Claire Beale

Global Editor-in-chief, Campaign

If you’re reading this at a desk (surrounded by the comfy detritus of papers, books, plants that demark your professional space) in an office (an office you’ve sat in every day this week, every week this year), then I defy you to not be thrilled, frustrated, envious and a little scared by the following pages.

R/GA’S latest Futurevision report outlines an exciting but challenging shift in how, where and even why we will soon be working.

The old notions of 9-5 clocking in and out, careers for life, and employer loyalty are being eroded, replaced by more agile, flexible and layered ways of earning a living.

At the same time, employees are increasingly unwilling to compromise principles for profit, prepared to earn less in return for more enriching and socially responsible work. And employers who don’t share such values are unlikely to attract the best human talent capable of working alongside the robots that are taking on more workplace tasks.

It’s a fascinating picture that redefines both the value of work and the value of workers. This new professional landscape has some fundamental social and economic implications. There are clear challenges laid out in this issue that will force a wholesale rethink of principles that have defined work for decades, if not centuries.

Exciting, definitely, but whether the opportunities and the costs for us as humans can be brought into balance is as yet uncertain.