What's Changing? - Work

 

Please see below selected recent work-related change. 

 

See also:

• What's New? - Work
• Questioning Change - Work
• What's Changing? - Automation

 

November 2021

• For some working women, particularly mothers, the flexibility to stay home part of the week as more companies embraced hybrid models may seem like a blessing. But Politico warnedof a possible downside: Women, often disproportionately "burdened with caregiving responsibilities", might opt fpr hybrid work while being "subtly" pushed aside and/or overlooked in favour of those who are in the office.
• Portugal made it illegal for employers to bother workers outside their normal working hours. New legislation means firms could face fines if they text or email employees in the evenings or at weekends.

 

October 2021

• As jarring as the transition to remote work was during the coronavirus pandemic, it was modest compared to what’s coming next, according to Adam Ozimek, a labour economist at the freelancing platform Upwork. He argued that the next phase of remote work will transform economies, as more companies revise their policies to accommodate employees who have permanently shifted to working remotely, and more workers move to places they’ve always wanted to live but couldn’t.
• Almost three-quarters of companies around the world offered employees more flexible hours in a bid to retain them, according to a UBS Group AG survey. Of more than 4,000 investors and business owners, 71% are giving staff more choice about where they work, and 66% have already raised base pay. The vast majority, 80%, cited difficulty recruiting and retaining workers as economies reopened from pandemic-induced shutdowns, especially in hospitality, construction and transportation.

 

September 2021

• About 4.3 million Americans - nearly 3 percent of the US workforce - quit their jobs in August 2021, the highest monthly number in over 20 years. Researchers weren't sure what prompted the mass drop-off, but workers' greater bargaining power amid a resurgent economy, persistent shortages of child care, and potential fears about the pandemic's Delta wave all seemed to be part of the equation, noted GZERO.

 

August 2021

• Global market research firm Ipsos published a survey of workers across 29 countries: one-third said they’d quit their job if forced to return to the office full time. It remains unclear where all of this will land, but a shift is underway. There may be no return to universal and uncontested expectations of physical presence in the office, and that could represent a major change in the way our societies are ordered, noted New World Same Humans.
• Despite record high job vacancies in some developed economies, many people aren’t even trying to find jobs. The labour force participation rate in mid-2021 was still 1.6 percentage points below its pre-Covid level and the prime age (25-54) employment-to-population ratio was still down by 2.7 percentage points. Some were still concerned about getting COVID-19 and didn’t want to return to the office. Others were stuck at home caregiving for younger or older dependants. Some took the opportunity to retire when the economy was shut down.
• In 2011, only 13% of job postings on Hacker News mentioned remote work. In 2021, that percentage passed 75%. Even before the pandemic, the proportion of remote jobs on the site was trending upward = but the pandemic accelerated the trend. A growing crop of startups worked to make remote collaboration more seamless, especially as some employees return to the office.
• The Effects of Remote Work on Collaboration Among Information Workers was the largest study of its kind yet published. Researchers analysed ‘rich data on the emails, calendars, instant messages, video/audio calls and work hours’ of over 60,000 Microsoft staff in the US. The conclusion? Remote work damaged communication across the company. In particular, it weakened cross-group communication between both informal communities and formal business units. The study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, reached this conclusion based on an analysis that leverages the idea of a bridging tie: a social tie that spans different parts of an organisation: remote work killed those ties.
• US private sector workers quit at record rates in 2021, with the quits rate first reaching a new high of 2.7% in April 2021 and again in June 2021, representing about 4m jobs each month. As retailers and restaurants scrambled to re-hire workers, automation solutions like store shelf tracking, self-driving delivery trucks, and even kitchen robots gained attention.

 

July 2021

• According to the International Labour Organisation, just 18 percent of the global workforce, or about 557 million people, were able to consistently telework during the pandemic. That's triple what it was before COVID, but it still left 2.6 billion people around the world unable to work from home, and many of whom and their families were hit hardest by the pandemic in terms of hours and wages lost, psychological stress, and unemployment.
• The Work-from-Anywhere Index was a 2021 study highlighting the destinations that are most attractive to "digital nomads" in search of a new home, According to legislation as well as liveability factors such as weather, cost of living and equality, Melbourne topped the list, followed by Dubai, Sydnet, Tallinn and London.
• Writing in The National Bureau of Economic Research, MIT economists claimed that between 50% and 70% of the change to the US wage structure across the last four decades was due to automation. Robots and software automated away manufacturing and clerical tasks and they claimed that it was this, above all - not the breaking of labour union power, or anything else - that led to the reduction in blue collar wages that we’ve seen since the 1980s.
• Amid a hard time for all, Europe weathered the COVID-19 crisis relatively well overall according to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace: 2021 Report. European workers are less stressed and less worried than the global average, but they’re also less engaged than other workers. Where other regions have seen increases in engagement over time, Europe’s engagement rate has barely budged.

 

June 2021

• The pandemic busted several misconceptions about how employees need to do their work. Remote work, flexible scheduling and even reduced working hours were put to the test, and they largely succeeded. Some firms used the crisis to try working a four-day week, and they liked what they saw, according to The Atlantic. Employees had more time to spend with and care for family members, and they used the time they had at work more efficiently. 
• Following a steady rise over the last decade, employee engagement decreased globally by two percentage points, from 22% in 2019 to 20% in 2020. Leaders will need to address this decrease and the business impact on workplace culture, employee retention and performance. Meanwhile, with global borders closing, workplaces shuttering and jobs being cut, workers' daily stress reached a record high, increasing from 38% in 2019 to 43% in 2020.
• Research from enterprise software firm VMware, The New Remote Work Era: Trends in the Distributed Workforce, published in 2020, revealed a 128% increase in the proportion of UK employees who see remote working as a prerequisite rather than a perk. For Generation X workers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, this was the view of 53%. Having realised the benefits of distributed work, seven in ten employees said their company cannot return to its old ways.

 

May 2021

• Overwork is killing people. According to World Health Organisation research, long hours contributed to the 745,000 global deaths from stroke and heart disease in 2016. The WHO report revealed that working 55 hours a week or more increased the likelihood of stroke and heart disease-related deaths. The WHO said this trend is likely to worsen because of pandemic-driven "work from home" arrangements.

 

March 2021

• The eventual end of the pandemic will demand conversations around how and when workers will return to the office. For many, the answer may be never and that could shift where many work from. A recent article argued that remote work will be combined with extended stays at hotels, hostels and the like, changing the face of hospitality. Some hotels have caught on, offering subscription services for nomadic workers. Countries have even begun changing laws to give remote workers visas to bring in revenue for battered hotels and stores.
• Most return-to-work scenarios focus on rich, industrialised nations where office work is predominant and many can work from home. However, the World Bank estimates that in low income countries only one in every 26 jobs can be done remotely.
• Axios suggested a blueprint for ways the workplace will change post-pandemic: even if it's not for everyone, remote work is here to stay, and the hybrid work model will be the "dominant office job arrangement"; we will have more flexibility, but this has its pluses and minuses - boundaries of work and life have been blurred and data reveal we're in more meetings than ever; expect to see more AI and freelancers, and culture-building with hybrid workforces will be a challenge.
• One of the lasting legacies of the pandemic might be to dissolve some  managerial scepticism and resistance to ‘alternative’ working arrangements. In late 2020, global HR firm Adecco found that not only did 75% of workers want to retain flexibility over their schedule following COVID-19. eight in 10 executives reported feeling that businesses would benefit from increased flexibility, too. 

 

February 2021

• McKinsey Global Initiative research involving the U.S. and seven other countries found that more than 100 million workers will likely need to transition to new jobs by 2030, which is up to 25% more than pre-COVID estimates in advanced economies. The research also shows that working from home and virtual meetings will stick around, though "less intensely," and the adoption of automation and artificial intelligence will speed up, especially for work that involves physical proximity.
• Remote work has blurred the line between our personal time and the time we’re working. Workers in Austria, Canada, the UK and the US are logging 2.5 hours more each day on average, according to Bloomberg, with a longer work day becoming the new normal globally. While many have more meetings and emails to catch up on, having a longer workday doesn’t necessarily mean more hours working, claimed The Washington Post. Some people have adopted new work schedules in which they work later but have longer breaks throughout the day.
• Salesforce said the 9-to-5 work day is dead. The company, which is San Francisco’s largest private employer, says staff should set their own schedule, and come to the office between one and three days per week.

