The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here

(#litres_trial_promo) Here are the four specific pieces about demography that have been patched into the future storylines.

1. The ascendance of Gen Y: by 2025 this group will begin to make their needs and hopes felt in the workplace. We can expect that their aspirations for a work/life balance and for interesting work could well profoundly impact on the design of work and the development of organisations and working conditions.

2. Increasing longevity: perhaps one of the most important aspects of the coming decades is the extraordinary increase in productive life – which will allow millions of people over the age of 60 who want to continue to make a contribution to the workplace.

3. Some Baby Boomers grow old poor: longevity will enable millions of people across the world to continue to make a contribution to the workplace. The challenge will be creating work for them, and we can expect a significant proportion of them to join the ranks of the global poor.

4. Global migration increases: over the coming decades migration will increase both to the cities and across countries as people move to gain education or better-paid work. We can also expect to see an increase in the migration of carers and supporters from the emerging to the developed countries.

Demographic and longevity forces will influence our work in positive ways – allowing us to live longer, healthier lives and to work productively into our 80s. It could also be that the ascendance of Gen Y – brought up in a more cooperative and productive way – will have a positive impact on the collaborative context of work. We can also expect migration to allow the most talented to join others in the creative clusters of the world. However, there is also a dark side of demography: increased longevity means that many millions of people around the world do not have adequate provisions for 90 or 100 years of life and will struggle to find work. Migration may enable the most talented to move to creative clusters, but it will also break apart families and communities and lead to the isolation that could be such a crucial motif for the future.

The force of society

It would be a mistake to imagine that we humans remain the same as the forces of technology, globalisation and demography swirl around us – leaving us perhaps battered, but fundamentally unchanged. Mankind has changed in the past, and will continue to change in the future. The question is how these changes will manifest themselves. If we look back to the first Industrial Revolution, huge swathes of people moved from the countryside to the towns to work in factories. These experiences transformed the way that people saw their lives and their communities. They changed the way people thought about themselves, they changed the way they thought about others, and they changed their hopes and aspirations for work.

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But this process is not straightforward. The future will be elusive when it comes to predicting human behaviour and aspirations. Yes, we want to be ourselves and autonomous … but wait, we also want to be part of a regenerative community. Yes, we are excited about technology and connectivity … but we also yearn to be comforted and crave time on our own. These are important paradoxes, which those at work will be increasingly faced with in the coming decades.

However, the fascinating aspect of the past, the present and the future is that, while the trappings may have changed, the basic human plot remains essentially the same. As Maslow described all those years back, we want safety for ourselves and those we love; we like to be cherished and find a sense of belonging in the communities we live in; we need a sense of achievement and of a job well done; and for some, we also want a sense of what he called ‘self-actualisation’ – the feeling that we have done the best we could and have fulfilled our potential.

(#litres_trial_promo) This is the basic plot that has defined the lives of people, their families and their communities from the very beginning. What has changed are the trappings, the trappings of technology and connectivity, and the trappings of the material goods that surround us.

I remember taking my young son Dominic to Tanzania to spend time with the Masai in the Masai Mara. Dominic and I were standing on top of a hill looking over the empty plains below, talking with a young Masai warrior about his life. As we talked we were interrupted by a sound very familiar to Dominic and me – the sound of a mobile phone ringing. From his pouch the warrior extracted his phone and talked in the excited way people across the world talk on their mobile phones. When he finished the conversation I asked him who he was talking to.

‘My brother,’ was his reply. ‘He had taken the goats out to find pasture this morning, and he has just rung me to tell me that after three hours walking into the scrub they had found fresh grass for the goats to eat.’

The trappings may have changed – but essentially the warriors are still as concerned about feeding their goats as they were many centuries ago.

Here are the seven pieces about society that will play a central role in shaping the future of work.

1. Families become rearranged: across the world family groups will become smaller and increasingly ‘rearranged’ as stepparents, stepbrothers and sisters displace the traditional family structures of the past.

2. The rise of reflexivity: as families become rearranged, and work groups become increasingly diverse, so people begin to think more deeply about themselves, what is important to them and the lives they want to construct. This reflexivity becomes crucial to understanding choices and creating energy and courage to make the tough decisions and trade-offs that will be necessary.

3. The role of powerful women: over the coming decades we can expect women to play a more prominent role in the management and leadership of companies and entrepreneurial businesses as they join the top echelons of corporate life. This will have implications for women’s expectations, the norms of work, and indeed the relationships between men and women in the home.

