Atos 2017 The future of work
Introduction
Work in the 21st century faces enormous challenges, everything has to be digital, global, a
24/7 business culture, flexible and foresight, pushing the best practices far beyond the status
quo. Also the human resources have to adapt in order to catch up. Employees should be
healthy and happy.
Top 10 forecasted trends:
1. The organizational structure will go from top-down to flat or horizontal structures of
authority less leadership.
2. Teams will me smaller, more ad hoc and more self-operating.
3. Managers will have less authority, and their function will be less controlling and more
cooperating.
4. Employees will work more remotely, with temporary/ free-lance contracts.
5. Soft skills will be become more important than hard skills.
6. HR will attract and retain employees who are self-starters and life-long learners,
flexible team players with creativity and drive.
7. Wellness programs on the work floor will rise in order to reduce stress and
encourage relaxation.
8. Artificial intelligence will take over the heavy lifting routine tasks, so that employees
will focus more on value-added work.
9. Automation and thinking machines will take over any routine and repetitious work.
10. We expect that advanced software like Blockchain will allow the growth of a new
breed of decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs).
Millennials: The workers of the future
Millennial: someone born between 1982-2002
In 2020 the expectation was that half of the global workforce is done by millennials.
There should become a new way of attracting millennials instead of baby boomers.
Millennials are shaped in a different context.
- They are more aware of the limitations of hierarchical organization.
- They are more tech-savvy and educated.
- They demand more flexible workplaces.
- They crave im mediate, substantive feedback.
- They are less motivated by pay than promotion.
- Business will need to change to better attract and retain the talent of the future.
The future of management.
Small is the new Big the number of employees does not say anything about how big a
company is.
The employees of the future are more intellectual, skilled and flexible. So you do not need a
lot of them. (give them a problem and they will solve it).
The kind of managers millennials want differs per part of the world.
,The New York times reports that workers are most happy when these needs are met:
- Physical
- Emotional
- Mental
- Spiritual
Remote work
Let people work remotely is more cost efficient and effective and let employees work when
they want to.
- Workers are happier
- Vastly diminished overheads (no more rented office space)
- Productivity increases
- Recruiting and retaining talent is easier
More frequent and substantive feedback
- Not every (half a) year feedback, but much more often.
- Millennials want to know now when and what to improve not in six months.
Less concern with hierarchy
- Millennials are team players
- No more top down mgt
- More focus on results than titles
Greater Flexibility
- More result driven
- No dress code, strict working hours,
expectations of long days in the office.
, - The world is their workplace not a desk.
Constant learning and advancement
- Millennials love a challenge.
- Do not stop learning when they graduate and go work
- Create opportunities
The future of education
- Schools aren’t training factories
- Memorizing facts is not as important as it was (google everywhere)
- Increase informal and peer oriented rather than traditional and hierarchical.
- VR and AR can be used to learn a lot. visualization of data.
- The most cutting-edge technologies signal disruption in the way motor skills are
learned.
The future of skills
- In 10 years half of the skills you learn in college are no longer
useful
- We need working learners, people who want to and can learn
and adapt quickly.
Learning skills
- Routine skills will be done by machines. (even in the white
collar world)
- Assess, judge, analyze and plan.
- Flexible work with smart people in temporary small teams.
Literacy skills
- Information, media and technological literacy, are so interconnected that they cannot
be separated.
- The workers of the future must be able to assess where they can find a reliable
source of information, judging a source’s authenticity, validity, and reliability.
Life skills
- Flexibility
- Initiative
- Social skills
- Discipline
- Learning with authority.
The office of the future
- Repetitive work will be replaced by machines.
- Companies will focus more on mental health and well-being by using the latest
wearable and mobile tech.
- the most forward thinking companies will use smart wearables to measure stress and
happiness to change how they organise daily business.
- This reinforces the importance of flexibility. The best data in the world is useless if
senior management refuses to act on it and change the way things are done
, The future Office
- DNA analysis for security;
- Smart office furniture;
- AR tech to increase productivity;
- Full-body virtual meetings to improve communication;
- Advanced AI to ease the burdens on employees;
- A green, naturally-lit workplace to improve mental health; and
- Smart wellness programs to keep employees in tip-top shape.
The rise of automation and AI:
- Automation of repetitive tasks will free up
valuable time to spend on more creative and
meaningful work;
- Advancements in robotics allow automation in
industry that both works with and replaces
many workers;
- The cost of automation is falling below the
minimum cost of human labour; we anticipate a
growing shift toward machines replacing
workers in fast-food, supermarkets, and
warehouses;
- Advanced AI threatens traditional white-collar workers as well; recent efforts to have
machines understand natural language point the way forward to replacing human
beings in retail, customer service, and in any information job that is data driven;
- Thinking machines have also begun to take on creative tasks, and it’s unclear just
how good at these traditionally ‘safe’ jobs they’ll be.
The democratization of work
Blockchain, crowdsourcing and the gig economy.
more and more people start for themselves.
- The gig or freelance economy is rapidly displacing traditional employment;
- This offers opportunities and challenges for the businesses of the future:
- They will have access to a larger, deeper pool of talent;
- But they’ll be competing with other firms for these high-skilled workers and will need
to rethink policies that attract and retain these superstars;
- The sharing economy is disrupting traditional business models in hospitality and the
taxi industry; expect that this trend will continue and that it will spread broadly to
many service fields;
- Blockchain software enables DAOs that are reshaping the nature of business,
leading to leader-less companies.
Bottom up innovation
The companies of the future will encourage internal entrepreneurship to spur innovation.
But this means rethinking the basic assumptions of business and embracing experimentation
and failure.
