The document discusses perspectives on the future of work from multiple expert discussions around the world. Key points include: demographic shifts like aging populations will change work and retirement expectations; new technologies will both create new jobs and replace existing ones, especially information-rich repetitive jobs; and organizations will need to adapt through more flexible project-based work and lifelong reskilling and upskilling of workers. Governments will need to consider policies to support workers through these changes, such as financing retraining, rethinking pensions, and potentially implementing universal basic incomes.

1. The Future of Work
Insights From Multiple Expert Discussions Around The World
14 November 2018

2. The Future of Work
The future of work is increasingly uncertain. What is clear is that we are in the
midst of a major transformation driven by multiple drivers of change. This talk
brings together several different perspectives to help make sense of the future.

3. DEMOGRAPHICS – THE BIG PICTURE

4. More Jobs
As populations continue to grow and consume more, many increasingly
recognise the need for additional jobs to be created on a global scale.
Over the next decade the UN sees we need to create 600m new jobs.

5. Youth Unemployment
In countries experiencing an ‘urban youth bulge’ rising unemployment for the
young is a major challenge. In several developed countries, many graduates
already need to wait a decade before finding meaningful work.

6. Getting Older
Ageing populations, low fertility rates and immigration are reshaping society.
By 2030, older people in the US will outnumber children for the first time.
Across many EU nations, over 65s will account for 25% of the population.

7. Working Longer
For many, retirement at age 65 is economically infeasible. Few workers can
fund a 30-year retirement with a 40-year career. Neither can societies.
More countries are joining Australia in contemplating a pension age of 70.

8. Next Gen Expectations
For the young there is a generational attitudinal shift underway.
At the same time as the supply of jobs is fluctuating, the expectations of
the new workers are changing - particularly amongst the educated elite.

9. Pivotal Questions
Theses change all have major implications and raise some difficult questions on
how societies should react, how governments should incentivise change and
how new thinking can help address the evident challenges.
How can new jobs be created on a significant scale?
Should we expect full or part-time work?
What will be the future retirement age?
Can pensions be better structured?
What is the nature of employment and unemployment?
Should we incentivise people to work less or not at all?
How should we, as society, value and support work?

10. TECHNOLOGY – PROMISE AND THREAT

11. Growth Opportunities
With faster change and the 4th Industrial Revolution building traction, many see
a major impact on jobs - creating new ones but rendering others redundant.
Several view capturing opportunities to be a significant driver of growth.

12. Technology Adoption
Some see opportunity with displaced jobs offset by gains in automation and AI.
These include those from rising IT expenditure, roles supporting growth in
consumer spending and jobs associated with increasing demand for healthcare.

13. Reinventing Roles
Will the shifts ahead will drive mass unemployment or can the evolutions that
replaced blacksmiths with car mechanics be repeated? Technology will have a
fundamental impact on roles that are currently part of our social fabric.

14. Evolution not Revolution
In the 1st Industrial Revolution the number of weavers rose as the work became
automated. The job of a weaver changed but the number of weavers increased.
This shift could be replicated for occupations including doctors and teachers.

15. Vulnerable Roles
There is lots of hype - While advocates of such innovations as AI and self-driving
cars are focused on the positive benefits, others see a very different future.
Up to 75% of accountants, bankers and lawyers’ jobs may well be vulnerable.

16. Good New Jobs
“The transformations, if managed wisely, could lead to a new age of good work,
good jobs and improved quality of life for all, but if managed poorly, pose the
risk of widening skills gaps, greater inequality, and broader polarization.” (WEF)

17. Clarity of Impact
Fundamental is the need to be clear on what tech changes we are talking about.
For instance, do we see AI as artificial, assisted or augmented intelligence
and, by implication, how it will replace or support us?

18. Automation of Interaction
Information-rich, repetitive jobs may be initially supported by a first phase of AI
(machine learning) but then replaced by the second phase (deep learning).
Automation may replace well-defined behaviours previously unique to humans.