 

January 2021

• Even with the arrival of vaccines, the road to pandemic recovery will be challenging, warned EY. Digital transformation will continue to underpin organisations’ strategic and business imperatives in 2021. However, consumers are worried about how businesses use data, so building trust is crucial to maintaining organisations’ integrity.
• Unilever workers will never return to their desks full-time, boss Alan Jope said. The consumer goods group chief said Unilever would adopt a “hybrid” model, claiming five days a week in the office seemed “very old-fashioned now”. In 2020, Unilever announced that it would pilot a four-day working week during a year-long trial in New Zealand. The maker of Dove and Lipton tea would give all 81 staff members at its New Zealand offices the chance to work four days a week without hurting their pay to assess working practices for its 155,000 employees globally.
• According to PwC's recent US Remote Work Survey, 55% of executives expect that most (60% or more) of their workers will work remotely after the pandemic subsides, up from 39% who estimated most workers worked remotely before the pandemic hit. That’s just one example of how the crisis has accelerated workplace changes that had already been underway. 
• The National Association for Business Economics surveyed businesses in the US and found that only one in 10 expect all employees to return to the office once the pandemic is over.

 

December 2020

• The equivalent of 255 million full-time jobs were lost in 2020 due to the pandemic, four times the number of jobs lost during the 2009 financial crisis, according to the International Labour Organisation in a new report. A total of $3.7tn in earnings evaporated globally in 2020, the report notes. Women and young workers were hit the hardest, while Southern Europe was among the regions that faced a particularly steep decline in working hours. The ILO expects an additional 15 million jobs to be lost in Europe alone in 2021.
• McKinsey analysis found that the potential for ongoing, post-pandemic remote work was highly concentrated among highly skilled, highly educated workers in a handful of industries, occupations, and geographies. More than 20 percent of the workforce could work remotely three to five days a week as effectively as they could if working from an office. If remote work took hold at that level, that would mean three to four times as many people working from home than before the pandemic and would have a profound impact on urban economies, transportation, and consumer spending, among other things.
• The pandemic pushed many to re-evaluate their professional lives, striving for more flexibility, shorter hours or more time for self improvement. Could these shifts become permanent? While employee pressure for better work-life balance could influence some firms, longer-term change would need a change in incentives or regulation, or “enough leaders and companies to exert social pressure,” management expert Michael Parke told the BBC. However, some believe this could be the start of a new form of “alternative hedonism”, where people aim to work less and spend more time on active pursuits.

 

October 2020

• As employees embrace remote working and continue to be wary of mass transit, some companies have already decided to ditch their offices and allow most people to work from home forever.
• 87 per cent of workers want to be free to choose whether to work at home or in the office once Covid restrictions ease, a survey of 10,000 people across Europe and the Middle East showed. Before the pandemic, when just 5 per cent were working mostly at home, that may have sounded odd. Now it is entirely normal and long may it stay that way, reported the FT. 
• The RSA believes that the pandemic also represents an opportunity to reimagine the social contract for work – at a deeper level. The RSA set out in detail its vision of how this might work, in its report, A blueprint for good work: Eight ideas for a new social contract. Central to their argument is the belief that we need a more ‘corporatist’ model of capitalism, grounded in stronger stakeholder relationships between workers, employers, local authorities, civil society and trade unions, particularly the latter.
• Some 34 million jobs have been lost in Latin America because of the coronavirus, the UN's International Labour Organisation warned.

 

September 2020

• The coronavirus pandemic resulted in the equivalent of $3.5 trillion in lost working hours during the first three quarters of 2020 compared with the same period in 2019, according to the International Labour Organisation. While an earlier estimate from the organisation suggested the equivalent of 400 million full-time jobs would be lost in the second quarter of this year compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, the number was re-estimated to be closer to 495 million full-time jobs lost during that time.
• Millions of workers had to contend with joblessness in the wake of the pandemic, but the global health crisis triggered another, less discussed consequence: underemployment, a term that encompasses working a job that doesn't offer enough hours, enough pay or doesn't match one's skill level. Under-employment can rob us of our sense of identity, causing mental distress.
• GZEROMedia warned that there are three reasons why many will find their jobs are gone for good. One, some businesses will not survive the economic stress. Two, some employers will see layoffs as a chance to lower labor costs as their companies struggle to restore profitability. Three, COVID-19 has increased incentives for many businesses to accelerate the process of replacing workers with machines that work around the clock and don't take sick days.
• Working from home is a revival of an old idea. Before the Industrial Revolution, the template for residential architecture included a space for doing business. English “workhouses” combined a workshop with the family’s living quarters, “longhouses” gave shelter to farmers and their animals, and merchants often lived above their workshops and storefronts. In the US, middle-class homes typically had a “den” or “gentleman’s study” close to the front door where the master of the house received clients. What changed with the Industrial Revolution is now seeing another big shift. In 1967, US broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite concluded his report on the home office by predicting, correctly, that “with equipment like this in the home of the future, we may not have to go to work—the work will come to us.” Quartz offered guidance on how to make the most of that shift.
• Research by McKinsey tried to understand what will the global workforce would look like after the coronavirus pandemic, based on a survey of 800 executives from around the world. It found that 85% of companies accelerated digitisation and 67% accelerated automation and artificial intelligence during the pandemic, with faster expansions in firms that had a greater shift to remote work, especially the financial services and tech sectors. McKinsey's survey suggested the mix of jobs available post-pandemic would be different, predicting increased demand for contractors, gig workers and hygiene, cybersecurity and data analytics jobs.

 

August 2020

• In the US in 1980, around 62% of national income went to workers; by 2018 that had fallen to around 56%. The west has been getting richer but its workers have not; most of the gains have gone to corporate profits and the top 1%. Meanwhile, work has become more precarious for millions. The UK gig economy more than doubled in size between 2016 and 2019, and now accounts for over 4.7 million workers, warned New World, Same Humans.
• Companies are buying digital tools to make working from hom easier. The increased adoption of remote work is leading 65% of big businesses to invest in cloud-based software this year. Xerox analysed how the pandemic changed the future of work.

 

July 2020

• Working remotely is now the norm for most white-collar employees. The results of the coronavirus office exodus are opening leaders’ eyes to future possibilities. Productivity has increased in many cases, but isolation and “Zoom fatigue” highlight the shortfalls of the available technology. As The New York Times Magazine reported, companies are creating new options to provide the videoconferencing world with a greater sense of community - and corporate culture - based on creative conversations.
• After months of enforced working from home during lockdown, when only a quarter of employees in countries like the UK wanted to go back to the office full time, 55 per cent reported higher levels of productivity. The finding, by identity management firm Okta, revealed a major productivity benefit of remote work, which bodes well as a future model for businesses that embrace the necessary technology and digital transformation.
• Having a working space inside a dwelling was de rigueur until the Industrial Revolution shifted the locus of work from the home to the factory. Affluent Englishmen began establishing “Victorian libraries” in their city houses, which in turn became a template for today’s home office. What goes around, comes around—we’re back in a new era of home offices, and it’s unlikely to end anytime soon, noted Quartz.
• A book by Pavlina Tcherneva, chair of the economics department at New York's Bard College, made the case for a "Job Guarantee" federal program. The idea of using federal funding to create jobs isn't new. It's found in the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposed US Economic Bill of Rights, and was again debated during the Civil Rights Movement. It's also a key component of the US Green New Deal, a suite of policy proposals that seeks to aggressively tackle climate change and economic inequality.
• Research from Xerox suggested that 82% of people will be back to the workplace for good by the end of 201. In the meantime, more than half of companies are investing in tech to support a hybrid staff, as the future of the workplace evolves.
• Is the growing trend to remote work for most industries actually a good trend for workers? Some have pointed out that this can mean a downward pressure on wages.

 

June 2020

• The idea of the office of the future changed radically in a very short space of time. In January 2020, Facebook announced plans to hire 1,000 staff members to fill their new £1-billion London HQ. But by May 2020, the company had said half their future workforce will be permanently remote. This is just one example of how the coronavirus pandemic blew apart companies’ conceptions of “the office”. Barclays boss Jes Staley said “the notion of putting 7,000 people in a building may be a thing of the past”, while Shopify founder and chief executive Tobi Lütke tweeted his company will become digital by default. “Office centricity is over,” he proclaimed. Flexible working is nothing new. A survey of 229 organisations by US research firm Gartner found 30% of employees were already working from home at least some of the time before COVID-19 struck. Since the pandemic began, that number jumped as high as 80%.
• Employee engagement has improved considerably over recent years, and benefits such as remote working and flexi-time are now commonplace. However, changing workplace cultures are putting increasing demands on workers and threatening the work-life balance, with a quarter of employees saying they struggle to relax in their personal time because of work.
• Writing for Quartz, the dean and professor of human capital management at the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University, said that our suddenly new ways of working are here to stay. He broke down the principle changes into four pillars:
  • Flexible hours: Employees will be forced to set—and communicate—their own availability, based upon their personal schedules and productivity levels.
  • New employee metrics: To measure individual success at the fully-remote tech firm Automattic, CEO Matt Mullenweg asks employees: “What do you actually produce?”
  • Social impact: The difference between a PR grab and making a real difference can hinge on building long-term relationships with nonprofits instead of one-time actions.
  • Authentic relationships: With the last semblances of formality now stripped away, it’s more important than ever to avoid a culture wherein every interaction becomes casually transactional.