The employee of the future.
Introduction
Work in the 21st century faces enormous challenges, everything has to be digital, global, a
24/7 business culture, flexible and foresight, pushing the best practices far beyond the status
quo. Also the human resources have to adapt in order to catch up. Employees should be
healthy and happy.
Top 10 forecasted trends:
1. The organizational structure will go from top-down to flat or horizontal structures of
authority less leadership.
2. Teams will me smaller, more ad hoc and more self-operating.
3. Managers will have less authority, and their function will be less controlling and more
cooperating.
4. Employees will work more remotely, with temporary/ free-lance contracts.
5. Soft skills will be become more important than hard skills.
6. HR will attract and retain employees who are self-starters and life-long learners,
flexible team players with creativity and drive.
7. Wellness programs on the work floor will rise in order to reduce stress and
encourage relaxation.
8. Artificial intelligence will take over the heavy lifting routine tasks, so that employees
will focus more on value-added work.
9. Automation and thinking machines will take over any routine and repetitious work.
10. We expect that advanced software like Blockchain will allow the growth of a new
breed of decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs).
Millennials: The workers of the future
Millennial: someone born between 1982-2002
In 2020 the expectation was that half of the global workforce is done by millennials.
There should become a new way of attracting millennials instead of baby boomers.
Millennials are shaped in a different context.
- They are more aware of the limitations of hierarchical organization.
- They are more tech-savvy and educated.
- They demand more flexible workplaces.
- They crave im mediate, substantive feedback.
- They are less motivated by pay than promotion.
- Business will need to change to better attract and retain the talent of the future.
The future of management.
Small is the new Big the number of employees does not say anything about how big a
company is.
The employees of the future are more intellectual, skilled and flexible. So you do not need a
lot of them. (give them a problem and they will solve it).
The kind of managers millennials want differs per part of the world.
,The New York times reports that workers are most happy when these needs are met:
- Physical
- Emotional
- Mental
- Spiritual
Remote work
Let people work remotely is more cost efficient and effective and let employees work when
they want to.
- Workers are happier
- Vastly diminished overheads (no more rented office space)
- Productivity increases
- Recruiting and retaining talent is easier
More frequent and substantive feedback
- Not every (half a) year feedback, but much more often.
- Millennials want to know now when and what to improve not in six months.
Less concern with hierarchy
- Millennials are team players
- No more top down mgt
- More focus on results than titles
Greater Flexibility
- More result driven
- No dress code, strict working hours,
expectations of long days in the office.
, - The world is their workplace not a desk.
Constant learning and advancement
- Millennials love a challenge.
- Do not stop learning when they graduate and go work
- Create opportunities
The future of education
- Schools aren’t training factories
- Memorizing facts is not as important as it was (google everywhere)
- Increase informal and peer oriented rather than traditional and hierarchical.
- VR and AR can be used to learn a lot. visualization of data.
- The most cutting-edge technologies signal disruption in the way motor skills are
learned.
The future of skills
- In 10 years half of the skills you learn in college are no longer
useful
- We need working learners, people who want to and can learn
and adapt quickly.
Learning skills
- Routine skills will be done by machines. (even in the white
collar world)
- Assess, judge, analyze and plan.
- Flexible work with smart people in temporary small teams.
Literacy skills
- Information, media and technological literacy, are so interconnected that they cannot
be separated.
- The workers of the future must be able to assess where they can find a reliable
source of information, judging a source’s authenticity, validity, and reliability.
Life skills
- Flexibility
- Initiative
- Social skills
- Discipline
- Learning with authority.
The office of the future
- Repetitive work will be replaced by machines.
- Companies will focus more on mental health and well-being by using the latest
wearable and mobile tech.
- the most forward thinking companies will use smart wearables to measure stress and
happiness to change how they organise daily business.
- This reinforces the importance of flexibility. The best data in the world is useless if
senior management refuses to act on it and change the way things are done
, The future Office
- DNA analysis for security;
- Smart office furniture;
- AR tech to increase productivity;
- Full-body virtual meetings to improve communication;
- Advanced AI to ease the burdens on employees;
- A green, naturally-lit workplace to improve mental health; and
- Smart wellness programs to keep employees in tip-top shape.
The rise of automation and AI:
- Automation of repetitive tasks will free up
valuable time to spend on more creative and
meaningful work;
- Advancements in robotics allow automation in
industry that both works with and replaces
many workers;
- The cost of automation is falling below the
minimum cost of human labour; we anticipate a
growing shift toward machines replacing
workers in fast-food, supermarkets, and
warehouses;
- Advanced AI threatens traditional white-collar workers as well; recent efforts to have
machines understand natural language point the way forward to replacing human
beings in retail, customer service, and in any information job that is data driven;
- Thinking machines have also begun to take on creative tasks, and it’s unclear just
how good at these traditionally ‘safe’ jobs they’ll be.
The democratization of work
Blockchain, crowdsourcing and the gig economy.
more and more people start for themselves.
- The gig or freelance economy is rapidly displacing traditional employment;
- This offers opportunities and challenges for the businesses of the future:
- They will have access to a larger, deeper pool of talent;
- But they’ll be competing with other firms for these high-skilled workers and will need
to rethink policies that attract and retain these superstars;
- The sharing economy is disrupting traditional business models in hospitality and the
taxi industry; expect that this trend will continue and that it will spread broadly to
many service fields;
- Blockchain software enables DAOs that are reshaping the nature of business,
leading to leader-less companies.
Bottom up innovation
The companies of the future will encourage internal entrepreneurship to spur innovation.
But this means rethinking the basic assumptions of business and embracing experimentation
and failure.
The employee of the future.