19. The Health Potential
The healthcare industry employs millions and shows how technology may be
deployed alongside workers. Robots are performing surgery; AI advisors are
supporting GPs; pattern recognition technology is out-performing radiologists.

20. Supervisor Surgeons
“Surgeons will still be in the mix, but they will act more as supervisors than
active participants.” They will be like airline pilots with machines undertaking
the technical tasks but humans on hand to step in if and when needed.

21. Self-Driving Vehicles
Many supporters of autonomous vehicles envisage a world where fleets of
trucks, taxis, ships and even planes all drive themselves and there are no
accidents - A consequence of this will be fewer drivers, sailors and pilots.

22. Autonomous Delivery of People and Goods
Changes may deliver a GDP value balance in but it not equate in number of jobs.
In the UK, there are up to 1m driving jobs ‘at risk’. In the long term up to 50%
could go as autonomous vehicles and urban delivery robots are deployed.

23. Reskilling and Upskilling
As some sectors and countries gain from new technology, others will
correspondingly lose out and fall behind. A response to this will drive both the
call for more reskilling and upskilling as well as an inevitable surge in migration.

24. THE ORGANISATIONAL RESPONSE

25. Three Organisational Shifts
As more companies look ahead to future resource and skill needs,
some are starting to rethink how they operate as organisations.
For many there are three core future shifts to accommodate
A change in the
tasks undertaken
by humans in
some fields
More freelancers
and contractors,
especially in the
service sector
The need to
upskill and reskill
two or three times
during work life

26. Smaller ‘Big’ Companies
The employment pool expands with ‘on and off-balance sheet talent’. In 2008
the world’s ten most valuable companies employed 3.5 million. Today, the top
ten companies are worth twice as much, but only have 50% of the employees.

27. Projects Not Jobs
Many see the future organisation as increasingly flexible, permeable, flat and
virtual. Companies shift from being employers and become the bodies that
create or coordinate projects that an increasingly freelance population delivers.

28. The Freelance Economy
The majority of us will be independent ‘free agents’ available for work as
projects require. Last year 15% of working Britons, 25% of Swiss and 36% of the
US workforce were freelancers - many expect this will rise to 50% in a decade.

29. How does the keep itself up to date and so attractive to the project?
Developing Talent
How does the organisation with projects to deliver attract the top talent?
Attractive Projects
How do cities / countries attract both the top talent and companies?
Pivotal Locations
Evolving Challenges
We may see more educated individuals who are ‘sometimes nomads’ moving
to the countries and cities where their next project prospects are best.
The challenge here is then increasingly three-fold.

30. Projects Worth Working On
‘Funky Business’ focused on a world with a few elite “people worth employing”
and a select range of “organisations worth working for.” Going forward, we may
be focused on the “talent worth accessing” and “projects worth working on.”

31. Attracting Nomads
As more selective graduates seek different organisations to work for, or with,
having the right combination of projects, talent magnets and core purpose will
be vital so that a company can stand out from the homogeneous average.

32. Future of the Company
The whole notion of an organisation has to change: Many activities are
increasingly being outsourced while HR is more about talent attraction.
The future of the company is as much in flux as the future of work itself.

33. POLICY IMPLICATIONS

34. Seven Thoughts
Given the varied developments underway, there are a number of emerging
issues for government consider. Those that proactively engage around the
future of work are the ones most likely to benefit from its transformation
1. Changing society’s view of the purpose and contribution of work and whether the future jobs
available should be proactively spread more evenly across the population and country;
2. Supporting the increasingly freelance, gig economy not just in terms workers’ rights but also
in areas such as taxation, credit ratings, loan terms and insurance cover;
3. Financing meaningful upskilling and reskilling so that every individual has the opportunity to
fully retrain, and not just be educated once;
4. Having more honest dialogue on the role of internal and international migration in
supporting and balancing the talent mix;
5. A rethinking of pensions to accommodate people not only living longer but also working
longer, and most likely part-time;
6. Introducing a tax on robots, data and AI and the companies that gain most from their use; and
7. Using revenues from digital taxes to support a wider and better universal basic income.

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