by I’m pleased to be able to speak to the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) Region 4 group on Thursday at their Retooling for the Recovery conference. It’s always good news to me when government agencies are practicing foresight. The goal of the conference most directly related to me is to help stimulate thinking about how work is changing, so they can in turn rethink their training programs. What jobs? What skills? ETA’s mission is to contribute to the more efficient functioning of the U.S. labor market by providing high quality job training, employment, labor market information, and income maintenance services.
I’m doing my Thinking about the Future workshop in the morning. The closing plenary is “A Dozen Surprises about the Future of Work.” The piece will be coming out in Employment Relations Today soon. In the meantime, I’ll whet the appetite with the list.
1. Augmented Humans: Hey, that’s cheating.
2. Emerging markets rewrite the rules of work and work culture.
3. Intelligence shows up in unusual places.
4. Work now, get paid later . . . maybe.
5. Time- or project-based employment contracts begin to mainstream.
6. Fairness becomes impossible.
7. Workers prefer working to live instead of living to work.
8. Work increasingly becomes a thing you do instead of a place you go.
9. Employer-provided training disappears.
10.Nearsourcing will become preferable to outsourcing.
11.Work in the happiness society changes metrics.
12.Meet the new boss, [not the] same as the old boss
— Andy Hines
Makes me think about the need for a new way to remunerate (future of currency?)…no one organisation will be able to afford the expertise that it requires in each unique situation, the expertise that comes through the process of crowdsourcing (or better yet think gamification – where contribution is freely provided – information based exchange as social currency). Capability will be shared more and more across teams, divisions, organisations, even departments/companies – how these ppl will be paid/rated/rewarded/acknowledged/incentivised for their contributions – in fact how we will determine the value of their contributions is (I think) another surprise that the new work environment will have to tackle…
Tracey
totally agree. In fact, one of my grad students did an excellent forecast/paper on the topic. Lots to think around this topic of “value” in the future!
I think #9 is interesting because it is the opposite of my assumptions. Assuming we are talking about knowledge work, I would think that flexibility and adaptability are going to be key drivers of knowledge companies, in which case, being about to “re-tool” workers would be a priority,
Exactly, if learning is the key competitive advantage, isn’t that a risky one to leave to the “marketplace>” It is perhaps the most counter-intuitive and perhaps short-sited!