What does the future of Work look like?
Understanding the modern nature of work, the modern workplace, and the modern workforce
A few months ago, when I began publishing this newsletter, I chose to start with ‘World 2.0 is Remote’ aka remote work is the future. We are way past the early lockdowns now and if you’re still enjoying the comforts of your home without having to travel to work every day then by now you must have gotten a glimpse of what the future of work looks like.
Prior to the pandemic, the trends of remote work culture could be seen in tech companies, but to envision a future with remote work for all work was still distant, with some thinking that they wouldn’t be able to switch to remote working at all. The pandemic ushered such rapid changes that the world had to hurriedly switch to remote work and adapt. With the rapid growth in collaboration and conferencing space, things got streamlined and we all came to realize that we don’t have to go to the office to get work done!
Now we know that COVID-19 has transformed the work scenarios and we’ll never fully go back to the pre-pandemic days. While remote work is definitely the future that we are living in, another trend that has been a major driving trend towards the future of work is Automation and digitization.
Companies are increasingly using robots for production, assembly, and other logistics-related operations. We are headed into the Fourth Industrial Revolution where technological advancements of the past decades have created a new age of automation, with smart machines in large scale deployment at workplaces.
Though humans have always thought of automating things, starting with steam engines and electricity generation to the internet era, it is now that we are realizing that the scope of automation has completely changed!
We can think of automation in almost everything and it’s happening. It’s important to understand how all of this is going to impact economies, productivity, employment, and the future of work.
In this issue, I’ll talk about the future of work in general by looking closely at its three dimensions:
What? → the modern nature of work
Where? → the modern workspace, and
Who? → the modern workforce.
The Modern Nature of Work
History tells us how innovations in technology have taken over manual jobs and with advancements in AI and automation, humans are more in the fear of losing their jobs to robots. Well, that’s not quite true!
The fact is that automation is already here and it is enhancing the quality of our lives. The general fear arises from the notion that the rate of task automation is greater than the rate of job creation and thus automation would render many people jobless in years to come. Contrary to this notion, innovations in tech often create more jobs than they eliminate and lead to a better quality of life.
The pandemic has already disrupted the economies severely and widened the gap between the privileged and the poor. As per this OECD report, nearly 14% of jobs in OECD countries are likely to be automated, while another 32% are at high risk of being partially automated. In another report by McKinsey, automation could replace 45% of activities currently carried out by humans, but only 5% of jobs could be completely automated by technology.
We do know one thing for sure now - there will be massive disruption in the nature of work. In this section, let’s take a look at two of the major disruptors for the future nature of work.
Humans vs. Machines
A topic well suited for sci-fi movies, Humans vs. Machines, is always an exciting prospect that has captured our fascination for the past few decades or so. But, is it really a battle? Are we supposed to think of machines as future nemesis when all they have done is made our lives much simpler?
Actually, it’s not, humans and machines are meant to work in unison just like the organisms involved in a symbiotic relationship. AI advancements are headed in the direction where this symbiosis is maintained, with both humans and machines in need of each other, thus helping in them being more efficient than either of them could achieve being alone.
Overall, it is a huge boost to productivity. Let’s take a look at the human and machine collaboration across various roles:
As per World Economic Forum (WEF) report, 75 million jobs could be displaced worldwide by 2022 due to the new division of labor among humans, machines, and intelligent technologies — but 133 million new roles could potentially emerge! Think of someone as a personal memory curator who could catalogue your memories as a VR experience.
Humans would end up with roles that machines are incapable of, for example: leading and managing roles that require expertise and experience where humans definitely have the upper hand.
Roles that involve repetitive and predictive activities or physical activities will see machines taking the edge, and less human involvement. Hence, the labor landscape is gonna transform dramatically. Developed countries that are employing new techniques and making maximum use of robots have significantly reduced their labor costs.
All of this will lead to high paying jobs that require a diverse skill set. The skill shift will be towards more social/emotional skills, logical reasoning, cognitive abilities, and creativity. I’ll talk more about them in the workforce section.
WEF reports that these jobs could range from remote healthcare to data analysts and developers for web-enabled products. This opens a door to a new set of opportunities for those willing to up-skill themselves and adapt to the coming automation age. Take a look at five transformative technologies here.
The onus is not only on individuals but the companies as well and they must take measures to up-skill their workforce by incorporating core AI concepts as part of their educational/training curriculum because AI is not just limited to the tech industry. Companies will do well only if they take their employees through the change.
Read more about the impact of automation on the future of work here.
Post-Pandemic Remote Work
Coming to the trend that we are currently living in, it has been established in many companies that remote work is going to stay. There are a lot of positives in this move, mainly increased access to a wider range of talent and increased efficiency that employees display when working remotely since they are enjoying the comforts of their home and the time saved from commuting to travel at the same time. Businesses have very realized that their remote workforce can perform equally well outside a traditional office set-up, leading to reduced infrastructural costs.
In fact, it’s not just the employers, employees prefer working remotely too because getting work done without going to the office is something that we have all been happy about. In a survey that I conducted on remote work, nearly 70% people said that they’d recommend remote working to others while roughly 22% people said maybe. Only 8% of the people hit a straight ‘No’.
Again, we owe this accelerated transition towards remote work to advancements in technology. So you see, how automation and AI discussed previously are capable of changing landscapes. For example, in the future, breakthroughs with virtual and augmented reality will make it possible for us to be in an office environment while being at home and have collaborations and meetings in that virtual space.
With improved collaboration and getting the right people on board virtually from almost any part of the world, we are likely to have rapid innovations. To read more about the benefits, impact and challenges of remote work, I’ll direct you to my first issue, where I have talked in detail on its nature.
