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WFS Home The Futurist 2014 Issues of The Futurist November-December
2014 (Vol. 48, No. 6)

Trends at Work: An Overview of

Tomorrows Employment Ecosystem
Timothy C. Mack

Trends Altering the Workplace Landscape

Among the many broad trends affecting the future workplace and workers are:

More workplace flexibility will be demanded by new highly skilled

workers, but most workers will also accept the need to work longer total

hours.

The workplace for any given job is likely to continue to spread over
multiple time zones or continents, with workers connecting through a growing
range of media channels.

There will be a greater premium placed on knowledge workers who ask

constructive questions concerning an employers mission, as well as their
customers, market values, desired results, and evolving marketing and
business plans.

Workers and managers will focus more on simplifying workloads versus

just getting it all done, which reduces the risk of missing critical innovation
opportunities.

Managers will promote health and wellness programs that focus on

helping workers quit smoking, lose weight, or deal with depression, because
healthy employees are more productive and miss fewer days because of poor
health.

Employers will embrace less-expensive employee recruiting through

social networks (this reached 94% of employers this last year, reports
Jobvite.com). And hirers are relying more on critical thinking skills tests like

the Collegiate Learning Assessment, rather than on just college grades and
degrees to assess candidates.

More than 75% of U.S. employees are almost continuously looking for
work while employed, and they hold nearly a dozen different jobs on average
before age 35.

Employers are using personal reputation (strong track records) to make

hiring decisions and 75% of jobseekers are using company brand in the
same way, even accepting a lower salary to work with a desired firm.

Approximately one-third of Americans in the workforce (17 million

workers) are freelance contractors and consultants. This means more people
working from home without employer-sponsored health-care benefits.

And 30% of U.S. workers are on flextime when working from home (or
other locations) two to three days a week. As well, some studies have found
increased productivity of as much as 15%20% for these flextime workers.
Timothy C. Mack

Where will work be in the future? And where will workers

be? The economic, social, and technological landscape is
shifting rapidly. Here are some of the major trends altering
the future workplace.
When we think about the future of work, the first thing we usually want to know
is what kinds of jobs will be available, how many, how much theyll pay, and
what we have to do to prepare for them. We then consult resources like the
official reports regularly generated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
concerning job categories that are undergoing change, in terms of both the
numbers of workers within each category and what theyll do.
For example, the current BLS projections for the years 2012 to 2022 show likely
growth for the categories of network systems and data communications
analysts, personal and home-care aides (also health-care industry human
resources, marketing, etc.), computer software engineers (high end), and
veterinary technicians (assistants).

More job openings are also expected for nurses, health-care technicians and
administrators, massage and yoga practitioners, car service and shoe repair
personnel, as well as retail salespeople, administrative aides, customer
relations, janitorial services, and teaching assistants.
The BLS expects that the fastest-growing job categories of all will include
organizational psychologists, interpreters, occupational therapists, and genetic
counselors. Finally, not surprisingly, the highest-paying jobs in the next decade
include very-high-skilled medical specialists: oral surgeons, obstetricians,
orthodontists, and pediatricians.
These projections are not at all surprising; in fact, they are rather similar to
those of past BLS reports. However, the depiction of job growth as a no
surprises straight line does not necessarily forecast what may actually happen
in the years ahead. While the fields of health and education have long been
economic bulwarks in both lean and prosperous times, new technologies are
rapidly being introduced in many sectors, especially those sectors where
industries are facing special challenges or undergoing dramatic change.

How New Jobs Are Created

Let us first consider some of the dynamics guiding the creation of new jobs.
One guiding process is simplification. Functions often get combined because
this proves more effective or efficient, such as when new needs arise, when
new technologies enable combining these functions, or when new problems
develop that demand creative solutions. This dynamic is a reflection of the
creative side of the economy, and this creative side is what will drive much of
job growth in the twenty-first century.
One approach to clarifying this rather complex process is to examine the new
trends affecting the workplace in the United States. New social dynamics can
drive new product development, thus building new markets and creating new
jobs. For example:

Increasing corporate and government surveillance is likely to stimulate

more privacy products.

Widening income gaps may lead to a growing security industry, as the

haves protect their holdings.

The sheer abundance of identical products is raising the perceived value

of handcrafted items.

New technological capabilities are making augmented reality a viable

alternative for many (boosting wearable computing tools and personalized
learning markets).

Information overload is driving many to consider adopting new lifestyles

that offer more chances for solitude and simplicity.

Sleep psychology is enabling an industry of sleep-enhancing products.