 

April 2020

• Post the coronavirus crisis, the economic case for such a shift in working practices - radically-reduced overheads, less time lost to commuting - seemed clear enough. Against this, neuroscientists and psychologists argued that Zoom, Slack and WhatsApp are a poor substitute for face-to-face interaction. The interim findings of the Institute for Employment Studies on the lockdown also suggested that, for some employees, protracted home-working would present mental health challenges.

 

November 2019

• What Can I Do When I Grow Up? is an introduction to the world of work for children. It sets out to answer some very big, fundamental questions about jobs and careers: questions that, because they look so deceptively simple, we often forget to ask. What exactly is a job? Why are there so many different ones? Why do some people get paid more than others? Why are most jobs so boring – and how can we find one we truly enjoy?

 

September 2019

• By 2022, 42.5% of the global workforce will be mobile - able to work remotely from anywhere in the world. And, between 75 million and 375 million individuals (3-14% of the global workforce) could be forced to switch occupational categories by 2030.
• Given that by 2020 millennials will make up more than a third of the global workforce, according to Manpower Group, how this generation wants to be managed, and subsequently manages others, is becoming an increasingly pressing issue in the modern workplace. Many millennials, say there is a disconnect between their expectations and the management they are delivered. According to Manpower Group’s report on millennial careers, half of millennials would consider leaving their current job due to a lack of appreciation.
• Since 2008 the average labour-force participation rate of 55- to 64-year-olds in OECD countries has risen by eight percentage points. An OECD report, Working Better with Age, points out that the employment of older workers is vital, if prosperity is to be maintained. The median age of citizens in the OECD is set to rise from 40 now to 45 in the mid-2050s; on current trends, by 2050 there will be 58 retired people for every 100 workers, up from 41 today.
• A study by the World Bank highlighted the restrictions placed on a woman’s right to work and the regions in which those restrictions are most severe. Of the 187 economies included in the study, countries in the Middle East and North Africa are ranked lowest overall for providing equal opportunities for women who want to work (Saudi Arabia places more restrictions on a woman’s right to work than any other country in the world), largely because moral objections to women in the workplace create significant barriers. Industries in this region also conform to gender stereotypes, with jobs in sectors such as construction and mining seen as suitable only for men.

 

May 2019

• Quartz noted that, for decades there have been fears of a “silver tsunami” of older citizens leaving the workforce and creating an enormous drain on public finances through their impact on pensions and health care. However, a more optimistic version of this demographic wave lies in the rising power of the “silver dollar”, with estimates that in the US alone, the over-50s account for nearly $8 trillion of consumer demand - bigger than the combined GDP of France and Germany.

 

April 2019

• There are few statistics on unfulfilling jobs. But in a YouGov poll, UK workers were asked “if their job made a meaningful contribution to the world”; 37% no and in a similar survey 40% of Dutch employees said their job had no reason to exist. Bullshit Jobs: A Theory postulates that more than half the jobs that exist are pointless and are in fact toxic to society. In the United States, 21 million people are estimated to be creating little or no economic value, according to a study by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini. 
• The School of Life believes that modern society is surprisingly intolerant of failure, and nowhere more so than in the world of work. This intolerance is clearly embodied in our CVs or résumés, which are not simply an objective record of our employment history, but manufactured narratives of achievement: entirely composed of our accomplishments to imply an ever-upward trajectory of progress. Consequently, when we do fail at work, we see it as not simply regrettable but deeply shameful. If success is the norm, our failure is a deviation; the fault for which lies squarely with us.
• OECD analysis pointed to the proportion of jobs it deemed to be at high or significant risk of automation. Although most of its members are developed countries, it also included a number of countries deemed to be “emerging” by various organisations, and they are predominantly the ones in the line of fire. Of the 28 OECD countries analysed, the 11 adjudged to have the smallest proportion of jobs at “significant” risk are all developed. In contrast, all 11 emerging countries are among the 17 deemed most vulnerable to job losses.

 

January 2019

• Chinese exports support as many as 180 million jobs in China, or nearly one-quarter of formal employment there. But exports have fallen to their lowest level in two years as US tariffs on Chinese goods contribute to a broader economic slowdown, reported GZEROMedia.

 

December 2018

• From switchboard operator to film projectionist, three industrial revolutions down and we’ve already seen many jobs wiped from the face of the Earth, noted Raconteur. Emerging technology means that more than half the global labour force will need to start reskilling and reinventing how they earn a living in the next five years, according to the World Economic Forum. Millions of roles will be lost, equally many more will be created.
• A survey of 48 developed and developing countries reported by GZEROMedia found that the global unemployment rate had fallen from 8 percent of the workforce in 2010 to just 5.2 percent in September 2018. That’s the lowest level of unemployment globally since 1980.
• By 2025, 75% of the workforce will be millennials. That means millennials globally will occupy not only the majority of individual contributor positions but the majority of leadership roles as well. They'll be responsible for making important decisions that affect workplace cultures and people's lives. Gallup outlined three distinctions between millennials and previous generations: millennials are connected, unconstrained and idealistic.
• “Perennials,” not millennials, will trigger the next wave of talent-retention efforts, according to Quartz. Older workers are now the fastest-growing population of workers in the US.
• Further reading:
  • Workplace Futures - Raconteur

 

October 2018

• Research by Deloitte Consulting suggested that there are seven powerful disruptors reshaping work as we know it. In order to address these disruptors, business leaders need to engage in transformative thinking that will not only re-design but re-imagine the way work gets done in their organisations. They need to think big, start small, become more agile, and ultimately move faster than the new realities of work.
• Raconteur argued that the moral argument for a more diverse and inclusive workplace is undeniable, though proving a business case for driving change is less clear. Organisational equality is no longer confined to the realm of human resources, but has become a boardroom issue all over the world. Yet there’s no simple fix or approach that can ensure equality is beneficial to organisations. Change needs to be focused on workplace culture itself and embedded into the business strategy if we are to see any meaningful improvement in gender equality
• Raconteur also warned that extreme inequality, occasioned by widespread automation, should be a major concern for politicians the world over, far more pressing than job losses in manufacturing alone.
• The importance of non-academic skills was highlighted in a recent paper produced by the UK parliament research facility. It reveals that non-academic skills very much exist alongside their academic brethren, but they are nonetheless vital and have been proven to have a positive impact across work, health and education.So what are non-academic skills? The paper suggests that they typically include things such as attitudes and values, social and emotional skills, creative skills, and metacognitive skills. These skills often overlap and interact, which can make isolating them difficult. They are associated with a wide range of beneficial outcomes, including increased empathy, positive self-image and lower levels of anti-social behaviour.
• Quartz at Work, to mark the one-year anniversary of its edition covering the modern workplace,  compiled 10 of it favourite stories about managing careers and also re-published best-of lists for topics including office life, management, leadership, and the lives of working parents.
• Further reading:
  • Automation and public sector jobs - Raconteur
  • Bringing Managers Back to Work - BCG
  • Mixed Reality - a new dimension of work - HBR
  • The New New Way of Working - BCG
  • Three keys to unlocking the future of work - EY
  • How Bosses Waste Their Employees’ Time - WSJ

 

September 2018

• By 2022, 54 percent of all workers will have a “significant” need to boost their skills to deal with advancing technology, according to a new World Economic Forum survey, with over a third requiring additional training of up to six months. Governments around the world are grappling with how to prepare their workforces for the jobs of the future.
• Less and less work done by humans will be in the routine tasks that define most work today, argued the Harvard Business Review. In part, this will be because machines will be able to perform this work far better than we humans can. But a much more compelling reason will be because this work will be less and less relevant to what businesses will need to create value as customers generally become more demanding and their needs shift. The focus of work will shift to activity that draws on the far more human capabilities that machines will find much more challenging to replicate
• Meanwhile, the author of The Robots are Coming: A Human's Survival Guide to Profiting in the Age of Automation, sees plenty of white collar jobs that will be threatened by automation.
• There is no more common emotion to feel around work than that we have failed, believes The School of Life (TSOL). We have failed because we have made less money than we’d hoped, because we have been sidelined in our organisation, because many of our acquaintances have triumphed, because our schemes have remained on the drawing-board, because we have been constantly anxious and because we have been, for long stretches, really very bored.
• Carnegie Mellon University is establishing a new Centre for Technology and Society that examines how emerging technologies impact the ability of workers of all skill levels to make a living in the 21st Century,
• Further reading:
  • 8 future of work influencers you need to know about - Silicon Republic
  • Measuring good work - Carnegie/RSA
  • Rewilding the workplace - Futures Centre
  • The work day should end at 3pm - Quartz

 

