The Future of Work is Here
The world of work as we know it has officially changed. We instinctively know the impacts will be long lasting — from working from home, to online classes, the use of video for communicating in our daily work lives, or home delivery for lunch from our favorite local restaurant. A change in employment, from furloughs to layoffs, and the near-term economic impact are also top of mind and quickly reshaping the workforce. The unintended consequences go far beyond what is in front of us.
Millennials and Gen Z make up 59% of the global workforce today. By 2025, Millennials alone will make up 75% of the workforce. From self-development, remote working, work-life balance and, the driving force behind the freelancing model, millennial’s influence on business culture is well under way but has not been mainstream. Enter COVID-19; accelerating this shift to the millennial workforce model and mirroring the predictions of the 2030 Workforce of the Future.
Globally — classrooms shifted to online — almost overnight. Five days ago, Coursera announced it was making 3,800 courses free to universities across the globe. Traditional players from Wiley to Scholastic and Kaplan, and dozens of others have followed suit. In education, the shift to online learning has been in a slow drag for years. Companies like Udacity and Coursera have been working to move the needle in the self-learning segment. Hundreds of new entrants like Masterclass have sprung up to offer people the opportunity find their passion. Universities and more traditional education players have been dipping their toe in the water. The moment for online education and personal re-skilling is here — and the moment in which millennials will thrive. The desire and ability to up-skill one’s self will be critical in the years ahead. We are entering an era where the need for continuous re-skilling is upon us as artificial intelligence is expected to add more than $1 trillion dollars to the global economy. Who will get displaced, and when, is just starting to be revealed. Millennials stand the best chance of being hired into these new types of roles since they will be entering the workforce trained in the latest technology; the shift will be much easier.
As companies and schools move to online and work from home models, video-based technology is seeing rapid adoption. Microsoft’s Teams saw a 500 percent increase in meetings, calls, and conference usage in China since the end of January. Services such as Facetime, WeChat Work, Zoom, Tencent Conference, Microsoft Teams, and others empower millions of people daily. Over the last two months, the numbers across the board are astounding. In the mobile space alone, these apps attracted 1.4 million new users across the App Store and Google Play in the first week of January, and the figure jumped to a record 6.7 million in the first week of March, according to app analytics firm Sensor Tower. Prior to our current state, 28% of Millennials and Gen Z were already using video chat daily.
Working from home has been a growing trend; the outbreak of COVID-19 is set to make it mainstream. Last fall, an Owl Labs study projected that by 2025, about half the U.S. workforce would be working remotely for at least part of their week. Effective today, California’s population of 39 million people are under orders to stay at home. On global scale, Italy has been operating on total lockdown for over a week, with the UK, Germany, and others to follow in the coming days. Regular, full-time employees working from home or on the road are only part of the story. In an economy where on-demand or contingent workers — freelancers, contractors, consultants, the self-employed, and anyone else whose work is considered part of the gig economy — form the fastest-growing share of the workforce, unconventional workspace arrangements have become routine. According to SHRM, millennials may not even consider a job opportunity if it doesn’t offer a remote work opportunity. For the younger workforce, it is not just about working from home. It is about striking a work-life balance and they demand flexibility. Their lives happen on the phone, not tied to any place or time.
The gig economy is not without its challenges, yet today more than 40 million people in the US are part of the independent workforce and 46% of US Millennials are freelancers. Millennials entered the workforce when long-term, full-time, jobs began to take a back seat to short-term, project-based, freelance gigs. They started their first job when technology made it possible for anyone to access a global workforce at the click of a button.
Trends indicate that mid-market companies are currently using freelancers to expand their capabilities and drive growth, while the primary driver for using freelancers in larger companies is to reduce costs. Tapping into this alternative workforce as a long-term strategic solution requires shifting from managing independent contractors, to leveraging them. It is a mindset shift. As companies struggle to find their highly qualified workforce, and as the skills needs constantly change, an alternative workforce could be the path forward if done properly.
Freelancers, independent workers, can bring additional capabilities that the traditional career development does not at the moment. Typically, these individuals have the appetite and obligation to be constantly self-developing and actualizing to respond to the very particular needs of corporations — and to maintain their value. This is giving back control and autonomy to each worker to create their own career path — not something static imposed by a hierarchy, but opening up the creativity and instinct of productive people who keep track of trends and insights.
The number of independent workers in the US was estimated at 100M by 2030; an estimated 60% of the working population. Freelancers are the fastest-growing labor group in the European Union, with their number doubling between 2000 and 2014; growth in freelancing has been faster than overall employment growth in the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands. The uncertainty of employment created by the current global disruption, combined with the opportunity for people to reshape their lives with the education tools made available, will change the curve on the independent workforce. It is here to stay.
Free, online access to self-development is available to all. The building blocks of a global, home-based workforce are in place, from near ubiquity of connectivity to the technology needed to communicate. The global economy is in flux and millions of workers are at risk of unemployment, the independent workforce is taking shape. Today’s COVID-19 pandemic may have the unintended effect of pushing us forward to the future of work and it looks like it’s a Millennial. Is your business ready for the future of work?
To learn more, contact Slalom Strategy (strategy@slalom.com).
Be on the look-out for more from our continuing series on the Future of Work.
