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New Zealand Herald – Editorial – Careers Section 29th January 2012

The Future of Work: Competencies for a new world

The nature of work will have changed forever within the next 10 years according to many researchers and commentators. Our world is changing dramatically as aging and expanding (and contracting) populations and consumerism put major stresses on our ecosystems. The current system of economics with growth as its aim is at threat, and money, which has become central to survival, may soon be in question as the key driver of change.

Big global challenges that call for a whole new way of thinking about what work is and why we do it are here. How to manage life itself in ways that are restorative and more meaningful will become an important question when constant and rapid change becomes the new ‘normal’.

By the time this article is published I will have read Sir Richard Branson’s book “Screw Business as Usual”. I’m looking forward to discovering his views on turning business as we know it upside down to address the issues we are facing. Branson terms this new approach to economics as “Capitalism 24902”, in that “every single business person has the responsibility for taking care of the people and the planet that make up our global village, all 24902 circumferential miles of it.”

Excerpts from Branson’s book suggest that such transformative change, implies that ‘work’ will not be the same as we know it by 2020. In fact, the Future of Work Foundation (based in Australia) proposes that we may be forced to re-configure work to be a “desirable activity in its own right”. They believe that a shift in the way we use and value money and address the increasingly critical needs of our planet will have to happen.

Future Work Skills 2020, a paper published by the Institute for the Future for the University of Phoenix Research Institute (2010) reckons there are six drivers of change. These are, extreme longevity (people are living longer); the rise of smart machines and systems (taking away repetitive tasks); a computerised world (new communication tools); super-structured organisations’ (social technologies and new forms of value creation); and a globally connected world (placing flexibility and diversity central to operations).

Here in New Zealand we have a revolution happening in the business, creative, social and environmental sectors; entrepreneurs who are driven by values more than money. They are engaging in new ways of working, using technology and more flexible and collaborative practices. Co-working hubs are sprouting up all over the place where entrepreneurs are clustering to collaborate and share resources and knowledge.

Corporates are promoting collaborative multi-disciplinary teams, and service industries are sharing systems of knowledge and expertise involving multi-disciplined practices to offer integrated services.

The old structures of siloed, hierarchical organisations are almost gone; we have leaner, more agile businesses that through technological advances are reducing their need for bricks and mortar. Employees want flexibility and now, with remote access, can work from anywhere. People want more autonomy, more variety and greater lifestyle balance.

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