How CSULB is Readying for the Future of Work
After decades of the status quo, Cal State Long Beach experienced a paradigm shift when the pandemic forced the in-person workplace online. Suddenly, telecommuting, digital service delivery, and remote and hybrid work arrangements became the new norm, and like universities and organizations across the globe, our institution was forced to adapt swiftly to the changing tides.
Now, equipped with the many lessons learned from that era, CSULB is continuing to reimagine the future of work on our campus.
Beach 2030’s Reimagine Staff team has officially launched the Future of Work project — a multi-dimensional initiative that aims to explore how our institution can best adapt its services to meet the desires and expectations of our workforce while serving students and supporting their changing needs. This year, we are building on the research and planning efforts that defined the project’s launch, aiming to engage all corners of campus in groundbreaking Future of Work pilot initiatives that can help us put into practice new concepts in this realm.
Future of Work Dimensions
Preparing our university for the future of work goes beyond implementing telecommuting policies or hybrid work schedules. It requires a holistic approach to align work practices with student, customer, and workforce needs, while also factoring in social, technological, environmental, economic, and political influences on the workplace.
In 2023, the Reimagine Staff team, in collaboration with Deloitte Inc., spearheaded the effort to analyze our current state and create a comprehensive roadmap for the Future of Work at CSULB. This project examined key workplace factors, including workforce dynamics, technology, services, collaboration methods, and physical space.
Future of Work Strategies
“Higher Education Institutions are Facing a Great Moment of Change,” declares CSULB's Future of Work Strategy Roadmap and Activation Plan, developed in October 2023. Precarious enrollment trends, shifting perceptions of the value of college degrees, business model transformations, and changing sentiments and risks associated with the workplace in a post-pandemic world are all factors signaling a “’new era’ in higher education." These trends were weighed in an analysis of our campus.
The key insights from that assessment — which spanned nine weeks and included hundreds of survey responses from staff members, managers and students — were analyzed against current best practices and shaped the creation of the four guiding principles with which new future of work strategies would be aligned.
These principles also align with and help drive forward CSULB’s Beach 2030 strategic vision and the mission, vision and values of our institution.
In our future-of-work strategic efforts, they urge us to:
- Prioritize the student experience
- Prepare leaders and evolve workforce culture
- Modernize how you use space
Rethink the way you work
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From these principles, 12 recommendations were developed as part of the final Strategy Roadmap and Activation Plan that was produced for CSULB, organized by “foundational,” “near-term priority,” and “long-term priority,” meant to build momentum over time and scale projects across campus.Our research and assessment lays the foundation for streamlining our future of work practices and expanding instruction and student resources beyond traditional formats.
Over the next five years, high-impact pilot subprojects will be developed in alignment with these recommendations. As we gather feedback from the campus community on these, we aim to formally integrate new work modalities into the structure of the employee experience at CSULB, ensuring we are serving the workforce needs of tomorrow while reshaping the university for the better, with a focus on serving students.