August 2018

• Work increasingly forms our routines and psyches, and squeezes out other influences. As the 2015 book, All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain at Work put it, “Work is how we give our lives meaning when religion, party politics and community fall away.”
• Yet, as a source of subsistence, let alone prosperity, work is now insufficient for whole social classes. In the UK, almost two-thirds of those in poverty – around 8 million people – are in working households. In the US, the average wage has stagnated for half a century.
• Humans are living longer, which puts additional strain on healthcare provision, social care and pensions. And unless these issues are addressed, they could wreak havoc on economies in the future, warned the World Economic Forum (WEF). The thinking goes that by harnessing the potential of older workers, governments can raise additional tax revenues and increase spending power, which in turn boosts output. 
• In this vein, PwC’s Golden Age Index assesses the impact of older workers on different aspects of a country’s labour market, including employment, earnings, the gender gap and participation in training. Iceland topped the 2018 index with 84% of the 55-64 age range employed.
• For Forbes, the confidence people should have with today’s low unemployment and jobless rates is impeded by their anxiety that robotics and AI will shortly make most people unessential. According to Pew, 72% of Americans are worried about robots replacing human jobs. The jobs are here, and more are being created every day thanks to innovation. Humans can offer the complementary skills needed to drive innovation, enhance production and maintain the ever-evolving devices, machines and robots of the digital age. But concerns won’t dissipate if companies do not offer employee development that helps them match the pace of innovation.
• In How to design a successful workspace, six senior executives told Raconteur how they designed their workspaces to improve processes, and foster employee creativity and happiness. (See also The Dynamic Workforce report.)
• According to Premier’s recent “Workplace Wellbeing Appraisal” survey, too many employers do not know and are not providing the benefits and HR policies that will best engage their staff.
• However, Quartz warned that meaningless jobs are draining economic productivity and that a large portion of mostly corporate positions could be eliminated without affecting society. 
• A Fast Company article warned that the most urgent, most critical work challenge does not come from customers, activists, or shareholders. The most urgent challenge lies within. According to the 2018 World Value Index, only 14% (of Americans) strongly agree that the values of their employer match their own. Another 28% say they somewhat agree, meaning a majority are spending the majority of their productive lives in environments they don’t fully believe in.

• According to Premier’s recent “Workplace Wellbeing Appraisal” survey, too many employers do not know and are not providing the benefits and HR policies that will best engage their staff. Creating spaces where workers can eat, collaborate, or even bring their pets, can reduce stress and boost productivity (though it is best to consult staff on the latter, as a dog-friendly office can tend to split the crowd). Whether it is having a good level of natural light to providing drinks and snacks, a pleasant office environment can revolutionise employees’ attitude towards coming to work. 

 

July 2018

• A study conducted by a New Zealand business confirmed that a 5-day work week really isn't more effective than a 4-day week. Perpetual Guardian, a wealth management firm in Wellington, New Zealand ran the experiment for 8 weeks and hired two researchers to report back on the findings of the study. According to the New York Times, employees saw a 24% increase in productivity and a better work-life balance. 

• Innovative initiatives are emerging to improve the quality of work across the globe. The recently launched RSA Future Work Awards aim to recognise and champion them,

• According to the RSA, a wide variety of international/multilateral agencies – EU, OECD, IMF, UN and its related agencies, have all examined the changing nature of work and what it means for regions and individual countries. However, it's the International Labour Organization (ILO) that puts forward a simple but very profound point of view, in that despite its global impact there is no one future of work.  Each country will have to confront its own challenges, which have been largely shaped by its history, level of social and economic development, culture and demographics. However, the splintering effects of the key drivers to the future of work -globalisation, demographics, rapid advances in technology and climate change - will set the terms and thus lay the foundation on how governments and institutions negotiate the new state of play.
• A new Populus survey commissioned by the RSA suggested workers should be less alarmed about the prospect of losing their job to a machine, and more with how it will affect the way they go about their work. This includes how they are recruited, the degree to which they are monitored, and whether their jobs are orchestrated from above. Automation is a threat to some jobs, but not to work writ large. For all the talk of self-driving cars, checkout-less supermarkets and fully automated warehouses, machines are still constrained in what they can do. Moreover, they tend to eliminate tasks rather than whole jobs, and often expand the capabilities of workers.
• A new report from JFF studied the career advancement prospects of people entering middle-skill jobs through the unprecedented analysis of nearly 4 million CVs of middle-skill jobseekers. It highlighted the types of occupations that offer the strongest opportunities for financial stability and true economic advancement.
• The Economist warned that, in real terms, wages at the bottom of the income distribution have now stagnated for two decades. Such workers cannot afford to contribute to pension pots; healthcare coverage has also fallen. In the US, concern over the potential long-term hit to the public finances has led to calls for more regulation of the gig economy. In 1937, economist Ronald Coase asked “why do firms exist”? Nearly a century later, as technology makes it ever easier for them to disassemble their enterprises, more and more managers are asking the same question.
• In a new report, the OECD said that positive employment trends are at risk of being overshadowed by “unprecedented” wage stagnation. While labour participation continues to rise and unemployment has reached record lows in some OECD countries, wage growth has been significantly more sluggish than before the global financial crisis. As at the end of 2017, wages growth in the OECD area was only half of what it was 10 years earlier.  Wage stagnation is also hitting low-paid earners particularly hard.
• According to the latest Manpower Talent Shortage Survey, 44% of employers across the globe report they cannot find the skills they need. Business leaders are reacting in several standard ways: recruiting hard for the few candidates who are out there, offering higher pay and benefits to attract and retain them, and investing in learning and development programs to increase the skills of current employees. But, for Gallup, there's another approach organisations need to consider: stop making management positions a reward for exceptionally skilled labour.
• While believing there will be enough work to go around (barring extreme scenarios), McKinsey noted that society will need to grapple with significant workforce transitions and dislocation. Workers will need to acquire new skills and adapt to the increasingly capable machines alongside them in the workplace. They may have to move from declining occupations to growing and, in some cases, new occupations. McKinsey's executive briefing examined both the promise and the challenge of automation and AI in the workplace and outlined some of the critical issues that policy makers, companies, and individuals will need to solve for.
• As robots and automation take over jobs, there will still be some occupations where humans will be preferred. Theoretical physicist and best-selling author Michio Kaku analysed the kind of job skills people will need to have to stay employed and relevant in the near future.

 

June 2018

• Will there be enough work in the future?  What’s the likely impact of our continuing technology advances on jobs?  How will they impact productivity?  These are all-important questions to reflect on as our increasingly smart technologies are now being applied to activities that not long ago were viewed as the exclusive domain of humans. While no one really knows the answer to these questions, most studies of the subject have concluded that relatively few occupations, 10% or less, will be entirely automated and disappear over the next 10 - 15 years. 

• Millennials view work in markedly different ways than the generations before them did, noted Gallup, and technology and artificial intelligence (AI) are rewriting workflows. These rapid changes leave leaders wondering: what will workplaces look like in the future, and how are those differences affecting my workplace now?

• Meanwhile, according to Gallup's State of the American Workplace report, many organisations are realising that creating flexible work arrangements is attractive to both the employee and the organisation. Employees who work remotely some of time show greater levels of engagement, and 35% of employees say they would change jobs to have flexible working locations where they can choose to work off-site full time.

• An interview by the editor of Exponential View with the head of leading online recruitment company Indeed.com pointed to some key current work trends:

  • The labour market in countries like the US is incredibly tight right now. There are more job vacancies than there are job seekers. This means the impact of automation may be attenuated. However, transition remains difficult. Workers face barriers to mobility: high housing costs prevent people from moving to many places where jobs are plentiful, and licensing and regulations can make is harder to enter some occupations. 

  • Gigworkers have yet to show up in labour statistics. This is either because of mismeasurement or because they aren’t really that relevant in the economy today. One early conclusion: older workers are the gig economy. They're far more likely than prime-age and young adults to be in such alternative work arrangements.

  • Lack of competition might reduce workers' bargaining power. The rise of non-compete clauses and the local market dominance of some employers can limit outside opportunities for workers.

• With one-in-three US manufacturers expecting technology-skills shortfalls, the push is on for new ways of upskilling workforces, noted PwC.

• Much business is still done face-to-face, but with remote working on the rise, many firms find themselves turning to laid-back co-working spaces and noisy coffee shops for their meetings.

• The role of work is changing fast, and leaders and organisations need to adapt to the demands of increasingly complex workplace and business realities, argued Gallup, which recently studied workplaces in four of the largest European economies - UK, France, Spain and Germany - to understand the current state of work and anticipate important future challenges.