The key takeaway is that if you are thinking about the future of work, envision is as being a remote worker and up-skill yourself to be a more productive off-site worker.
The Modern Workspace
Continuing with remote work, we do not expect that the physical office setup is gonna disappear completely. What we’ll see is them evolving from a place to work to a space where people can collaborate and brainstorm ideas. These people would often come together once in a while for the collective benefit that in-person interactions and discussions have.
The company needs an office space for its physical presence due to legality and various other purposes, but it wouldn’t need a large space in the future, thanks to a remote workforce. Thus, we will also see the emergence of small and distributed offices for remote teams.
This in turn has the potential of disrupting the real estate sector and the economic gap between small and large cities. With distributed offices across multiple locations, the economy is expected to rise in small, tier-II cities which provide a good part of any company’s workforce. This distribution of the economy could potentially eliminate the need of having grand offices in large cities altogether, making these offices irrelevant. Moreover, the internal brain drain of any country from small to large cities will also get significantly reduced, thus reducing the development gap between cities.
Additionally, companies must adapt their work environment to their employee expectations, who mostly belong to the internet era and are looking for more personalized experiences. Hence, companies must also treat their employees as consumers and change the workplace as per their consumer’s demands.
In this section, I’ll cover the two aspects of the future workplace: its office space and its functioning.
What would it look like?
Did you come across the following picture on social media last month?
It was very much in the news then. If you haven’t recognized it already, it’s Microsoft’s new engineering hub in Delhi-NCR taking inspiration from the Taj Mahal. You can check the video out here.
Looks pretty cool, right? Similarly, people have also fancied Google’s offices in the past which has spaces dedicated to a lot of activities other than work. However, the workplace is going to look much more different in a decade with the combination of AR + VR + AI + ML set together to disrupt spaces as we know them.
As per this WSJ piece, here’s what we could expect: our offices would turn into a completely digitized environment with people working in simulations of office space around them, courtesy of VR headsets. They wouldn’t even need a real desk, because almost all things can be done virtually. Meetings could be conducted via holograms as they show in the Marvel movies eliminating the barriers of language and geography.
All employees would be heavily dependent on IoT based devices, right from scheduling their tasks to finding the way to different sections of the office. They would work with software assistants to delegate complex tasks and spend more time on ideating.
Over the next decade, these tools will turn offices into digitally dominated environments, where people slip on VR goggles and work at virtual desks instead of real ones, delegate complex tasks to software assistants and chat with colleagues around the globe in holographic spaces. This fits perfectly for remote workers as well. Further, informal get-together can also be organized via VR so that remote employees can interact how they would have in a physical office.
With their teams mostly remote, companies would focus more on internal branding and provide their employees with internet access and a bunch of other goodies. This would establish uniformity and work culture across all teams and also make the employees feel a greater sense of belonging with the company.
As I said earlier, companies would have to treat their employees as consumers and provide them with a healthier work environment. This includes having sections for recreation, music, games, sleeping rooms and maybe allowing them to bring their pets to office. The number of such offices have been on the rise in the last few years, cool co-working spaces targeting millennials have popped up at multiple locations.
The modern workplace will be making great use of analytics to track how their remote workers are performing, how good communication and collaboration is across distributed teams and how humans and machines are interacting together, which makes me very confident that we are moving towards a much more efficient future.
The Modern Workforce
As a millennial, I can say that we have now made our place everywhere. Zooming past the ‘boomer’ era, the workforce is now being taken over by millennials. Our generation has grown in a time where massive technological evolution has taken place from PCs to smartphones. So not only are we well acquainted with technology but have also seen how we use it to enhance our productivity.
Millennials are getting into executive roles and revolutionizing work culture by focusing more on innovation and creating value. We also have our own set of expectations about work and are always on the watch for better learning opportunities. And one thing that the pandemic has taught us is that millennials love working remotely which enables them to have a flexible work schedule.
Though, we have become more workaholics trying to get the best, tipping our work-life balance. We sleep late, technology has made people accessible anytime and anywhere and it becomes difficult to unplug. So, millennials are pushing much harder to achieve the zen work-life balance, something that employers must realize about the modern workforce.
Further, given the dramatic change in the business landscape, companies’ workforce demands continue to change as well. Therefore, it is expected that companies would move towards a scalable workforce that provides them more flexibility to adapt as per the need of the situation.
If you come to think of it, a ‘flexible’ workforce is already a reality in many places. Not only does it eliminate the tedious process of hiring a full-term employee (read salaries, benefits, paperwork, social security, etc.) for the company but also gives them access to a wider talent pool.
At Pesto, we have seen this firsthand, we have made it super easy to hire rockstar developers for companies and helped them meet their talent needs as well as take care of all the logistics.
The second bit is about the skill-set of the workforce given that we are entering a new age in automation. As per this report by McKinsey Global, the most in demand skills of 2030 would be:
Higher Cognitive: Quantitative and statistical skills, critical thinking, advanced literacy, complex information processing
Social and emotional: Advanced communication and negotiation, empathy, ability to learn continuously, managing others
Technological: basic to advanced IT skills, data analysis
Millennials equipped with these skills are the modern workforce. Read more about the millennial takeover here.
I’m really optimistic about the future of work, which promises a better work life balance as well as increased productivity.
The best thing about humans is that we are upgradeable i.e. we can always update ourselves, no matter the age. Given the rapid advancements and disruption in the tech sector, it is possible to learn more and try hands at different things throughout the course of one’s career. The future of work is surely an exciting space to watch out for!
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