby headquarters, work from home, or do a combination of the two.

Mark Dixon, CEO of IWG, has stated that his organization was working with businesses to “offer hybrid working options”. He said that it makes no sense for everyone work from the same office in the digital world. Dixon also added that employees have figured out that they can work from anywhere, and they want to go office sometimes, but not all of the time.

However, not all businesses intend to use a hybrid strategy. For example, Goldman Sachs International has stated that whenever the limitations are lifted, it wants workers to return to the workplace. Other example – representatives of banking giant Citigroup said that the company works better when workers are together. Employees will work from offices three days a week and two days a week elsewhere, according to the firm’s plans.

So what does the labor market data can tell us about the Great Resignation? I will try to explore several aspects of the jobs market development below using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics data. My calculations are just some back of the envelope quick estimates and deal with only one future scenario in order to simplify the math. The underlying basic future conditions are explained here

Employment and hours worked

The first chart shows the dynamics of employment and working hours starting from January 2000. Three observations are evident:

• in the two previous recessions businesses shed labor more gradually so it took about 3 years to reach the employment trough in 2000-03 and about 1.5 years in 2008-09 (ironically the latter seemed really harsh for me personally and for many other people who saw and experienced the then unprecedented layoffs avalanche);
• the 2020 slump in employment wasn’t accompanied by a reduction in hours worked as it was the case in 2008-09 – quite on the contrary, working hours significantly increased as employees were ready to stay in the office for longer trying to keep their jobs;
• in the previous two recessions it took 5-6 years for employment to recover to the pre-crisis levels.

With this in mind, the main assumptions about the future path of employment in the US can be described twofold. First, as the economic activity will most likely rebound much quicker the previous two recessions the employment will also recover at a faster pace. In the most probable scenario it will take 2.5 to 3 years from peak to trough and employment will return to the pre-COVID-19 level by end-2023 (2023 is not shown on the chart but it’s pretty clear where the trend line is directed). Second, as the labor market returns to balanced growth, working hours will go back to the 2010-20 average.

Job openings and hires

The major factor behind such spectacular (not spectacular enough someone may say) employment growth is the demand for labor that the majority of companies have nowadays. With most economies rapidly opening up after the severe lockdowns of the past 1.5 years businesses just need those workers back on-site in order to get on track with the production, revenue, and profit plans that suffered so much lately.

The feeling of just how coveted employees are can be seen in the recent jump in job openings. For January-April 2021 – the months the data is available – job opening have been soaring above 7 mln. per month which is an all-time record. At the same time, actual hires, which are highly correlated with job openings, also saw a pick up albeit not as a material one as in mid-2020.

The future path of the jobs market is not as outstanding as it is now. Nevertheless, in the basic scenario we can expect job openings to hover at a level of more than 7 mln. for about three more months. Subsequently the job creation rate – as measured by both job openings and hires – is most likely to subside by the end of 2021, after that returning to its long-term path.

Layoffs and quits

Basically, the BLS data provides two major reasons for employees to leave their jobs: being laid off or quitting (there is a residual of other reasons but it’s small, stable, and does not substantially influence the calculations). The third chart shows the dynamics of the both as a percentage of the total employment. Several comments are applicable here:

• the 2020 peak in layoffs is indeed unprecedented but it was understandably short-lived and was mostly an uncertainty shock to all the corporate decision makers – see how later lockdowns did not engender such an erratic labor market reaction;
• as many observers rightly noted, the layoffs tsunami was accompanied by the sharp drop in employee quits because many people were just clinging to their jobs in the times of skyrocketing uncertainty about their future;
• since the start of 2021 the opposite dynamics can be seen with layoffs moving to their historically lowest levels and quits reaching their highest ever mark.