• Gallup believes that their are diverse reasons for this change, like digitisation, socio-economic forces and the innovative nature of the millennial generation. Attitudes and behaviours of employees are different from ever before, and they will define what the real future of work looks like.
• An agenda for the talent-first CEO - McKinsey & Company
• Can You Manage Employees You Rarely See? - Gallup
• CILIP’s Chartered Knowledge Manager: a timely and much needed accreditation? | RealKM
• Deloitte CEO Engelbert's future in doubt after board move - New York Business Journal
• Eight shifts that will take your strategy into high gear | McKinsey & Company
• Future Proofing the Organisation - Nadim Habib at Social Now 2018 - YouTube
• Good Vibrations: The CEO’s Practical Guide to Create and Amplify Energy
• How can business leaders make the new world of work better for people? | McKinsey & Company
• Linking talent to value | McKinsey & Company
• Putting talent at the top of the CEO agenda - McKinsey & Company
• Seven big new things in knowledge management | RealKM
• Strong link between knowledge management and innovation evident in research - RealKM
• Successfully transitioning to new leadership roles - McKinsey & Company
• Talent Wins Games, Teamwork Wins Championships | LinkedIn
• The business feeling index: the feelings that move business forward | As digitally addicted as we are? Read our blog+news
• The case for professional accreditation of KM | RealKM
• The End of the Traditional Manager - Gallup
• The Five Traits of Transformative CEOs - BCG
• The stark relationship between income inequality and crime - The Economist
• The Transformations That Work and Why - BCG
• The Truth About Corporate Transformation - BCG

 

May 2018

• Reorganisations are popular, claimed Quartz, but less than half are successful. When Boston Consulting Group conducted a global study of executives, it found that 90% of leaders recently launched a reorg. Here’s how the Brightline Initiative helps leaders identify whether a reorg is really necessary—or whether there’s a deeper issue at play.
• As adults there is nothing that more preoccupies our lives than work. For 95% of us, work is an entirely non-discretionary matter, claimed iai.
• As workplaces get more automation, employers are focusing on more human skills and workers are looking for more purpose.
• Blockchain development is the hottest freelance skill in the job market, growing more than 6,000% since this time last year.

 

April 2018

• The OECD reckons that 50% of jobs are vulnerable to automation, although it varies significantly by country and sector (see summary from The Economist and the full paper here). 

• The world of work is undergoing a massive shift, argued The Atlantic, noting that not since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries and the Information Age that followed in the last century has the scale of disruption taking place in the workforce been so evident. An oft-cited 2013 study from the University of Oxford predicted that nearly half of American jobs—including real-estate brokers, insurance underwriters, and loan officers—were at risk of being taken over by computers within the next two decades. (The McKinsey Global Institute released a report in 2017 that estimated a third of American workers may have to change jobs by 2030 because of artificial intelligence.)
• Gallup at Work is a new a monthly newsletter claiming to cover everything you need to create an exceptional workplace.
• Today there are no shortage of institutions trying to make the world of work that more liveable. But, asked the RSA, what if a job is no longer enough to get by?
• See also: What is the future of work? - McKinsey & Company; The Future of the Workforce - Deloitte; Future Workforce: Reworking the Revolution - Accenture; The Future of Work - Gartner.

 

March 2018

• Automation is continuing to move income from workers to owners, according to a new study by the Brookings Institute. "Displacement need not imply a decline in employment, hours, or wages. Rather, it simply requires that the wage bill - that is, the product of hours of work and wages per hour—rises less rapidly than does value-added".

 

January 2018

• The informal sector – the part of the economy where people work/employ without declaring it to the government – comprises 41 percent of the GDP of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. That’s a massive amount of untaxed income and unregulated working conditions.

2018 sources include Exponential Media

 

January 2017

• Forecasts on the impact of technology on the future of work are deeply polarised, creating fear of the challenges to come and inaction on new opportunities. What do we know about the transformation underway and what short- and long-term innovations hold the greatest potential to navigate these changes?

 

June 2016 

• The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy uses real-time data from Google trends and more than 100 billion searches to forecast the rate of joblessness across the EU. The Czech republic will have EU’s lowest unemployment next month at 4.27% ,while Greece has the highest with 25.26% The EU average in June will be 9.07%. 

• Asking "what’s the future of the workplace?", an MIT professor predicted that new technologies will enable more decentralised decision making and ultimately more freedom in business. 

• Within the next decade, nine out of 10 of your fellow employees may well be gone. Instead, their functions will be carried out by an “on-demand” roster of 10 times their number - permanent freelancers in long-term, flexible arrangements, paid per project in teams corralled by HR managers more akin to Hollywood casting agents. That’s the view at least of an executive fellow of organisational behaviour at the London Business School, who specialises in generational change in the workplace.

  

May 2016 

• The World Economic Forum (WEF) released its Future of Jobs report - a survey based on 15 economies comprising 1.9 billion workers, or 65% of the world’s workforce. It predicts that sweeping changes to the global workforce will lead to more than 5.1 million jobs being lost by 2020 - with 7.1 million positions lost among routine white-collar office functions and 2 million new jobs created in computer science, mathematics, architecture, engineering and related fields.  　 

• Forecasts of real GDP growth attract a lot of media attention. But what matters more to the person on the street is how growth translates into jobs. Unfortunately, the mediocre growth outlook of recent years may lead to a disturbing outlook for jobs, warned the World Economic Forum, particularly among fuel-exporting countries and in the Latin America and Caribbean region.

 

 April 2016 

• The OECD area employment rate – defined as the share of people of working-age in employment – increased by 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2015, to 66.5%, just below its pre-crisis peak of the first quarter of 2008.

  

March 2016 

• About 200 million people are unemployed globally, according to BCG. As a result of demographic shifts, there will be a need for 600 million new jobs over the next 15 years to keep current employment rates stable, particularly in Africa and Asia. At the same time, many companies cannot fill positions because applicants lack the right skills, especially in developing countries.

  

 February 2016 

• Most countries produce reliable statistics on the number of people who are employed and unemployed but they find it harder to measure what they call non-standard or contingent work - where the employment relationship is fractured, impermanent or unclear. These labels also apply to people working in the “gig economy” and the “human cloud” of online taskers. Many believe this sort of work is on the rise, but the numbers we have are patchy and ambiguous and policymakers are flailing around in the dark, warned the Financial Times.

   

January 2016 

 

• The number of jobless people in the world is set to rise this year, as problems in emerging markets prevent the global unemployment rate from returning to pre-crisis levels. The International Labour Organisation, a UN agency, forecasts that the number of unemployed people in emerging and developing countries will increase by 4.8m in the next two years. 

• The eight-hour workday hasn't changed much since Henry Ford first experimented with it for factory workers. Now, Americans work slightly longer - an average 8.7 hours- though more time goes into email, meetings, and Facebook than whatever our official job duties actually are. Is it time to rethink how many hours we spend at the office? In Sweden, the six-hour workday is becoming common.

 

 

December 2015

• Will robots replace people at work? Rapid advances in technology, from big data to artificial intelligence, are revolutionising the way we work and businesses are keen to capitalise on resulting efficiency gains. Raconteur's latest report explored workplaces of the future, including the impact of virtual reality and wearable technology, gamification in the recruitment process, the rise of the freelance economy and top business technology trends for 2016.

 

• According to Project Syndicate, in the Middle East, half of those aged 18-25 are either unemployed or underemployed. Aggravating this situation is the global refugee crisis, which has displaced some 30 million children, six million from Syria alone, very few of whom are likely to return home during their school-age years.

 

• Will computers take your job? According to a new book by a financial journalist, they’ll take the “cognitive” work but not the “interaction jobs”. For a long time to come, those positions will need real people with "authentic empathy". Many people get a buzz from collaborating with other people, and computers can’t replace that. New socioeconomic value, 'Humans are Underrated" argues, could therefore derive from innate human skill at engaging with others – collaborating, bonding, creating, caring and giving.

 

• A new book, The Refusal of Work, argues that the time has to come to challenge the work-centred nature of society. The author, David Frayne, an academic who looks at consumerism and radical approaches to work, describes the powerful view that jobs are an expression of our creativity and selves. There is for some, a religious devotion to work. He writes: “Gratifying work is a fantasy that we have all been trained to invest in, ever since our teachers and parents asked us what we wanted to ‘be’ when we grew up.” Moreover, he argues that “those activities and relationships that cannot be defended in terms of economic contribution are being devalued and neglected”. How different this is from economist John Maynard Keynes’s prediction in 1930 that in 100 years we would devote most of our week to leisure.

 

• Real estate billionaire Jeff Greene warned that technology will kill white-collar jobs. He says new forms of technology will only exacerbate the growing gap between the rich and the poor, because, he claims, we have left ourselves unprepared for the inevitable automation of many jobs traditionally done by humans. He said: “What globalisation did to blue collar jobs and the working class economy over the past 30 or 40 years, big data, artificial intelligence and robotics will do to the white collar economy - and at a much, much faster pace.”

