Future of Work. It's a popular topic, and there's a lot of buzz about what's next for workers around the world. So, what will the Future of Work look like at Mars? 

Work looks different today than it did before the COVID-19 pandemic, and recognizing the many lessons learned over the last 18 months, we now have a tremendous chance to reimagine our workplace rituals, policies, and habits. We’ve listened to our Associates’ experiences and tested new ways to optimize productivity and Associate health and wellbeing. 

What’s resulted is our flexible, hybrid Future of Work strategy – it’s one that reimagines where, when and how work gets done to maximize efficiency and empower our 32,000 office-based Associates, all while preserving what’s best about our culture. 

“Our Future of Work strategy is designed to empower Associates to make more choices about where, when and how to work to be the most productive and effective,” Nici Bush, VP Workplace Transformation, said. “As a global business with 140 offices there can be no one-size-fits-all solution. but we will strive to create a consistent experience across segments and regions for office-based Associates.”

Our Future of Work beliefs: 

Hybrid working will unlock productivity and performance for our Associates and our business. We will empower Associates to safely work in environments that best meets the needs of the business, the Associate, and the team. We appreciate that each Associate and each business function is unique. When our offices are fully operational, our guidance to Associates will be to spend at least half of their time in the office to facilitate face-to-face collaboration and teamwork. 

Offices will remain an integral part of our work-life. The role of the office and the way we design them will be more important than ever. Our offices should offer a vibrant environment that enables collaboration and relationship building and strengthens our culture. We believe there is great value in bringing Associates together for certain tasks – when it is safe to do so.

We will travel for purpose rather than presence, cutting business travel globally by at least half compared with 2019 levels. This will improve the health and wellbeing of our people, enhance business performance, and positively impact the world we want tomorrow.

Meetings  must  be purposeful. We need to find a sustainable balance between collaboration in meetings—whether face-to-face or virtual—with time for focus. This means decreasing hours spent in meetings and increasing the use of tools that allow Associates to contribute on their own timetable, using asynchronous collaboration. We need to reimagine how we collaborate by leveraging other methods, forums, and tools to enable a more sustainable balance of collaboration and focus.

With a workforce spanning the globe, remote and flexible working are not new to our business — in fact, we’ve supported Associates with flexible working policies for more than a decade.  Now, with an evolved Future of Work strategy, Mars is able to offer even greater flexibility and embrace a broader range of working styles. This supports our Equity, Inclusion & Diversity efforts by granting Associates with the freedom to manage responsibilities outside the workplace more flexibly, and will broaden opportunities within Mars to larger talent pools. Embracing hybrid working will also contribute to our Sustainable in a Generation commitments by reducing business travel and daily commutes.

We hope finding new ways of working will empower, energize, and engage our Associates — helping them bring their best to Mars and their lives every day.