Communications technology acceleration is stimulating the growth of

digital agents, or buyer bots, on the Internet.
Yet, even driverless cars, teacherless schools, and pilotless planes will still
need maintenance (so, ground crew, mechanics, cleaners, and similar services
will not disappear).

Re-visioning New Job Development

In addition to solving new problemsincluding those created by new
technologiesother dynamics also affect the future workforce, careers, and job
creation. For example, as previously discussed in THE FUTURIST,
job retrofitting will involve adding new parts to older tasks or moving them to
new settings, such as into outer spacee.g., lunar waste management.
Existing job descriptions are shifting and blending to match new conditions
e.g., an environmental health nurse would address personal health plus the
environment; an agri-restaurateur would blend farming plus hospitality,
cooking, and food service. (See 70 Jobs for 2030, January-February 2011.)
According to McKinsey & Company, 85% of new jobs involving knowledge work
also require new problem solving and strategic skills. Accordingly, another
approach to foreseeing the shape of tomorrows workforce is to evaluate what
abilities will be needed to meet the challenges of the future. These may well
include creativity, analytical problem solving, teamwork and collegiality,
enhanced mental flexibility, and increased decision speed, combined with the
ability to test and validate both complex assumptions and interactive dynamics.

New tools will also be needed to cope with problems created by social and
professional fragmentation and dysfunction, such as navigation through
increasing complexity, improved pattern recognition, crisis resolution,
communications skills, self-directed learning, and cyberliteracy.
According to the MIT Sloan Management Review, no more than 10% of the
individuals in a typical organization or commercial enterprise today possess the
ability to look beyond existing rules and goals to create new directions.
Therefore, twenty-first-century managers seeking high-performing employees
will value:

Intelligence more than mere experience.

Commitment and loyalty to organization and task ownership.

Work ethic, including a desire to lead.

Personal integrityparticularly when facing difficult ethical dilemmas.

Teamwork and likabilitysmart, hard-working people who like to work

with other smart, hard-working people.

Technological Unemployment
While it has long been economic gospel that innovation would always find new
ways to employ workers faster than they were rendered obsolete by
automation, it is not clear that this will continue very far into the twenty-first
century. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers pegs the
unemployment rate a decade from now at one in seven, as technology finally
begins to be recognized as a permanent substitute for human labor, even in
white-collar professions like accountancy, legal work, and technical writing.
White-collar automation could ultimately take over some 47% of all white-collar
job categories, Summers has warned.
Since the Industrial Revolution first began, new jobs were always being created
even as old jobs were being done away with or drastically changed. However,
while both the highly skilled (such as lawyers and doctors) and the largely
unskilled (such as farmhands, dockworkers, and manual laborers) tended to
benefit from these newly created jobs, those workers with middle-range skill
sets did not. Like the hand weavers once thrown out of work by steam-powered

looms, mid-level managers and accountants are facing the same sort of risks
today.
Work automation today isnt just about efficiently repeating standardized tasks.
And patterns of implementation of automation vary by industry, country, and
economic sector. For example, in Japan, robotics are likely to be at the center
of new manufacturing, but in India, human labor continues to hold its own, as it
is still relatively inexpensive.
This shuffling among new technologies and potential business responses is
what sets the pace for social change. As The Economist has pointed out, 10
years ago no one believed that self-driven cars would ever be viable, let alone
at the verge of commercialization.
Computers will soon be able to perform detailed image processing on X rays,
text-mine legal materials, and turn out fault-free analyses of tax forms by
breaking these dauntingly complex cognitive tasks into smaller and smaller task
units.
While automation has often been said to help workers rather than replace them,
surely one of the first markets for self-driving cars will be the taxi-cab industry.
In fact, taxis have already been on the receiving end of a disruptive technology:
Ubers ride-sharing app, which allows users to summon others when they need
a ride, thus disrupting the already-in-place taxi-management system. Strikes,
aggressive regulation, and even legislation have all been responses to
competition perceived as unfair throughout Europe and the United States.
Unfair competition is also on the way from machine analysis, which is
becoming sophisticated enough in such areas as text-mining legal documents
that it could soon surpass the abilities of paralegals or other skilled humans.
This proficiency is a matter not just of speed, accuracy, and cost, but also of the
ability to critically assess logical relationships and suggest successful legal
strategiesand then present those assessments in innovative graphic formats
that laypersons can easily grasp.