 

• Meanwhile, Finland's government is drawing up plans to give every one of its citizens a basic income of 800 euros a month and scrap benefits altogether. A poll commissioned by the agency planning the proposal, the Finnish Social Insurance Institute, showed 69% supported the basic income plan.

 

 

November 2015

 

• The European Commission, together with the European Business Network for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR Europe), launched the European Pact for Youth, a mutual engagement of business leaders and the EU to improve the chances for young people of getting a job, at the Enterprise 2020 Summit. The Pact is an appeal to all business, social partners, education and training providers and other stakeholders to develop or consolidate partnerships in support of youth employability and inclusion.

 

 

• It's tough for employees to meet performance goals when they don't know exactly what's expected of them. And far too many employees fall into that category. Based on Gallup's work with companies worldwide, only about half of employees strongly agree that they know what is expected of them at work. Helping employees to set and achieve goals is a manager's key responsibility, but Gallup analysis in Germany shows that many managers don't really own this task. To free employees to take initiative and inspire high performance, managers need to set clear expectations, hold employees accountable for meeting them and respond quickly when employees need support. But managers also should hold themselves accountable for meeting employees' performance needs.

 

 

• The OECD unemployment rate was stable at 6.7% in September 2015, 1.4 percentage point below the January 2013 peak. Across the OECD area, 40.9m people were unemployed, 8.0m less than in January 2013, but still 6.4m more than in July 2008, immediately before the crisis. The euro area unemployment rate declined by 0.1% to 10.8%, its lowest level since January 2012. Within the euro area, the largest fall was in Spain (down to 21.6%, now having decreased every month for two years). The unemployment rate in September was stable in Japan (at 3.4%) and in the US at 5.1%), while it increased in Canada (to 7.1%). More recent data show that in October 2015, the unemployment rate fell by 0.1% in the US (to 5.0%) and in Canada (to 7.0%).

 

 

October 2015

 

 

• In One Algorithm to Rule Them All, strategy+business argued that we’ll likely see is unemployment creeping up, downward pressure on the wages of more and more professions, and increasing rewards for the fewer and fewer that can’t yet be automated. Meanwhile, in Will automation replace our jobs?, the professor of management practice at London Business School, discussed the impact of automation trends in the workplace, and in particular how this will affect the work of internal communicators.

 

 

• However, in Will Robots Put You Out of a Job, Or Give You a New One?, Design News concluded that over the long term, productivity increases and advances in technology have always created more jobs.Project Syndicate also noted that, while this is an age of anxiety about the job-killing effects of automation, with dire headlines warning that the rise of robots will render entire occupational categories obsolete, such fatalism [wrongly] assumes that we are powerless to harness what we create to improve our lives - and, indeed, our jobs.

 

 

• Looking much longer-term, in On the Edge of Automation, in five hundred years from now, claimed venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, fewer than 10 percent of people on the planet will be doing paid work.

 

 

• KPMG’s recent piece, Bots in the Back Office: The Coming Wave of Digital Labour explored the ‘withering’ BPO industry. KPMG’s report said “The concept of labour arbitrage as the primary value lever of business process outsourcing (BPO) is dying. The geographic discussion is giving way to automation."

 

 

• The EU28 unemployment rate was 9.5% in August 2015, stable compared to July 2015, and down from 10.1% in August 2014 - details.

 

 

 

September 2015

 

 

• Eurozone unemployment fell to its lowest level in three years, hitting 10.9 per cent in July amid encouraging data from countries such as Italy that have been hardest hit by the region’s economic crisis. The 213,000 fall in eurozone joblessness has left the rate at its lowest since February 2012. Across the region, 17.5m people in the labour market remain without work. In Spain, the jobless rate fell to 22%. Greece, Portugal and Ireland - all recipients of economic rescue packages - have witnessed dips of about two percentage points over the past year to 25%, 12.1% and 9.5% respectively. Italy’s unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly to 12% in July.

 

 

 

August 2015

 

 

• The Millennial generation is causing dissonance in the expectations of many traditional employers, a recent survey from PwC shows. Only 14% wants to work in the traditional office setting in the future and 20% would prefer a ‘virtual’ collaborative space in which to work. In addition, there is a shift to more freelance based work.

 

 

• As Europe’s post-crisis workers live through huge labour market upheaval, with growing numbers surviving on short-term contracts, the Financial Times analysed what this means for young people, business and the economy. The FT believes that, in Europe, the increase in temporary work is sinister, as it reflects a rise in precariousness rather than autonomy.

 

 

• To identify the 54 Best Companies to Work For, 24/7 Wall St. examined reviews from current and former employees on Glassdoor.com. The best US companies to work for were concentrated in particular industries. For example, technology companies are well represented among the highest-rated employers, as are consulting firms. Of the 54 best companies, only nine received an average rating of 4.0 or higher on a scale of 1.0 to 5.0. Of these, five are in the technology space and several consulting firms also made the list. Seven out of the 54 best companies provided consulting services, including the Big Four. The high pay associated with the technology and consultancy industries may also explain the relatively high worker satisfaction. Not only are software engineers and consultants some of the highest-paid individuals in the workforce, but employees at companies on this list tend to be paid more than similar professionals at other companies.

 

 

July 2015

 

 

• Creating high-impact employment experiences for youth, a report from EY and the MasterCard Centre for Inclusive Growth, highlighted the fact that global youth unemployment is on the rise and is expected to remain unchanged through 2018. But there is some good news. As the report indicates, some businesses are discovering the dividends of offering work and employment opportunities to young people.

 

 

• Unemployment across emerging markets has risen sharply this year, reversing a six-year slide, even as it has continued to fall in developed countries. The figures compound a worsening slowdown in emerging markets, driven by a fall in commodity prices and a pullback in global trade, which threatens to drag consumer spending down.

 

 

• The OECD Employment Outlook 2015 highlighted what has been mentioned in countless political speeches over the past years: Europe is suffering a social crisis. Unemployment rates give the first indication of this: whereas unemployment has fallen below 6% in the United States and is under 4% in Japan and South Korea, in the euro area the unemployment rate remains above 11%. It is clear that Europe is still lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to employment.

 

 

June 2015

 

 

• According to Deloitte, organisations today must navigate a “new world of work”- one that requires a dramatic change in strategies for leadership, talent, and human resources. In this new world, barriers between work and life have been all but eliminated. Employees are "always on" — hyperconnected to their jobs through pervasive mobile technology. Networking tools enable people to easily monitor the market for new job opportunities. Details about an organisation’s culture are available at the tap of a screen, providing insights about companies to employees and potential employees alike. The balance of power in the employer-employee relationship has therefore shifted - making today’s employees more like customers or partners than subordinates.

 

• In the Simplification of work: the coming revolution, Deloitte argued that organisations are simplifying work in response to employees becoming overwhelmed by increasing organisational complexity, growing information overload, and a stressful 24/7 work environment. Technology, globalisation, and compliance needs continuously add complexity to work. Left unaddressed, this can lead to an organisational environment that damages employee engagement, lowers quality, and reduces innovation and customer service. Business and HR leaders should therefore, for Deloitte, put “simplification” on the agenda for 2015 and focus on individual, organisational, and work-specific programmes that reduce complexity and help people focus on what really matters.

 

 

May 2015

 

 

• For the first time since the financial crisis, the employment rate of the population aged 20 to 64 in the EU increased in 2014, reaching 69.2% but not yet its 2008 peak (70.3%). A similar pattern can be observed for men: their employment rate has hit 75.0% in 2014, up compared with 2013 but still below its 2008 level. In contrast, the employment rate of women has continuously risen since 2010 to 63.5% in 2014, above its previous 2008 peak of 62.8%. The Europe 2020 strategy target is to reach a total employment rate of people aged 20 to 64 of at least 75% in the EU by 2020.

 

 

 

April 2015

 

 

• According to new Gallup research, employees with the longest tenures in a company are also the least likely to be engaged. After years with the same company, most workers lose some of their motivation to make a difference. Many grow apathetic over time and spend each day doing the minimum to get by. Some nurse grudges for years and even undermine the company when they get the chance.

 

 

 

January 2015

 

 

• Unemployment will continue to rise in the coming years, as the global economy has entered a new period combining slower growth, widening inequalities and turbulence, warned a new International Labour Organisation report. By 2019, more than 212 million people will be out of work, up from the current 201 million.

 

 

 

November 2014

 

 

• A London Business School professor identified forces shaping the future of work, arguing that technology is rapidly redefining the way we all work, enabling new forms of collaboration across traditional business boundaries. Trends that will profoundly reshape the context and practice of work in coming decades include the rebalancing of globalised markets for goods and labour; dramatically changing demographics; the widening of skills gaps; the demise of middle-skill work; and the rise in the importance of talent clusters, but one other stands out as having the most profound impact on the way work is done and, indeed, as underpinning all of these: IT-enabled hyperconnectivity.