4. The balanced man: there is growing evidence that men’s perception of their role and the choices they make are also changing. Faced with the consequences of their fathers’ choices, it seems that there will be an increasing proportion of men who will decide to make a trade-off between wealth and spending time with their family and children.

5. Growing distrust of institutions: trust is about the relationships between the individual and their community and work. It is based on the perception of whether others can be trusted to deliver. Across the developed world it seems that levels of trust in leaders and corporations have fallen, and may well continue to fall over the coming decades.

6. The decline of happiness: perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of working life is that, in the main, increases in standards of living – beyond a certain level – have been accompanied by decreases in happiness. If the trajectory of consumption continues, there is no evidence that this decline will be reversed.

7. Passive leisure increases: one of the headline stories from the industrialisation of work has been the significant increase in leisure time. Up until the 2010s much of that time was spent in passive television watching. It could be that in the coming decades the growth of virtual participation will create a significant ‘cognitive surplus’ which can be focused on more productive activities.

At first glance these piece about the societal forces look bleak: a future of dislocated families, ebbing trust, general unhappiness, ever more voracious consumption and little in the way of work/ life balance. Certainly as we construct the storylines for the Default Future these pieces play a key role in the themes of isolation and fragmentation. However, it could also be that this force is the most positive of all in the sense that it is most dependent on personal actions and choices. So as we will see as we construct the storylines for the positive, Crafted Future, within these seemingly bleak forces are rays of hope as rearranged families create a greater openness to differences, as Gen Y exercise their choice for more collaboration in the workplace, and as women are able to have their voices heard with more vigour in the boardrooms of 2025.

The force of energy resources

The way we will work in the future is intimately wrapped up with our access to energy and the impact this access will have on our environment. Of all the five forces we considered in the Future of Work Consortium, people felt most concerned and yet powerless about this one. For many it felt that a spectre was haunting them – the spectre of ever-increasing energy costs and of a rapidly changing climate.

These are forces that began with the first Industrial Revolution and have been gathering pace ever since. It’s clear to many governments, to businesses and to each one of us that the actions we are taking are having a detrimental impact on the environment. The central challenge is one of short term versus longer term – an issue we will encounter at various times in thinking through these five forces. Of course we care about the environment and the future of the planet – but these are all longer-term issues. In the short term, for many people and companies and even governments, there is no immediate stimulus to drastically reorganise their policies, companies or lifestyles to avoid some of the projections we will consider in the hard data. As many of those engaged in the conversation about the Future of Work remarked, the consequences of climate change seem like a distant fiction that currently has very little influence on their everyday decisions. Yet this is likely to change considerably by 2025, and we can expect issues of energy usage and climate change to be at the centre of the working agenda by 2030. By then, many of the outcomes of fossil fuel depletion and visible climate change will begin to impact on the daily working life of people across the world.

One of the members of the Future of Work Consortium was Shell Oil, and we found their resource scenarios for 2050 a very useful starting point from which to develop the more detailed pieces. For over 30 years the scenario team at Shell Oil have worked with experts from around the world to construct scenarios of the future use of energy, releasing these scenarios every few years. In 2008 they released the two scenarios they believe most accurately describe the paths into the next 50 years. These scenarios consider the effects of various levels of reform and progress in terms of policy, technology and commitment from governments, industry and society in order to provide a glimpse into the possible futures of energy. The interesting aspect of the Shell scenarios is that neither conclusion reached is infeasible. They display a cautious sense of optimism without forgetting the severity of the facts.

In both energy resource scenarios we are faced with an impending and necessary restructuring. We can either run the course of the present energy framework, adapting to emerging challenges as they arise, or alternatively, begin to construct a new energy framework that integrates local, regional and global networks into a new international architecture of sustainability. Whereas the first scenario (which they term Scramble) relies on the activities of national governments to secure their future energy supply, the second (termed Blueprint) emerges as a consequence of grassroots coalitions (recall those 5 billion joined-up people) that bring together individuals, companies and other institutions to construct a new foundation for energy and resource generation and control.

In the Scramble scenario, over the coming decades, governments around the world scramble to attempt to guarantee the maximum amount available to them of the dwindling resource pool. In asserting their autonomy rather than agreeing to cooperate, governments increasingly compete with each other to secure energy for their domestic consumers. This has the impact of preserving high-energy prices and putting increasing strain on the existing energy infrastructure. In this scenario, although prosperity persists throughout the 2010s and 2020s, this relentless scramble and competition for energy resources continues to increase the gap between the rich and the poor. Many of the resource gains that are made are due to the resurgence of the coal sector. In this scenario multilateral governmental institutions find themselves too weak to subsidise the creation of a global clean energy sector. To supplement the use of finite coal reserves, domestic investment is instead directed to the expansion of nuclear power and a modernised biofuel industry. In the short term they manage to sustain economic growth throughout the 2020s.

