Future is a world of freelancers — but management will persist
• Clock is ticking on office jobs, but Mercer survey expects demand for problem-solving skills
For many years, there has been speculation about the future of work. Will there be such a thing as formal employment by 2020? Will we be going in to offices when technology allows us to work anywhere?
Obviously, automation itself is disrupting the workplace, along with 3D printing and machine learning. Digitalisation and automation have been changing work for decades. Artificial intelligence is no longer the stuff of science fiction as more routine tasks can be passed on, and soon even some creative processes will be entrusted to machines as they develop imagination.
But the word that’s most often used as business models change is disruption.
Global consulting firm Mercer conducted an international survey, including SA, that produced an interesting breakdown of the job trends across job “families”. The head of the Mercer family in Singapore, Kulshaan Singh, says there will be a massive loss in jobs in the office and administrative “family”, with almost 4.8-million jobs falling away by 2020 across the 15 countries surveyed — far more than the jobs created in all the other families.
It is no surprise that more than 2-million are expected to be in the Industrial Revolution sectors: manufacturing and production as well as construction and mining. Mercer predicts that between 2015 and 2020 creativity will move from the 10th most important to the third most important skill. Yet this will not prevent a 151,000 fall in jobs in the arts, design, entertainment, sports and media family.
If creativity is used in the sense of problem-solving, Mercer expects growth in professions such as architecture and engineering, where a substantial 339,000 jobs will be added. And, as you might expect, the world will become more attractive for those skilled in computer and mathematical skills, where there will be demand for another 405,000 jobs.
It isn’t yet necessary to can your ambitions to study for an MBA, as there will be a need to fill about 416,000 new management jobs, according to Mercer. In fact, there will no letting up in pie charts and flow charts, since no less than 93% of executives plan a redesign of their businesses over the next two years.
I hope the traditional military-style system of reporting lines will be dead and buried by then.
How are we supposed to react to the news that there will be 109,000 fewer jobs for lawyers by 2020? They can be creative, but not always in a helpful way.
Singh says there are 16 skills we need in the 21st century. Some of these seem nebulous, such as cultural and civic literacy. Others would be critical for anyone’s survival in the workplace, such as persistence and collaboration. The word that doesn’t appear in the Mercer checklist but is relevant to many of the life skills, is empathy, being in tune with the environment around us.
It is often said that companies are tearing down their traditional hierarchical structures to please the millennials. Every younger generation thinks it can make unlimited demands. But Mercer exposes some real chutzpah in the demands of this generation, which asked for a four-day work week and even unlimited paid leave. In reality many of these people will not be employed in the formal sense with the traditional employee benefits; many firms might choose to work without them. Like most of us when under 30, we believed in our invincibility.
In SA, the seventh-most important consideration is more flexible work options. First comes the opportunity to get promoted. This is old-fashioned, showing how much people still see the workplace as hierarchical and militaristic. “Promotion” should probably be dropped from the modern human resources lexicon. In SA, along with the UK, India and Italy, the number one request from employees was for their unique interests and skills to be understood. Being truly appreciated is probably a lot more valuable than having the ego stroked with a fancy title.
Yet quite a few of us would change employers just for a cooler workplace. A quarter would leave for fitness facilities, and 20% for wellbeing services.
Mercer says freelancers will soon make up a huge 40% of the workforce. Singh says almost three-quarters of South African employees could end up working on a contract basis. These freelancers won’t just be competing against other human beings but also against robots or mathematical programmes known as algorithms.
The model for the future company could be the film business, in which a pool of talent comes together to form a company and then disbands once the task has been achieved and the movie has been made and marketed. Mercer argues that there might be a day when only management is paid a salary, with everyone else earning fees for service and possibly bonuses linked to performance.
It is a culture perfectly suited to sales specialists, many of whom are already used to working this way.
Mercer found there were sufficient leadership, administration, human resource and technology skills in SA. But there is an undersupply of sales people, though you might not guess it from the amount of cold calling. And there is a shortage of nuts and bolts skills, such as logistics and service delivery.
I wonder how many of those spoilt young millennials are dying to have careers in these sectors. But there’s no doubt that SA needs them.
IN SA, THE SEVENTH-MOST IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION IS MORE FLEXIBLE WORK OPTIONS