The Great Resignation wave

So what about the wave of resignations? As the third chart shows, we are currently going through this wave. However, it is highly likely that neither the wave will be as high as one can imagine, nor will it be as prolonged as many workers hope. Three crucial factors are the main reasons for this most probable future calming down scenario:

• in part the current quits wave is compensating the gap seen in 2020, and once this re-balancing is over most employees just will not risk their overall well-being in order to get a 10% raise or get rid of the slight dissatisfaction with their current boss;
• somewhat counter intuitively quits go hand in hand with job openings and hirings (but eventually it is all quite clear: the more job openings there are the more possibilities to find a better position and quit) so the Great Resignation wave will depend on job openings which will be fading off as discussed above;
• as soon as the employment figures are reaching their long-term trend levels the quits numbers will return to their own long-term slightly up-beat trend.

A few words about the labor market dynamics in the longer run. After the temporary volatile factors like compensating for the jobs lost due to the lockdowns are settled, the more fundamental labor market mechanics will come into play: productivity and wages being the major variables defining the future developments. Nevertheless, these questions to be answered adequately require a much more detailed and intricate analysis and math.

Overall, the Great Resignation wave is pretty real, and we are riding it at the moment. But it will not be as huge or as long-lasting as many people expect.

At present, the clear leader here is Russia that places a high priority to development of its far-north. It has a formidable fleet of icebreakers already, including five nuclear-powered vessels: two heavy ones that can negotiate ice of up to 2.25 meters thick, two ones suitable for work in relatively shallow estuaries of great Siberian rivers, and the Sevmorput lichter-carrier (the world’s only commercial nuclear vessel in operation). A new-generation Arktika icebreaker has been commissioned recently by Baltiisky Shipyards in St.Petersburg, capable of navigation across 2.9 meter ice, and four more ships of the same class are expected to reach the service by 2030. They have variable draft, so they are both sea- and river-worthy. Besides this, three Lider-class icebreakers of even greater capacity (up to 4 meters of ice) are to be built.

No less important, Russia, together with Sweden, Finland and Canada, has a history of developing and building a fleet of ice-capable commercial vessels that are the necessary complement to the ice-breakers. Soviet ships of Lena, Amguema and Norilsk series came into service in 1950s-1990s. They were mostly built as general cargo / bulk carriers. Yet the development of natural gas extraction in the regions adjacent to the polar sees, along with formation of global LNG market, brings about new classes of technologically-advanced vessels, ice-capable LNG carriers.

Naturally, other leading global powers start to pay attention to this domain, too. China obtained observer status with the Arctic Council in 2013, and declared itself a “near Arctic state” in Jan 2018, with the “Polar Silk Road” plan. Its own ocean-faring icebreaker fleet is currently small with two vessels, but the plans abound – e.g. to build ice-capable LNG tankers by a JV between Socso and Sovmorflot funded by Novatek and Silk Road Fund. We have all witnessed the astonishing speed and scale of infrastructure build-up China is capable of, and running shipbuilding programs of both commercial and geopolitical importance is probably one of good ways to support the national economy in the time of COVID crisis, and by the same token to achieve some longer-term strategic goals.

In the light of the present entente between Russia and PRC, the US views the Arctic area as a new frontier to defend. The US Congress considers building six more icebreakers to add to the existing two. Other major sea-faring nations, including Japan and S.Korea, have a plenty of shipbuilding capacity and competencies to go after the new promising market segment. Nuclear propulsion may be a costly exotics (few countries in the world do the necessary technologies on an operational level), but conventional ice-capable vessels come – as a matter of fact, Russia placed an order for 29 such vessels for Yamal LNG Project, including 15 LNG tankers. The present economic downturn and a glut of hydrocarbons may delay or scale down such plans, but is unlikely to cancel it outright. After all, the Arctic is estimated to hold about one-third of all undiscovered natural gas reserves (plus 13% of oil reserves), and the present shift towards more ecologically-friendy types of fossil fuel means there will be more demand in the years to come.

So what may all this mean for industries beyond the shipbuilding? Extra demand for special steel alloys capable of withstanding mechanical loads under very low temperatures, for rubber and plastic (along with technical fluids like lubricants) to work under these extreme conditions, and for Arctic-hardened UAVs capable of searching for easier ways across the ice fields by optical, IR and radar tools. As the powers of the West playing catch-ip in the Arctics, and commercial goods flow likely to grow over there, this looks like a range of interesting niche business opportunities.