 

• Tower Watson's The 2014 Global Workforce Study: Driving Engagement Through a Consumer-Like Experience provided a detailed view into the attitudes and concerns of workers globally, with responses from 32,000+ employees across a range of industries in 26 markets. Key findings: (a) just four in 10 employees are highly engaged, so there is room for improvement, (b) regardless of employee age, base pay is the reason most frequently cited by employees for joining or leaving a company and (c) 41% of employees cite job security as a key reason to join a company.

 

 

October 2014

 

 

• BCG and The Network conducted research on today’s global workforce - everything from what people in different parts of the world expect of their jobs to what would prompt them to move to another country for work to the countries they would consider moving to. More than 200,000 people from 189 countries participated in the survey. The picture that emerged is of a global workforce that is stunning in its diversity - but that is also in broad agreement in certain areas. The areas of agreement included: a high level of willingness to work abroad; the greater appeal of certain work destinations than others; the importance to would-be expatriates of broadening their personal experiences; and the growing interest in “softer” workplace rewards.

 

 

• In The Future of the Workforce - a world of contingencies, Shaping Tomorrow argued that the changes in both the nature and skills required of employees and the dynamics in the global labour market are creating both uncertainty and opportunity. Many labour trends have been stable for long periods of time, yet are now entering a period of greater change. Contingent workforces are on the rise. For example: businesses will face a shrinking workforce and fiercer competition for skilled workers; many service industries may shed much of their workforceto automation and more of the workforce may be located in service sectors and the average output per worker (and thus average productivity in the economy) will rise.

 

 

• However, the global problem of umemployment has become a major challenge for governments and international organisations alike. According to the International Labour Organisation, almost 202 million people were unemployed in 2013 around the world. Of this figure, 40 million are long-term unemployed (out of work for over 12 months). In view of this situation, KPMG argued that it becomes crucial to seek new and effective ways to activate the unemployed and, consequently, to curb high unemployment.

 

 

• Meanwhile, in Wealth without workers, workers without wealth, The Economist noted that the digital revolution is bringing sweeping change to labour markets in both rich and poor worlds. The modern digital revolution, with its hallmarks of computer power, connectivity and data ubiquity, is disrupting and dividing the world of work on a scale not seen for more than a century. Vast wealth is being created without many workers; and for all but an elite few, work no longer guarantees a rising income.

 

 

 

September 2014

 

 

• High joblessness across most of the developed world results mostly from the tepid pace of recovery, rather than increased structural unemployment, a finding that has important implicationsfor policy, the OECD said in a new report. The developed world “is still recording a jobs deficit,” the report said, noting that almost 45 million people are without work - 12.1 million more than before the global financial crisis hit almost six years ago. Weak aggregate demand accounts for a significant part of the persistence of high unemployment, with the number of openings per unemployed jobseeker remained low by historical standards.

 

 

August 2014

 

 

• Working in an office is becoming increasingly unpopular, with a growing trend away from the traditional nine-to-five day, according to a new PwC report. A survey of 10,000 adults in five countries found that only 14% wanted to work in an office in the future. About one in five of those surveyed said they would prefer to work in a "virtual" environment, where they could work from any location. The report said the lack of interest in working in an office showed a growing desire for people to have more flexibility in their careers.

 

• The informal sector – the part of the economy where people work/employ without declaring it to the government –comprises 41 percent of the GDP of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. That’s a massive amount of untaxed income and unregulated working conditions.  

 

December 2015

• Will robots replace people at work? Rapid advances in technology, from big data to artificial intelligence, are revolutionising the way we work and businesses are keen to capitalise on resulting efficiency gains. Raconteur's latest report explored workplaces of the future, including the impact of virtual reality and wearable technology, gamification in the recruitment process, the rise of the freelance economy and top business technology trends for 2016.

 

• According to Project Syndicate, in the Middle East, half of those aged 18-25 are either unemployed or underemployed. Aggravating this situation is the global refugee crisis, which has displaced some 30 million children, six million from Syria alone, very few of whom are likely to return home during their school-age years.

 

• Will computers take your job? According to  a new book by a financial journalist, they’ll take the “cognitive” work but not the “interaction jobs”. For a long time to come, those positions will need real people with "authentic empathy". Many people get a buzz from collaborating with other people, and computers can’t replace that. New socioeconomic value, 'Humans are Underrated" argues, could therefore derive from innate human skill at engaging with others – collaborating, bonding, creating, caring and giving.

 

• A new book, The Refusal of Work, argues that the time has to come to challenge the work-centred nature of society. The author, David Frayne, an academic who looks at consumerism and radical approaches to work, describes the powerful view that jobs are an expression of our creativity and selves. There is for some, a religious devotion to work. He writes: “Gratifying work is a fantasy that we have all been trained to invest in, ever since our teachers and parents asked us what we wanted to ‘be’ when we grew up.” Moreover, he argues that “those activities and relationships that cannot be defended in terms of economic contribution are being devalued and neglected”. How different this is from economist John Maynard Keynes’s prediction in 1930 that in 100 years we would devote most of our week to leisure. 

 

• Real estate billionaire Jeff Greene warned that technology will kill white-collar jobs. He says new forms of technology will only exacerbate the growing gap between the rich and the poor, because, he claims, we have left ourselves unprepared for the inevitable automation of many jobs traditionally done by humans. He said: “What globalisation did to blue collar jobs and the working class economy over the past 30 or 40 years, big data, artificial intelligence and robotics will do to the white collar economy - and at a much, much faster pace.”

 

• Meanwhile, Finland's government is drawing up plans to give every one of its citizens a basic income of 800 euros a month and scrap benefits altogether. A poll commissioned by the agency planning the proposal, the Finnish Social Insurance Institute, showed 69% supported the basic income plan.

 

 

November 2015

 

• The European Commission, together with the European Business Network for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR Europe), launched the European Pact for Youth, a mutual engagement of business leaders and the EU to improve the chances for young people of getting a job, at the Enterprise 2020 Summit. The Pact is an appeal to all business, social partners, education and training providers and other stakeholders to develop or consolidate partnerships in support of youth employability and inclusion.

 

 

• It's tough for employees to meet performance goals when they don't know exactly what's expected of them. And far too many employees fall into that category. Based on Gallup's work with companies worldwide, only about half of employees strongly agree that they know what is expected of them at work. Helping employees to set and achieve goals is a manager's key responsibility, but Gallup analysis in Germany shows that many managers don't really own this task. To free employees to take initiative and inspire high performance, managers need to set clear expectations, hold employees accountable for meeting them and respond quickly when employees need support. But managers also should hold themselves accountable for meeting employees' performance needs.

 

 

• The OECD unemployment rate was stable at 6.7% in September 2015, 1.4 percentage point below the January 2013 peak. Across the OECD area, 40.9m people were unemployed, 8.0m less than in January 2013, but still 6.4m more than in July 2008, immediately before the crisis. The euro area unemployment rate declined by 0.1% to 10.8%, its lowest level since January 2012. Within the euro area, the largest fall was in Spain (down to 21.6%, now having decreased every month for two years). The unemployment rate in September was stable in Japan (at 3.4%) and in the US at 5.1%), while it increased in Canada (to 7.1%). More recent data show that in October 2015, the unemployment rate fell by 0.1% in the US (to 5.0%) and in Canada (to 7.0%).

 

 

October 2015

 

 

• In One Algorithm to Rule Them All, strategy+business argued that we’ll likely see is unemployment creeping up, downward pressure on the wages of more and more professions, and increasing rewards for the fewer and fewer that can’t yet be automated. Meanwhile, in Will automation replace our jobs?, the professor of management practice at London Business School, discussed the impact of automation trends in the workplace, and in particular how this will affect the work of internal communicators.

 

 

• However, in Will Robots Put You Out of a Job, Or Give You a New One?, Design News concluded that over the long term, productivity increases and advances in technology have always created more jobs.Project Syndicate also noted that, while this is an age of anxiety about the job-killing effects of automation, with dire headlines warning that the rise of robots will render entire occupational categories obsolete, such fatalism [wrongly] assumes that we are powerless to harness what we create to improve our lives - and, indeed, our jobs.

 

 

• Looking much longer-term, in On the Edge of Automation, in five hundred years from now, claimed venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, fewer than 10 percent of people on the planet will be doing paid work.

 

 

• KPMG’s recent piece, Bots in the Back Office: The Coming Wave of Digital Labour explored the ‘withering’ BPO industry. KPMG’s report said “The concept of labour arbitrage as the primary value lever of business process outsourcing (BPO) is dying. The geographic discussion is giving way to automation."

 

 

• The EU28 unemployment rate was 9.5% in August 2015, stable compared to July 2015, and down from 10.1% in August 2014 -  details.