However, in the longer term (2020 and beyond) the scenario is increasingly negative. In the Scramble scenario governments increasingly have to react to the emerging constraints of the traditional energy framework, imposing solutions that often have immediate benefits but long-term negative consequences. Coal is not without its environmental problems, while nuclear fuel produces nuclear waste, and the biofuel industry competes with the food industry, pushing up prices of food to unsustainable levels. As a consequence, by 2025 the uncoordinated efforts of governments to secure resources have ensured that the existing framework is stretched to its limit, eventually necessitating draconian measures on production, consumption and mobility. For the governments of China and India, still in the process of developing a modernised industrial economy, these constraints prove hard to enforce. In Europe and America the introduction of a carbon tax and the scrutiny of the carbon footprints of individuals and companies put pressure on people to work from home and live austere lives. It is only when governments, companies and individuals reach this impasse that substantial steps to create a new energy sector are taken. Having failed to cooperate sooner, instead insisting on competing to use what remained of traditional energy reserves, nations begin to realise the extent of this undertaking. Not only do they have to restructure their energy framework completely, but they also have to confront the oncoming consequences of their lack of restraint.

The second Blueprint scenario reveals the beneficial aspect of confronting climate change and energy problems sooner (that is, before 2020) rather than later. It is also a scenario that depends both on a sense of urgency and the flow of information. It relies on the practical actions of well-coordinated coalitions who have acknowledged the implications of climate change, and are quick in their efforts to secure a safe and sustainable future. These coalitions include companies with mutual energy interests, cities and regions conscious of their future energy requirements, and a whole host of other institutions that are united in formulating low-carbon ventures. In this scenario general awareness of the damaging effects of climate change, and the initial successes of creative and efficient experiments and practices in infrastructural development, play key roles. Productive processes and lifestyle choices are quickly emulated by others on a national and regional scale. As more and more people come to accept the threats that a high-carbon economy poses to their environment and livelihood, pressure on governments, including those of developing countries, increases investment in emission-reduction projects. Emissions trading schemes offer incentives for the establishment of low-carbon ventures, while giving more traditional sectors the opportunity to adjust.

In this scenario, the Blueprints established by these multiple actors quickly create a culture of sustainability, helping to fuel a more effective international consensus. In turn, this consensus mitigates the inefficiencies and uncertainties that might otherwise continue to undermine a disintegrated, bottom-up approach. In order to stay at the forefront of innovation, many technologically developed countries bring about an era of brave policy-making that incentivises the creation of new and efficient infrastructural foundations. This establishes the emergence of new and innovative firms that become global leaders in exportable carbon management technologies and systems. Meanwhile, China and India commit to various international frameworks that guarantee technology transfer and secure an energy-efficient future. In rural areas of Africa, cheap and efficient wind turbines and solar panels ensure cost-effective access to energy and help make electric transport increasingly viable. Energy prices, though initially reflecting the cost of infrastructural reorganisation, remain affordable in the long run and continue to fall as wind and solar technology become more efficient.

These two scenarios, Scramble and Blueprint, are not polar extremes – neither is unrealistic. Yet they do differ substantially. The first is one of denial and competition, while the second is of acknowledgement and cooperation. Both inevitably confront the hard truths of climate change without sacrificing economic growth. These are the three pieces of the energy force that will have the most profound implications on the future of work.

1. Energy prices increase: Over the coming decades the easily available energy resources of the world will be depleted. At the same time, countries such as China and India will increase their resource requirements significantly. One of the most immediate impacts of the rising cost of resources will be that the movement of goods and transportation of people will have to be significantly reduced.

2. Environmental catastrophes displace people: the correlation between carbon dioxide emissions and temperature increases was already causing concern by 2010. By this time, changes had begun to occur in the many ecosystems of the world, sea levels began rising, wind patterns had changed and heat waves and droughts had become more prevalent.

3. A culture of sustainability begins to emerge: one of the implications of the dwindling of easily accessed energy resources could be a renewed interest in sustainability and widespread adoption of more energy-efficient ways of living, with a brake on vicarious consumption. These cultures of sustainability could have a profound impact on the way that work gets done.

