We’ve seen the workplace of the future – and it’s grey

Who knows what the future may bring? Emma Birchall for one.

Birchall works for the Hot Spots Movement, a UK consultancy that bridges academia and management practice, and which runs The Future of Work, a research consortium of more than 100 global multinationals.

From that vantage point she is well placed to peer into the workplace of the future. What she can see most clearly is that it will be grey.

“Trying to figure out what the world will look like when we all live to 100 sounds futuristic, but it’s happening already,” says Birchall.

“Babies born in the UK since 2007 can expect to live to over 100. And of course, all of us are facing a life expectancy beyond that of our parents and grandparents. But, to date, all we have done with those extra years is add them to our retirement, which has remained at 60 to 65 years. But we’ve got to a point where it is no longer sustainable to have a 1:1 ratio between years spent at work and years spent in retirement.”

It’s a fact that is exercising western governments increasingly. But the issue isn’t only one of how those in old age should best be funded, she says.

“Studies show that people who work part-time, or take semi-retirement, don’t just do so for financial reasons, but to stay socially and mentally active. This is especially true for people in professions for whom their social life is embedded in their work, and for whom leaving is hard. Yes, there may be financial reasons for staying on, but there are other benefits to be had from working longer too. The problem is it’s not something you hear from government because working longer is not a message anyone wants to deliver.”

Aged reality

The result is that, as a society, we are not adapting fast enough to this new, aged reality, she says. “And when people do raise this topic, they do so with fear. Yet the fact is, if we are going to be working into our 70s and 80s, from an employer perspective alone it’s important not to ‘burn out’ your workforce.”

As it happens, not wishing to “burn out” is something that is also emerging as an issue at the other end of the workplace spectrum. “Younger people are not as tied to the idea of working so hard, just to become, for example, a partner in their law firm,” says Birchall. Part of this may be that they feel they have other options.

“We have already seen that starting a business has become more acceptable and, thanks to technology, is cheaper to do than previously,” she adds. The demise of the traditional job for life means a job-hopping CV is no longer the no-no it was previously either.

“Culturally it’s more acceptable than ever to move jobs. Indeed, some of the organisations we work with are much more open to the idea of losing good people than ever, to the extent that they will help good people leave. It sounds mad, but employers are realising that people will not stay with them for decades – and that very often they don’t even want them to, because change enables them to bring in people with fresh experiences and skills. So what employers increasingly do is help place their good employees with, for example, a client company. That way they have a ‘friendly face’ in a client’s company.”

It’s part of a changing trend whereby the old HR “recruit, develop and retain” model is being replaced by one that emphasises the need to engage and build external alliances. “It’s about staying in touch with good people,” says Birchall.

Upskilling

For their part, the workers of the future will have to embrace change too. Already one in six workers is reckoned to be freelancing or on short-term contracts. Constant upskilling is increasingly the name of the game.

“For my father, who was an accountant, it was a question of having all your studying frontloaded, and then practising your profession for the next 35 years. That’s not so the case any more. Now if you’re an accountant, regulations can change completely within five years of graduating, or some new technological disruption come along, just as accounting software encouraged people to file their own returns. There will be fewer and fewer of what we might call ‘safe haven’ occupations in the future,” says Birchall

And instead of classing work as high-, medium- or low-skilled, for employees of the future, “non-routine” may be the category that is most coveted, “because anything routine can be codified, and anything that can be codified will be automated,” she adds.

Certain types of legal eagle are more likely to find themselves made redundant by technology than office cleaners or those who provide elder care, she points out. And, of course, there’ll be loads of need for the latter.