 

 

 

September 2015

 

 

• Eurozone unemployment fell to its lowest level in three years, hitting 10.9 per cent in July amid encouraging data from countries such as Italy that have been hardest hit by the region’s economic crisis. The 213,000 fall in eurozone joblessness has left the rate at its lowest since February 2012. Across the region, 17.5m people in the labour market remain without work. In Spain, the jobless rate fell to 22%. Greece, Portugal and Ireland - all recipients of economic rescue packages - have witnessed dips of about two percentage points over the past year to 25%, 12.1% and 9.5% respectively. Italy’s unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly to 12% in July.

 

 

 

August 2015

 

 

• The Millennial generation is causing dissonance in the expectations of many traditional employers, a recent survey from PwC shows. Only 14% wants to work in the traditional office setting in the future and 20% would prefer a ‘virtual’ collaborative space in which to work. In addition, there is a shift to more freelance based work.

 

 

• As Europe’s post-crisis workers live through huge labour market upheaval, with growing numbers surviving on short-term contracts, the Financial Times analysed what this means for young people, business and the economy. The FT believes that, in Europe, the increase in temporary work is sinister, as it reflects a rise in precariousness rather than autonomy.

 

 

• To identify the 54 Best Companies to Work For, 24/7 Wall St. examined reviews from current and former employees on Glassdoor.com. The best US companies to work for were concentrated in particular industries. For example, technology companies are well represented among the highest-rated employers, as are consulting firms. Of the 54 best companies, only nine received an average rating of 4.0 or higher on a scale of 1.0 to 5.0. Of these, five are in the technology space and several consulting firms also made the list. Seven out of the 54 best companies provided consulting services, including the Big Four. The high pay associated with the technology and consultancy industries may also explain the relatively high worker satisfaction. Not only are software engineers and consultants some of the highest-paid individuals in the workforce, but employees at companies on this list tend to be paid more than similar professionals at other companies.

 

 

July 2015

 

 

• Creating high-impact employment experiences for youth, a report from EY and the MasterCard Centre for Inclusive Growth, highlighted the fact that global youth unemployment is on the rise and is expected to remain unchanged through 2018. But there is some good news. As the report indicates, some businesses are discovering the dividends of offering work and employment opportunities to young people.

 

 

• Unemployment across emerging markets has risen sharply this year, reversing a six-year slide, even as it has continued to fall in developed countries. The figures compound a worsening slowdown in emerging markets, driven by a fall in commodity prices and a pullback in global trade, which threatens to drag consumer spending down.

 

 

• The OECD Employment Outlook 2015 highlighted what has been mentioned in countless political speeches over the past years: Europe is suffering a social crisis. Unemployment rates give the first indication of this: whereas unemployment has fallen below 6% in the United States and is under 4% in Japan and South Korea, in the euro area the unemployment rate remains above 11%. It is clear that Europe is still lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to employment.

 

 

June 2015

 

 

• According to Deloitte, organisations today must navigate a “new world of work”- one that requires a dramatic change in strategies for leadership, talent, and human resources. In this new world, barriers between work and life have been all but eliminated. Employees are "always on" — hyperconnected to their jobs through pervasive mobile technology. Networking tools enable people to easily monitor the market for new job opportunities. Details about an organisation’s culture are available at the tap of a screen, providing insights about companies to employees and potential employees alike. The balance of power in the employer-employee relationship has therefore shifted - making today’s employees more like customers or partners than subordinates.

 

• In the Simplification of work: the coming revolution, Deloitte argued that organisations are simplifying work in response to employees becoming overwhelmed by increasing organisational complexity, growing information overload, and a stressful 24/7 work environment. Technology, globalisation, and compliance needs continuously add complexity to work. Left unaddressed, this can lead to an organisational environment that damages employee engagement, lowers quality, and reduces innovation and customer service. Business and HR leaders should therefore, for Deloitte, put “simplification” on the agenda for 2015 and focus on individual, organisational, and work-specific programmes that reduce complexity and help people focus on what really matters.

 

 

May 2015

 

 

• For the first time since the financial crisis, the employment rate of the population aged 20 to 64 in the EU increased in 2014, reaching 69.2% but not yet its 2008 peak (70.3%). A similar pattern can be observed for men: their employment rate has hit 75.0% in 2014, up compared with 2013 but still below its 2008 level. In contrast, the employment rate of women has continuously risen since 2010 to 63.5% in 2014, above its previous 2008 peak of 62.8%. The Europe 2020 strategy target is to reach a total employment rate of people aged 20 to 64 of at least 75% in the EU by 2020.

 

 

 

April 2015

 

 

• According to new Gallup research, employees with the longest tenures in a company are also the least likely to be engaged. After years with the same company, most workers lose some of their motivation to make a difference. Many grow apathetic over time and spend each day doing the minimum to get by. Some nurse grudges for years and even undermine the company when they get the chance.

 

 

 

January 2015

 

 

• Unemployment will continue to rise in the coming years, as the global economy has entered a new period combining slower growth, widening inequalities and turbulence, warned a new International Labour Organisation report. By 2019, more than 212 million people will be out of work, up from the current 201 million.

 

 

 

November 2014

 

 

• A London Business School professor identified forces shaping the future of work, arguing that technology is rapidly redefining the way we all work, enabling new forms of collaboration across traditional business boundaries. Trends that will profoundly reshape the context and practice of work in coming decades include the rebalancing of globalised markets for goods and labour; dramatically changing demographics; the widening of skills gaps; the demise of middle-skill work; and the rise in the importance of talent clusters, but one other stands out as having the most profound impact  on the way work is done and, indeed, as underpinning all of these: IT-enabled hyperconnectivity.

 

• Tower Watson's The 2014 Global Workforce Study: Driving Engagement Through a Consumer-Like Experience provided a detailed view into the attitudes and concerns of workers globally,  with responses from 32,000+ employees across a range of industries in 26 markets. Key findings: (a) just four in 10 employees are highly engaged, so there is room for improvement, (b) regardless of employee age, base pay is the reason most frequently cited by employees for joining or leaving a company and (c) 41% of employees cite job security as a key reason to join a company.

 

 

October 2014

 

 

• BCG and The Network conducted research on today’s global workforce - everything from what people in different parts of the world expect of their jobs to what would prompt them to  move to another country for work to the countries they would consider moving to. More than 200,000 people from 189 countries participated in the survey. The picture that emerged is of a global workforce that is stunning in its diversity - but that is also in broad agreement in certain areas. The areas of agreement included: a high level of willingness to work abroad; the g reater appeal of certain work destinations than others; the importance to would-be expatriates of broadening their personal experiences; and the growing interest in “softer” workplace rewards.

 

 

• In The Future of the Workforce - a world of contingencies, Shaping Tomorrow argued that the changes in both the nature and skills required of employees and the dynamics in the global labour market are creating both uncertainty and opportunity. Many labour trends have been stable for long periods of time, yet are now entering a period of greater change. Contingent workforces are on the rise. For example: businesses will face a shrinking workforce and fiercer competition for skilled workers; many service industries may shed much of their workforceto automation and more of the workforce may be located in service sectors and the average output per worker (and thus average productivity in the economy) will rise.

 

 

• However, the global problem of umemployment has become a major challenge for governments and international organisations alike. According to the International Labour Organisation,  almost 202 million people were unemployed in 2013 around the world. Of this figure, 40 million are long-term unemployed (out of work for over 12 months). In view of this situation,  KPMG argued that it becomes crucial to seek new and effective ways to activate the unemployed and, consequently, to curb high unemployment.

 

 

• Meanwhile,  in Wealth without workers, workers without wealth, The Economist noted that the digital revolution is bringing sweeping change to labour markets in both rich and poor worlds. The modern digital revolution, with its hallmarks of computer power, connectivity and data ubiquity, is disrupting and dividing the world of work on a scale not seen for more than a century. Vast wealth is being created without many workers; and for all but an elite few, work no longer guarantees a rising income.

 

 

 

September 2014

 

 

• High joblessness across most of the developed world results mostly from the tepid pace of recovery, rather than increased structural unemployment, a finding that has important implicationsfor policy, the OECD said in a new report. The developed world “is still recording a jobs deficit,” the report said, noting that almost 45 million people are without work - 12.1 million more than before the global financial crisis hit almost six years ago. Weak aggregate demand accounts for a significant part of the persistence of high unemployment, with the number of openings per unemployed jobseeker remained low by historical standards.

 

 

August 2014

 

 

• Working in an office is becoming increasingly unpopular, with a growing trend away from the traditional nine-to-five day, according to a new PwC report. A survey of 10,000 adults in five countries found that only 14% wanted to work in an office in the future. About one in five of those surveyed said they would prefer to work in a "virtual" environment, where they could work from any location. The report said the lack of interest in working in an office showed a growing desire for people to have more flexibility in their careers.