Some work functions, such as fast-food service, are not likely to be costeffective to automate. Moreover, the ad hoc and interactive nature of a burrito
production line like at Chipotle Mexican Grill (where specific customer
preferences require a customized response and worker agility) could
flabbergast an automated system or else forcibly streamline the process to the
point of alienating consumers.
Another thing to consider is that the push for increasing the minimum wage
could reduce the availability of job opportunities for low-skilled or languagechallenged workers nationwide, as such regulation may push smaller
businesses out of that market.

Technologies in the Tool Kits

Mobile media at work is becoming the primary versus secondary worker
network, so employers will need to support complete interconnectivity. Gen
Mobile is a behavioral demographic with a preference for nontraditional work
hours, flexible work locations, and Internet connectivity. These items may at
times be traded off against premium salary levels in job negotiations.
BYOD (bring your own device) policies are expanding distributed-core
communications architectures, with sync and share files as the base. Of course,
the challenge here is to successfully walk the productivity line between not
enough connectivity and much too much.
While the selection and hiring of personnel still remains an art rather than a
science, there has been some progress in quantifying (and thus potentially
automating) the process for domains such as open-source programming. The
growing use of engines of meaning in human resources and other areas will
be driven by big data analysis and ongoing improvements in AI capabilities
and add to downsizing in another white-collar area.

Transformation of Travel and Meetings Industry

One of the most wide-reaching influences on the future of work worldwide is the
business travel and meeting industry. Not only a powerhouse behind business

hiring and project negotiations, the industry also offers a framework for training
and business-practice benchmarking globally.
In 2013, global business travel surpassed 432 million trips, with business being
conducted in hotel rooms, lounges, lobbies, meeting rooms, conference
breakout sessions, and other impromptu/informal settings. This includes
interactive research meetings, where audiences are polled electronically on
issues, values, and preferences. In addition, sessions are increasingly being
simulcast globally and locally, so interactivity and attendance at sessions can
run in parallel.
A growing challenge for business conferences is convincing employers of the
return on investment from live meeting attendance and how it is possible to
partner with both on-site and remote attendees at the same conference to
achieve business goals. And as the ease and reliability of international
connectivity increases, the need to provide value for live attendees coming from
further away at greater expense also increases.
Meeting managers can do this by better understanding business training and
ways to maximize the effectiveness of the learning experience offered by
conferences and meetings. Strategies include:

Understanding neuroscience and how we learnexpanding the range of

delivery systems at conferencerepetition and skill-building (Maker Faire

model) activities.

Discerning how to effectively move from knowledge to learning, and thus

avoid overloading an audience with information beyond the point where they
can process and assimilate it. Attendees at meetings are often stressed by this
massive overload of new information and tend to zone out, because their
brains cant digest it all. One idea is to avoid 7 a.m. sessions, but have more
evening sessions and networking events at other times of day, when greater
effectiveness is possible.

Enhancing the engagement of all the senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell,
and touch) and maximizing the use of more flexible, open-space organizing
approaches.

Encouraging person-to-person collaboration and supporting creative

gamification activities (interactive content that encourages engagement) and
hackathons, such as problem-solving exercises and the building of new
solutions for existing problems.
Of course, the biggest transformative technology in the business meeting world
is a potentially very disruptive one, that of 3-D holographic imaging. In the
United States, Cisco Systems has had a TelePresence product in the
marketplace since 2013. Straightforward videoconferencing includes a clear
sense of watching long-distance participants on a screen, but Cisco
TelePresence provides both the sense of in-the-same-room participation and
the opportunity for long-distance third parties to observe this holographic
interaction as if it were a conventional meeting. Now Microsoft, which has been
working on a competitive technology for decades, is utilizing a Skype base for
its Viewpoint product, now nearing beta development.
It is not clear how soon either technology will broadly affect the world of work,
however. There will be some body-language data recorded that could be mined
for meaning, but more-complex electronic opportunities for mutual persuasion
and influence that rival face-to-face encounters are not likely to be competitive
for some time.

Shifting Markets and Jobs within Those Markets

The transformation of markets has been a major impact of new communications
technology, and one significant impact has been the growth of prosumers
individuals and groups who are both producers and consumers. For example,
the DIY maker movement is being accelerated by rapidly expanding 3-D/4-D
printing (the latter incorporates interactive features in the final product that
continue to increase their utility after printing).
When imagining a future marketplace and future customers, dont forget that
customers may not be locally or even nationally based. The globe is now
everyones backyard, which drives a whole new set of logistics (outreach and
delivery) and imposes new values, shaped by the number of different cultures
one must now work with.

