The 4 Trends Shaping the Future of Work

Key Trends

The last decade has seen the development of 4 marked trends which will profoundly shape the way people access and operate within labour markets. These transformations promise to reshape the labour markets not just on for individual sector and activities, but across the board. The effects of these changes will be of the same order of magnitude of the division of labour and the creation of the industrial production line. In other words, they promise a revolution.

Automation/AI
Activities which used to be the purview of human intelligence and skill are being lifted out of the labour market as machines become more capable than we are. The ability to be flexible in the face of this digital disruption will prove to be critical in making these changes work for people. One study finds that 54 percent of EU jobs are likely automatable, while the chief economist of the Bank of England has argued that 45 percent of UK jobs are similarly under threat. Workers will increasingly have to be able to be adaptable to new tasks and responsibilities, and the emphasis on novel projects and our ability to work creatively will never have been so valuable. Under these conditions nothing is more important than people’s ability to seek out new work and take full advantage of the connected world to find those opportunities.

Platforms and Digital
Fortunately, the platform revolution makes it easier than ever for people to find new and interesting opportunities. Formerly hidden networks can grow become accessible to anyone, making it easier to find things which were once niche and obscure, such as the exact right work. Furthermore, communities which were once merely ideas in the heads of enthusiasts or activists can now have a more tangible existence online, and rapidly grow in size and utility. This is true from e-commerce, to transport, to hospitality, to dating. These depend on network effects to rapidly grow reach and effectiveness. These developments make it easier to build the right teams around projects at a larger scale than ever imagined by HR managers of yore. This in turn is facilitated by an increasingly common way of organising labour.

Gig/Sharing Economy
Arun Sundarajan describes the gig economy as finding “the value in taking underutilised assets and making them accessible online to a community, leading to a reduced need for ownership of those assets.” The gig economy is taking up an increasingly large amount of the labour market — in turn this logic applied to corporations means that underutilised workers will find new outlets for their work, and ownership of skill and activities will no longer be restricted to jobs, departments, or even corporations. These developments both free up some workers as well as increasing the sense of insecurity of others. But the trend is unmistakeable, people are increasingly pursuing a variety of different short term roles, often at the same time.

Changing Expectations
Across the spectrum those who work think differently about their relationship to jobs. Many top graduates no longer look to traditional careers in finance and consultancy as their best options. This comes from several different trends. Many top graduates are dissatisfied with the work life balance offered by the more traditional pursuits. More importantly possible impact is becoming increasingly determinative of the choices the best graduates make. The question ‘what difference will I make?’ ranks with ‘how much will I earn?’ for many millennials. Technology companies have been luring more top graduates with the promise that they’ll not just make gobs of money, but also have a happier life, even if the hours are still long, according to students and recruiters. Last year, about 17 percent of Harvard’s business school graduates poured into the industry, up from 7 percent in 2007, its figures show.

Finally, even leaving these big picture considerations aside, simply put, the work of these traditional roles is less empowering and offers less control to most employees. New (and even existing) employees want to work in new ways; 66% of people said their primary reason for resignation was a lack of freedom[1], while 44% of millennials are looking to leave their corporate jobs within 2 years[2].

War for Talent
In an age where location is less and less relevant to work, where cloud computing lets anyone acquire a server space that would have been technically impossible a mere decade ago, brain power is the most prized asset for most companies. The competitive edge, even for hardware heavy industries, is secured by obtaining the brightest employees. The above considerations mean that companies will have to fight ever harder to attract the most accomplished and driven people. And part of that will be empowering the brightest employees to fulfil their potential.
Businesses will need to prepare for a whole new phase in the war for talent now that workers have publicly visible on-line career profiles. Labour market fluidity, enabled by online talent platforms, is a positive dynamic for individuals and the broader economy, but companies will face increased costs due to higher turnover unless they can retain the people they recruit. On average the cost to employers of replacing a single member of staff is more than £30,000[3]. This makes it more important than ever for companies to create a compelling value proposition for their workforce. Those that do are likely to be net beneficiaries of the digitisation of talent markets. Just as they carefully manage their consumer brands, companies now have to be conscious of managing their reputations as employers.

[1] Upwork Millennial Majority Workforce, 2015
[2] Deloitte Millenial Survey, 2016
[3] Oxford Economics report, 2016