FUTURE OF WORK
Market leaders in HR Consulting, Korn Ferry Research predicts a major crisis coming latest in 2030. According to their findings by 2030 there will be a slack of a staggering 85.2 skilled resources worldwide resulting in an estimated lost revenue of $8.452 trillion – the combined GDP of Germany and Japan. In other words this will not affect only organisations across the globe, but complete nation economies too.
The shrinking labor pool is a key reason. Europe’s working-age population is expected to decrease by about 13.5 million, or 4 percent, by the decade’s end. The decline will be especially large in Germany (almost 8 percent, or about 4.0 million people), Italy (almost 7 percent, about 2.5 million people), and Poland (9 percent, about 2.3 million people). A shrinking workweek might add further pressure. Since 2000, the average hours worked each week per capita have decreased by more than one (or almost 3 percent), to 37.1 hours.
Based on our research conducted by McKinsey, three sectors are likely to account for more than 70 percent of Europe’s potential job growth through 2030. The strongest net gains are in human health and social work, where 4.5 million jobs could be added. This is followed by professional, scientific, and technical services, which could add 2.6 million jobs, and education, which could gain 2.0 million jobs.
The majority of jobs lost therefore are lost due to automation. And therefore with the demographic shifts and increasingly older generations, not forgetting the challenges we will face with catering or workforce for the needs and expectations of Generation Z it is paramount to make the right workforce and leadership decisions today..
Although these are solemn figures, we must also understand the dynamics of tommorow*s workforce and let go of limitations of how work is conducted today.
When looking at the transformation of the workforce we look among other things at how we want people to work, what people can do, when they do it and where they do it. Right now these seem like silly questions, however a major shift has already taken place, and this within one year. So what else must we brace ourselves for?
There are three concrete areas which we will have to adopt:
Artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive technologies — AI is already impacting our work and personal lives. We should be careful not to shun AI or view it as a threat to jobs. If anything, it will aid us to bridge the gap of skill shortages and allow our positions to become more fluid within organisations.
Workplace and workforce transformation — Globalisation of businesses has resulted in a diverse and distributed workforce. Communication will become increasingly more dependent on extended reality technologies, Especially business areas that require high amounts of communication like Sales, Education and Support will increasingly use virtual- augmented- and mixed reality, travel will therefore be less frequent and hence all levels of business can be done around the clock. The true impact in the future will come from dynamic teams — i.e., full-time and part-time employees, remote workers, freelancers and gig economy workers
Agile Work Models–Classic 8-hour day models and shift models will become a thing of the past across all industries. For many people, the delineation of work and personal life will completely fade.
What most studies have in common is that people will increasingly get to choose who they work for, what they do, and where they work from — based on availability, expertise, and convenience. Lastly, work will become more and more invasive and ultimately an ongoing task with no defined time or physical boundaries. In other terminology “The Überisation of the workforce.”
THE WORKFORCE OF TOMORROW