The diversity of both domestic and overseas markets is increasing and

becoming easier to track, which means there will be a need to develop multiple
marketing channels to more effectively address different languages, customs,
education, income, etc. (and all the job positions thus created).
Change is ravaging the retail industry: change in how people shop (mobile point
of sale), and change in how people congregate (disappearance of the mall and
the mall rat). The Internet offers user-friendly systems that allow customers to
search and select products, handle sale and distribution (for pick up or delivery
to store or home) from their armchairs or offices.
This has led to the global decline of the shopping malltransforming the
shopping experience and the lives of those who worked there. Shopping center
vacancies have almost doubled since 2006some with vacancies above 40%
and many retail centers approaching failure. The causes of this retail failure
include the global recession, the new ways consumers use technology to shop,
and facility overexpansion alongside the U.S. housing boom. The fact that
failing shopping centers have the lower rents often leads marginal businesses
to fail together, while the strongest tenants consolidate in better locations.
To combat these challenges, employment strategists (including employers,
workers, and policy makers) will need imagination, new communities and
networks, and new communications strategies. This will require thinking
creatively, and people are still ahead of artificial intelligence in that department.

Workplace Demographics
One workforce group where changes are proving to be dramatic and lasting is
among those over age 55. In 2012, only Japan reported 30% or more of its
citizens older than 55 years of age, but by 2030, there will be 64 such countries
in that category (the United States alone will have 34%, and Europe will be the
oldest region with 36%).
Health remains the top reason for early retirement, but 39% leave for more
leisure. Most are also looking for new solutions to protect against rising healthcare costs, including the cost of long-term care.

In contrast to previous Sunbelt migrations in the United States, retirement-inplace is growing much more common, even in Snowbelt areas. The end of the
boomer boom in 2030 already suggests that a slowdown of economic growth
may be coming.
Meanwhile, another workforce cohort of concern are the many millennials who
have not gone on to college. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that
employed millennial-age (now 2532 years old) high-school graduates were
earning an average of $18,000 less annually than college graduates in the
same age group. As well, they were four times more likely to be unemployed
(12%) and three times more likely to live below the poverty line (22%).
In contrast, average retirement-age workers now work 4.2 years past their
projected retirement date, and almost 70% consider seeking employment of
some kind after officially retiring. This can include flex-retirement and
volunteering in order to use ones life skills to assist nonprofits.
Certainly a big change is coming in Social Security. The twentieth-century
Social Security model was built on an assumption of 150 workers for each
retiree. By 2030, we should expect that ratio in the United States to be down to
two workers for each retiree. That definitely means significant policy change, as
millennials will represent 30% of the electorate by 2030and 12%
unemployment for those with only a high-school diploma portends civic
discontent. Given the fact that there will be 80 million millennials in the United
States by 2020, they will be a political force to be reckoned with.
The postretirement job market will require successful candidates to focus on
their personal core competencies, especially among those re-careering beyond
age 55. Besides the growth of peer-to-peer services from the elderly to the
elderly, there is also the significant growth potential in collateral markets,
including construction of new service facilities (e.g., community, assisted-living,
and nursing homes). In addition, smart-home tech (health monitoring, security,
connectivity) also brings with it positions in managing, installing, and repairing
the hardware and software to run a smart home, as these collateral industries
grow.

Beyond the Workplace Horizon

We have considered a number of less-conventional futures for the world of
work, but only skimmed the truly adventuresome, such as the eventual impact
of 3-D printing (additive manufacturing). Will it become a veritable horn of
plenty, which could supply all human wants and thus nullify the need to work to
live? While the physical and economic specifics shaping this Black Swan
outcome are yet unclear, cultural and values dynamics have the potential to
change the way we see work in the near future.
Many boomer retirees appear to be moving away from the idea of working for
money alone (or at all). An increasing number of retirees aim to provide value
to society as volunteers without being rewarded in a traditional manner. In
contrast, many high-school-graduate millennials agree that work and the
identity it provides may not be at the center of personal or social life, often
seeing work as just a job to get by (42% on the Pew survey).
As the manner in which individuals and their demographic cohorts view the
world of work changes, and as social values evolve, these shifts in attitude and
action shape the future of work just as much as technology and economic
forces. The future has always been the outcome of a broad range of interactive
factors, and shifts in attitude drive human behavior as much or more than
automation or recessions.

DAN DOWNEY FOR WFS

About the Author

Timothy C. Mack is the former president of the World Future Society (2004
2014) and executive editor of World Future Review. His previous article for THE

FUTURIST, Privacy and the Surveillance Explosion, was published in

January-February 2014.