As we consider the dark and bright impact energy resources will have on the future of work, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the negative. However, as we will discover, it is possible to cast the task ahead in a positive light, one that can rejuvenate faltering economies, promote greater equality and foster innovation. It could constitute, to some extent at least, an energy revolution that echoes that of the late 1800s, with the culture of sustainability having as much impact as the engineering culture had on Victorian Britain. It is possible that the collaborative spirit will influence business ventures and government policy, creating greater transparency and integration even beyond the energy sector. There are already clues to these scenarios in the other forces. The technology force implies 5 billion people connected with each other, creating a ‘cognitive surplus’ that could well become the momentum and energy behind the grassroots-led initiative of the Blueprint scenario. What’s more, as the demographic force shows, the generation who will be leading the world in 2025 – Gen Y – are extremely aware of the energy and environmental challenges they are faced with. Perhaps more than any other generation before, they are capable of creating the cooperative and empathic skills that will be so crucial for the emergence of the Blueprint scenario.

Crafting your own working future

You have now taken a glance at the 32 pieces that make up the five forces that will shape the coming decades of your work life. Now the task is to begin to work with these pieces to craft the story of your own future of work, and from this begin to create a deeper understanding of your options and choices.

As you look at these pieces the challenge is to make them your own and from them to craft your own story. Just as my mother worked with her fabric pieces to craft her quilts, so you need to go through a process of filtering and selection. Right from the beginning, there will be some pieces you will want to discard, others that will surprise you and you’ll want to know more about, and some you will fall in love with and want to understand more to make your own. Then, once you have initially sorted the pieces, you will want to look for patterns and begin to create a deeper structure that resonates with your own context and values. These are the actions you will want to take with the pieces:

* Discard: one of the most important aspects of creating a beautiful quilt is to know what to leave out. The same is true with crafting your own story about the future. As you look back on each of the pieces about the future, there will be some that you can immediately discard. It may be that you don’t agree with the data, or that you know it’s not going to be important to you, or that it is something that you cannot imagine resonating with your picture of the future. Feel free to discard as many of these pieces as you wish.

* Embroider: as you looked through the pieces, there will be some that intrigued you and created a sense of wanting to know more. As we take a closer look at the stories of the future, you will see that I provide more detail for each of the pieces and also have highlighted references and resources that you may find interesting.

* Discover and collect: as you begin to put these ideas together and look at them in a more holistic way, you may decide that there are bits completely missing that I have failed to find in my own quest. I’ve had this feeling with my own fabric collection. I can recall that for years I wanted to see the silks of Varanasi, which are legendary in their luminosity and beauty but which required a trip to the upper banks of the Ganges to find them. It took me years to actually make the trip – but as soon as I did my first priority was to take a closer look at the fabrics. I am sure that as you take a closer look at the pieces I have collected, there will be some that are missing and that you will want to devote energy to finding. That’s wonderful – but do come to www.theshiftbylyndagratton.com to post what you have discovered – I’d love to take a closer look at what you have found.

* Sort: I have presented the pieces to you in the simplest of categories, by the impact they have on the five forces. But as you look closer you may find that for you there are other ways of categorising these pieces. For example, you may want to sort them in terms of how much you find them personally intriguing, or the extent to which they will impact on your own future, or by the way they will impact on the region of the world in which you live.

* Look for patterns: in a sense this is the most creative aspect of making a quilt. You have discarded the fragments that don’t fit, embroidered those that you value highly, and sorted them in categories beyond the most obvious. Now is the time to stand back and see if you can find an emerging pattern. The challenge with these pieces about the future is to find a pattern that makes sense to you, and resonates with how you believe your future will emerge. It’s only at this stage that you can move into the next phase of working out the shifts you will need to take to ensure that you have future-proofed your work and career.

You may recall that this was the task I set the members of the Future of Work Consortium. I asked them specifically to take the pieces and to construct a day in the life of someone working in 2025. Many of these initial storylines were negative. They reflected the anxiety and concern people felt as they thought about the forces. As you will see, the major themes to emerge from this initial task were themes of fragmentation, isolation and exclusion. It is these themes we will next explore in more detail. After presenting these storylines, I will then describe in more detail the specific pieces that seem to play a contributing factor in the creation of the storylines.

Once the negative, default storylines had been created, we went back to the original pieces with the task of re-sorting them to create more positive storylines – what I have called the Crafted Future. These show how the pieces from the five forces can also create work for the future, a future that has co-creation, social participation, micro-entrepreneurship and creative lives at its centre.

As you begin to think through your own future of work, do download the Future of Work Workbook I have created for you – it’s available at my website, www.theshiftbylyndagratton.com, where you will also find a series of short videos in which I describe the forces and trends in a little more detail. By the way, whilst you are there do sign up for the monthly newsletter to stay in touch with developments.

PART II