JOB TRENDS

BUSINESSES may be “waiting for business to settle into familiar patterns. However, business hasn’t resumed a familiar pattern and employers waiting for it do so may wait in vain” – 2013 Talent Shortage Survey Research Results, Manpower Group.

The world as we know it is changing. Robotics, digitisation, mobilisation, cognitive computing, augmentation, automation, disintermediation and others are affecting us every day and the combination of these will create even faster exponential change.

This will result in a completely different way of work and therefore a completely new skills set to survive and thrive. Combined these changes will mean that winning and losing will happen faster than before.

As business leaders we need to ask ourselves what are we doing to drive this change and to help our people adapt and cope with the changes that will impact both their work and personal lives, especially in light of the statistics that are often quoted.

We see statistics quoted, such as “up to 70 percent of jobs of will be lost due to changes in technology” and others that say “65 percent of children entering school now will work in jobs we have not envisaged yet”.

Additionally, the following possible trends that will affect the future of work are discussed in many forums:

The technological, economic and social transformations occurring around us. Information swamping. Destruction of sectors and national economies dependent on non-sustainable energy and materials.

Cumulative environmental problems (including climate change, industrial pollution and destruction of biodiversity) that render large territories uninhabitable resulting in “climate refugees”, “water wars”, for example.