How to survive and thrive in the face of global megatrends

TODAY OUR WORK follows us via smartphones and laptops, tablets and cloud services. These devices and services are the most visible sign of one of four global megatrends already reshaping the New Zealand business landscape.

The four global shifts are: digital disruption, globalisation, an ageing population and the peer-to-peer economy. On their own, and in combination, these global trends have already disrupted century-old business models, from newspapers and television to the postal service. These big four trends are the focus of a report,

Future Inc: The future of work: how can we

adapt to survive and thrive, published in February by Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand and Deloitte Access Economics, a member of Deloitte’s global economics network, based in Australia.

New Zealand businesses need to factor these trends into their thinking and planning to meet the challenge they pose to every business in the country.

Take digital disruption and the peer-to-peer economy. The latest research from Nielsen finds that more than two thirds of New Zealanders own a smartphone and a third of us have a tablet. The devices are in heavy and frequent use, with 3.1 million Kiwis spending an average of 16 hours online a week, with quite likely a lot of that online time on social media sites and shopping. Kiwis spent an estimated $4.15 billion online in 2015, while the current king of social media sites, Facebook, reports that 1.9 million New Zealanders use Facebook on average 14 times a day. The entry of Airbnb and Uber, the advance guard of the peer-topeer economy, to the New Zealand market, are causing regular headaches and sleepless nights in the accommodation and taxi sectors and for policy makers.

As in the rest of the world, our workforce is greying. The proportion of workers aged 55 years and over was one in six in 2007, by 2020 it will be one in four. As workers age and retire, they aren’t being replaced at the same rate. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) predicts our labour force will grow by only 15,000 a year after 2016, less than half the rate we have experienced since the millennium.

Meanwhile, globalisation means that over the past 20 years the biggest change in our population is greater diversity. The latest census showed that Asians are now the fourth largest ethnic group in the country. As MBIE notes, our future workforce will have a rising proportion of Asian workers. For New Zealand businesses to succeed and prosper it will be vital to not only understand how to manage a more ethnically diverse workforce, but also how to retain and grow market share in a more ethnically diverse local and global market.

There are no silver bullets on how to meet the challenge of the four global megatrends. However, the Future Inc report does provide eight key questions to help business owner/ managers and (separately) the consultants who are already forming an increasing large part of the workforce. (see table below).

Fundamental shifts in our communities, our economic and physical connectivity and the frontiers of our technology create opportunities for new business models and social change. Our workplaces will change along with our staff. We need to ask the hard questions on how best to adapt, survive and thrive. We need to start that conversation now.