Workplaces of the Future: Human or Robot?

When we think about the past decade, we have seen much change. This should cause us to pause, think about who and what in the future will be affected by technology and what our workplaces of the future will look like. In so doing, we can start to map out how we, as HR professionals, can influence this ever-changing landscape and how we can support our people through the transition.

After all, ‘Future of Work’ has turned into a hashtag. It is a thing. But how are the trends in technology going to affect our workplaces? What can we reliably predict (as opposed to the dystopian Bladerunner or Jetson’s ‘no-more work’ scenarios that are bantered about)?

Here’s what I predict, based on the research for my co-authored book Don’t Worry About the Robots: How to survive and thrive in the new world of work and what I shared with participants at a recent HRNZ Summit.

The pace of change will accelerate, exponentially

Many of our predecessors have faced periods of widespread change and social upheaval. Water and steam drove the first industrial revolution in the 19th century and, hence, harnessed mechanised production methods. The invention of electricity drove the second industrial revolution in the 20th century, which led to mass production, assembly lines, specialisation and urbanisation. The mid-1970s are characterised by what is called the third industrial revolution when advances in computing power brought us the personal computer.

Experts say we are now living in the fourth industrial revolution, but this one is different from the past three. In previous revolutions, only one technological change was arguably driving things. This fourth revolution is driven by advances in the computing power that drives most facets of our life and economy. These advances are exponential. As Moore’s Law predicted, computing power is doubling every two years, and computer power underpins most aspects of our life. Just imagine the power and functionality our smartphones will have in five years’.

We can expect change across many areas, with advances in nanotechnology, 3D printing, biotech, robotics and genetics. What we don’t know is how these technologies will converge with a breakthrough in one area unlocking change in another.

The exponential change also means this will hit fast. We may not even realise change is going to happen until after it has arrived.

There will still be people working

Despite predictions to the contrary, I think we will still be working. Work is key to who we are, how we arrange ourselves and finding meaning in our lives. This is unlikely to change quickly. But technology is going to change the nature of work – what we do, how we do it and even who does what.

There are many ‘best guesses’ about what will happen. The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research has carried out one of the most credible analyses. It looked at the current state of automation and predicted where it is likely to develop and then applied this to the current workforce.

The Institute found that roughly half of all jobs in New Zealand today are at risk of technological displacement over the next few decades. This includes jobs in sectors that we might not automatically think about, such as financial services, public administration, and scientific and technical services, as well as more repetitive, manual roles.

Other predictions are that up to 60 per cent of current jobs could have up to 30 per cent of their work automated in the near future. That is good news for many of us because the repetitive tasks we often dislike doing could be automated in the future. It means we are likely to be working alongside more sophisticated systems. But it also potentially means our employers need less of us.

While this has happened through time (think Xero and accounting, the AI programmes used by law firms to do case analysis, and even back to typewriters and tractors), what is different now is the potential scale and speed of change in new technology.

There will be fewer managers

Our productivity in the future is likely to be more easily monitored, potentially through an app or dashboard showing the performance of many hundreds of workers. The potential need, therefore, for the current army of supervisors (who traditionally checked up on us) is likely to be gone. Transport is a good example of this. In previous years, an army of supervisors would hop on and off buses and check timelines by waiting for buses at bus stops. Today this can all be efficiently completed by one person tracking each bus by GPS.

Think of the ease of which employers will be able to monitor keystrokes or phone calls.

As I have already outlined, routine tasks are ripe for automation. Futurists predict that, increasingly, workers will be focused on problem solving, making sense of data and serving others. These are more complex, judgement and analysis-based tasks.

Expecting workers to problem solve means that organisations may increasingly need to delegate and distribute the power for decision-making. Workers will need to be able to actually solve problems and change things, and this potentially means fewer managers and flatter hierarchies.

With the volume of data now available at the fingertips of most workers, sitting outside their manager’s office waiting for a decision may be a thing of the past. They may be in a better place than a manager to make a decision.

While we may see fewer supervisors and managers, I think leadership will become more critical. By leadership, I mean the ability to create a vision for an organisation that unites and motivates its workers. Leadership also means the ability to generate change when the vision needs to adapt. This will be a difficult transition, though we have many managers in our organisations who are not necessarily leaders. It is quite a different role.

The workforce will be more diverse

At present, we have the greatest diversity of age of workers ever. With people retiring later, we have a wide range of ages in our workplaces. This is likely to continue and intensify. With different ages, come different expectations of work and the workplace; something leaders of the future will need to grapple with.

With the increasing diversity of New Zealand’s population, our workforce is and will continue to be more ethnically diverse than ever before. Forty per cent of the Auckland population was born overseas, and Māori, Pacific and ethnic groups are the largest growing sections of our population.

Such diversity is a strength, bringing together different skills, experience and insights to create effective decisions and actions. But leadership will be needed to harness diversity. Leadership will be required to draw us together when many of us working together may not be in the same physical location or even the same time zone and will have very different experiences and expectations.

The workers of the future may not be employees

Many of us still base our lives on the assumption of a three-stage model – education, work, retirement – and work means the same job for similar organisations. What will be a reality for most of us is to be more fluid; we may re-train, have periods of self-employment, and gig work.

For some people like me, portfolio work is a rewarding way of working, giving flexibility and variety. For many, however, gig work could mean precarious income, poor conditions and exploitation.

The volume of New Zealanders who are self-employed has increased by 30 per cent in the past 10 years. Australian data shows 32 per cent of its workforce freelanced between 2014–15.

We should expect both employer and employee demand for different work arrangements and the workforces of the future to not necessarily be based in one space or even in New Zealand.

Workers will need to learn as they go

Think about the number of times the apps on your phone update. If we are working alongside sophisticated machine learning systems, they will continually improve and update, and we will need to adapt continuously.

We may need to upskill and learn to do more on-the-job informal, bite-sized learning to keep up. Formal learning at the beginning of our careers may become less useful and learning as we go will need to become part of our day-to-day job.

Some organisations will have empty desks while there are queues of people looking for work

In 2017 the Foundation for Young Australians published research that was an analysis of graduate and entry-level jobs for the five years previous. It found a 200 per cent increase had occurred in demand for digital skills in these ads and a 150 per cent increase in critical thinking and communication.

The skills needed in the 21st century aren’t the ability to know facts or do a routine, repetitive task. They are the ability to work together, to communicate, to find insights and build solutions. They are creativity, communication, collaboration and critical thinking.

But this is not just for our kids. It will be for us over the next decades. The higher-level value-add skills of analysis, sense making and advice giving will be in high demand. Our organisations will be in a battle for talent. This also means some workers without these skills and the ability to learn might be left behind.

Being human won’t change

Employees who talk loudly to their colleagues about what they watched on Netflix last night will still be around. But our more positive human qualities – empathy, caring, connection and humour – are difficult to automate and are essential human traits. These are what we need to focus on and keep reminding ourselves of when we shudder at the thought of robots entering our lives for good. As custodians of the people agenda within our organisations, we can be proud of and champion our diversity, skills and uniqueness.