Hope or despair? The future of work and what it means for us
When Motorola executive Martin Cooper created the first commercial mobile phone prototype in the world in 1973, the device weighed close to one kilogram. The phone hit the market 10 years later as the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, but even though it could not be used for more than half an hour, a single unit cost close to a whopping US$4,000.
Twenty years on, the mobile phone was still limited to making calls and leaving alpha numeric messages on pagers. Today, however, we use this machine to do much more than that. They are also a lot smaller. The iPhone X weighs just 174 grams and is smaller than those business envelopes our dreaded bills come in.
From browsing content on the web to taking photos to controlling other electronic devices to making payments, the mobile phone has become the Swiss Army knife of the digital age. For many of us, it is unimaginable to leave home with it.
But while machines have made our lives easier in many ways, they can also cause an unwelcome disruption in other ways.
Case in point: our careers.
Staying relevant in a digital world
One of the most pressing issues in society today is how to provide jobs for people in this digital age where automation is becoming more prevalent. According to international research firm McKinsey, up to 800 million people around the world could find themselves replaced by machines in the workplace by 2030.
Such is the urgency of this matter that the International Labour Organization has even launched the Global Commission on the Future of Work to tackle the challenges ahead.
But it isn’t all Skynet-esque doom and gloom for humanity. In the words of Google vice president Vint Cerf, also affectionately known as the Father of the Internet, “robots and intelligent software seem destined to be used in cooperative and collaborative ways with humans.”
So, no, it seems unlikely that we’re on the cusp of entering a post-apocalyptic era where robots will conquer the world and shove us into pods that siphon our life energies. It’s certainly fun to imagine being Neo and fighting sentinels alongside Morpheus and Trinity, but that might be a tad too far-fetched. Let’s just stick with creating flying cars first. Those things are long overdue.
In fact, there might actually be more jobs available for us because of technology. Hey, someone’s got to troubleshoot the machines, no?
Research firm Gartner has forecast that while artificial intelligence would replace 1.8 million workers by 2020, it would at the same time generate 2.3 million new jobs. In addition, between 2020 and 2025, two million new jobs related to this field would be created.
What this means is that we would need to be armed with right skills for these new jobs in a digital age through continuous learning.
And this brings about the next point — education.
Changing the way we learn
While education has generally been regarded as the learning phase of life that precedes work, this digital landscape we are now in has altered the dynamics. Because technology is changing the world at such a rapid pace these days, the curriculums at schools simply cannot evolve quickly enough, and this in turn creates a skills gap.
Last year, Dell released a report stating that “around 85 percent of the jobs that today’s learners will be doing in 2030 haven’t been invented yet.” The CEO of global freelancing platform Upwork Stephane Kasriel also reiterated this point in an article for the World Economic Forum.
“Here’s the problem in a nutshell: the job opportunities that are available today are 21st-century jobs. But the way most people perform these jobs is still stuck in the previous century. As is the way our society is training and educating people,” he wrote.
To keep up with the times, educational institutions will, like us, need to evolve and update themselves. One of the ways to do so is removing that traditional border that separates education and work. Startups like NewCampus have been emerging in recent years to help fill this gap by providing a lifelong learning school. We believe that education can’t stop with schools and colleges. One needs to keeps oneself in the know-how about emerging business, technology and cultural trends, and consistently building the skills they need to thrive in the changing world.
The rise of the gig economy and the future of work
Technology will also inevitably impact how we will work in future. Just like how emails had changed the way colleagues communicated with one another decades ago, the advent of web-based project management tools such as Slack, Fleep and Jostle have redefined the meaning of the workplace as an increasing number of people embrace working remotely.
In Upwork’s second annual Future Workforce Report which was released in February, more than half of the managers surveyed said that working remotely has become more prevalent over the past three years. They also predicted that 38 percent of their full-time staff would work in such a manner in 10 years.
Furthermore, 53 percent of the more than 1,000 respondents pointed out that companies in the US today are hiring more freelancers. Financial software company Intuit Inc has even projected that 43 percent of the workforce in the US will be freelancers by 2020.
The booming gig economy could prove to be a boon for everyone. For companies, hiring freelancers would mean having to spend less on things such as medical benefits for staff, as well as a reduced need for office space.
For the individual, freelancing means having the freedom to work wherever and whenever he or she prefers. This new mode of working will also blur the boundaries between travel and work, for we can now do both at the same time.
We could spend our mornings in Bali doing yoga before working in the afternoon. We could spend the afternoons in Scotland visiting distilleries after working on our projects in the morning. Gone are the days of struggling to get to the office by nine in the morning.
According to popular estimates, between 75 and 80 percent of the global workforce will be made up of millennials, individuals who are passionate about finding purposeful work that they can enjoy. This new mode of working will undoubtedly sit well with them and could in turn raise work productivity and creativity to new heights.
So, fear not what’s to come. Rather, let’s look at the future as a time when we can create the freedom to choose how we want to work.
Who we are
NewCampus is a lifelong learning school for people excited by change. We’re a gym membership for learning experiences, with daily classes hosted at a network of accessible colearning spaces. Members learn together, from global entrepreneurs and experts, about emerging business, technology and cultural trends, and consistently building the skills they need to thrive in the changing world.
We are a team of 10 passionate individuals from Australia, the United States, Singapore, China, India and the Philippines. 🌍
