After the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, many business are planning to reopen. Industries that were shut down are faced with the problems not only on how to bring their workers back and keep them safe, but also how to reimagine their production, and even their products. Not all workers and businesses can be transformed into working from home, supported by internet and computer technology. There are the health care, manufacturing, logistics and service industry sectors, just to name a few, where workers must leave their homes, commute to a workplace, and conduct physical work, often coming in close contact with others.
Thomas Kochan and Kristine Dery will discuss how we can we recover from the devastation the COVID crisis has had on our workforce and businesses? What actions are needed to make the return to work safe and productive for all concerned? The speakers will draw on research from MIT CISR, the MIT Task Force on Work of the Future and the MITx course on this topic to discuss concrete actions for managing the employee experience as we reconstruct the workplace post-crisis, and for building a more resilient productive, fair, and inclusive economy for the long run.
Thomas A. Kochan is the Post-Tenure George Maverick Bunker Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a faculty member in the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research.
Kochan focuses on the need to update America's work and employment policies, institutions, and practices to catch up with a changing workforce and economy. His recent work calls attention to the need for a new social contract at work, one that anticipates and engages current and future technological changes in ways that build a more inclusive economy and broadly shared prosperity. Through empirical research, he demonstrates that fundamental changes in the quality of employee and labor‐management relations are needed to address America's critical problems in industries ranging from healthcare to airlines to manufacturing. His most recent book is Shaping the Future of Work: A Handbook for Action and a New Social Contract (Routledge, 2021).
He is a member of the National Academy of Human Resources, the National Academy of Arbitrators, and past president of the International Industrial Relations Association and the Industrial Relations Research Association. Currently he is member of the MIT Task Force on Work of the Future.
Kochan holds a BBA in personnel management as well as an MS and a PhD in industrial relations from the University of Wisconsin.
How can we recover from the devastation the COVID crisis has had on our workforce and businesses? What actions are needed to make the return to work safe and productive for all concerned? In this webinar I will draw on research from our MIT Task Force on Work of the Future and our MITx course on these topics to discuss concrete actions for managing the return to work and for building a more resilient productive, fair, and inclusive economy for the long run.
Kristine Dery is a Research Scientist at MIT Sloan School of Management in the Center for Information Systems Research (MIT CISR).
Kristine’s research in the dynamic between technology and the way people work has been a focus of her publications and teaching for the last fifteen years.
Currently, she is investigating how organizations design their employee experience to enable their people to deliver value in the digital world. Her research questions focus on: (1) how digital capabilities are deployed internally to create more effective ways of working and (2) the impacts of new ways of engaging with talent in the digital era. This work has stemmed from a historical research focus on the relationship between HRM and IT, mobile connectivity, human resource information systems, gamification, and remote working.
Kristine serves as a Senior Editor for MIS Quarterly Executive, and has published in Sloan Management Review and other leading academic and practitioner publications.
Prior to her academic career, Kristine held management roles in the tourism and airline industries in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.
Kristine is based in Sydney and is responsible for fostering research relationships with companies in AsiaPac and the delivery of workshops for senior executives and nonexecutive Board directors.