Digitalization has the potential to create around $1 trillion of value for Oil and Gas firms. Of that amount, $580-$600 billion is expected to accrue to upstream companies, approximately $100 billion to midstream firms and $260-$275 billion to downstream companies.

The potential for digitization of deposits is 125 billion barrels – this is how much in the medium term it is possible to increase the return of already discovered fields only by improving the organization of work. According to expert estimates, the integrated use of IT technologies allows oil companies to increase the oil recovery rate by 2-7 percentage points and at the same time reduce operating costs by a quarter.

Due to the development of all technologies, technically recoverable reserves can grow by 35%, and the cost price can decrease by 25%. 36% of the world’s oil companies are now actively using Big Data technology, and another 38% intend to adopt it in the next 3-5 years.

Two — thirds of the global market for specialized industry programs is controlled by five companies- Shlumberger, Landmark, Aspen Technology, Honeywell, and Invensys. Energy giants also use the services of specialized companies.

By 2025, due to the use of the Internet of things in the oil and gas industry, global GDP can grow by 0.8 % (or by 816 billion us dollars).” Wood Mackenzie estimates the effect of digitalization on the 10 largest mining projects at $ 20 billion us dollars, or 40% of the total net present income of projects (net present value, NPV).

Digital transformation in the industry could create benefits worth about $640 billion for wider society. This includes approximately $170 billion of savings for customers, roughly $10 billion of productivity improvements, $30 billion from reducing water usage and $430 billion from lowering emissions. Environmental benefits include reducing CO2e emissions by approximately 1,300 million tonnes, saving about 800 million gallons of water, and avoiding oil spills equivalent to about 230,000 barrels of oil.

The modern world can be described as VUCA — Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous. Bureaucratic companies can’t successfully address the issues pertaining to such a dynamic setting with traditional Project Management methodologies: vertical structures just can’t have the same speed of response as small companies. Various small fixes to existing organizational processes, combined with traditional mindset of both employers and employees, are resulting in loss of the competitive position. Abandoning all hope, leadership seeks the answer and finds Agile, a modern advance in management. This is ultimately the right thing to do… However, Agile is everything but a silver bullet.

What is Agile, anyway? First, it’s important to understand that Agile isn’t some hard-coded methodology. While it’s started as a software development approach, it grew to be something bigger. It’s better described as a global movement, or rather a mindset with the set of canonical rules, which can be applied to pretty much everything. These rules are the cornerstone of everything that’s done with Agile:

• Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools;
• Working product over comprehensive documentation;
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation;
• Responding to change over following a plan.

It’s great, isn’t it? But there’s always a catch. Despite all the appeal of Agile, we must remember that it’s really imperfect. Yes, Agile projects on average are much more successful than the ones with traditional PM in mind. Sure, there are quite a lot of successful use cases. However, there are a lot of failed ones, too, and most of them failed for the similar reasons with each other.

Agile mindset might be instrumental for modern companies that want to survive in the uncontrollable environment. At the same time, it’s important to understand that adherence to Agile wouldn’t necessary provide better results than any other PM methodology, but it would be better in some contexts. So, you must check if your company really needs Agile transformation. Sometimes organizations just don’t need it!

Agile by itself isn’t a cure-all solution. However, the right implementation can provide your company with a critical competitive edge. Dozens of small companies and large corporations have already transformed themselves to Agile, from Spotify with their music subscription service to Saab Defense with 4+ Jet Fighter. Can you do the same?

1 – “13th Annual State Of Agile Report” by CollabNet VersionOne, 2019.

In the modern understanding even better technologies are being used. We have online courses, professors keep in touch with students everyday, real-time tests and exams are a normality, and much more. Introduction of all this tech already happened quite some years ago. Subsequently, a plethora of online educational courses appeared in mid-2000s. Nevertheless, the area covered by remote classes almost exclusively was targeting higher education or teaching some specific skills to adults. What is more, many distance education programs at universities were considered sub-par. Their quality was widely mocked by the professionals and the general public alike. Maybe you can even recall those comedy TV sketches about using the online university certificates as wallpaper from 10 years ago?

So the pre-COVID-19 landscape in remote learning was a bit lackluster and uninspiring — not many people wanted to enroll and paying for distance learning was considered a waste of money. It is widely believed that the 3 main factors were to blame:

• low quality — at least as perceived by the customers — for the majority of the online-only courses even with the leading colleges and universities;
• lack of trust by both potential students and future employers;
• relative inexperience with online tech and methods among both students and professors.

There were high chances that the current pandemic would change all of this. Fervently enforced lockdowns combined with the need to continue studies magically made the remote solution not only viable but seemingly the best-and-only way to go. Everybody was forced into using remote apps for communication. Lack of trust was overcome in directive mode by university administrations just telling students and professors to go online. And quality seemed of lesser concern. Troubling times require drastic measures — so who cares about quality so much?

All the changes described above (there were even more, I understand that) bode so well for the acceptance of distance leaning. But here we are in September 2020 discussing and rooting for going ‘back to normal’ with awkward relief. So many open questions still remain: is it even possible for humans to study without peer pressure and social interaction? maybe we are just at the early stage of the technology adoption curve and more change is still to come? why the cost-efficiency of distance education not the major factor here? what other triggers do we need to launch a real revolution in learning?

Sam Palisano, IBM SEO

Products, services, customers, etc. no longer obey the exclusive philosophy. Everything around has become inclusive and diverse. What does it mean? According to the modern marketing classic Philip Kotler : being inclusive is not about being similar, it is about living harmoniously despite differences.

Social circles are the main source of influence, overtaking external marketing communications and even personal preferences. Communities have become ever more powerful. Random conversations about brands in such communities are now more credible than targeted advertising campaigns. The main tasks of a marketer are to understand his entire audience, to please virtually every customer and make them talk about the brand by word of mouth. Inclusivity and diversity strategy can help greatly.

In fact, diversity is not anything new. Back in 1995, IBM included diversity as the main part of the firm’s business strategy. IBM CEO at the time, Sam Palmisano, said “We made diversity a market-based issue. It’s about understanding our markets, which are diverse and multicultural.” The company recognized, that this is the only way they can compete in the future. The result was amazing and overwhelming. They rose from $10 million in 1998 to $300 million in 2001¹ . Many companies have embraced the idea of diversity. Today’s this is rightfully considered as major trend of the last few decades. It just became more visible and relevant with the advent of the digital marketing era..

Inclusivity and diversity strategy can be fruitful for more than just products and services. Let see on with P&G statement: “With more than 140 nationalities represented in our workforce, our own diversity helps us reflect and win with the consumers we serve around the word. The more we understand people, their needs and challenges, the better we can delight them with our products and services”² . Research carried out by McKinsey found, that companies with racially diverse strategies outperform industry norms by 35%³ . In other words, these companies better understand their audience and create multinational Buzz (conversation) around brand.

Nike was embroiled in a scandal after that company said it would pause Montaño contract and stop paying her if she wanted to have a baby. Olympian competed while eight months pregnant. In 2020, Nike launched an inclusive collection after realizing its mistake⁴. The collection is designed to take women through all the stages of pregnancy and beyond. Nike wants to appeal to female athletes despite the company itself has not always supported women.

Mistakes in the details of the marketing strategies have led big brands to apologize. They suffered big image losses. Brand buzz is an main part of strategy in the digital marketing era. Image helps in attracting the “right” brand advocates. It is important who will be a follower of your brand. It is important who will defend their brand in social communities on the Internet. Because decision making is no longer an individual decision, but a decision of the crowd.

Thus, inclusivity and diversity is a proven strategy that can work in your favor. This will help create a “positive aura” around your company and benefit. However, be careful, because a good name is sooner lost then won.

References

1. Harvard Business Review, Diversity as Strategy by David A. Thomas,2004

2. P&G 2019 Citizenship Report

3. McKinsey, Why Diversity matters, by Vivian Hurt, Dennis Layton, and Sara Prince, 2015

4. Nike News, Creating a Bond Between Motherhood and Sport, 2020