The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here. Lynda Gratton

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СКАЧАТЬ many countries low immigration. By 2050 it is estimated that the median age of Europeans will rise to 52.3 years from 37.7.¹¹ In some European countries this challenge is particularly pressing. In Italy, for example, 25% of Italian women are childless with another 25% having only one child.¹² Estimates indicate that Italy will either need to raise its retirement age to 77 or admit 2.2 million immigrants annually to maintain its current worker-to-retiree ratio.¹³

      However, of all the forces, demography and longevity are the most situationally and contextually based, with contradictory aspects across the world. For example, birth rates are indeed falling in Italy – but they are soaring in Ethiopia. People are certainly living longer in Sweden – but across the border in the Soviet Union life expectancy has dropped. With regard to the demographic groups, it is clear for example that Gen Ys in Boston want meaningful work and the opportunity to develop – yet in Shanghai the most talented Gen Ys are leaving one company to join another for an extra $1,000 a year. As a consequence of these contextual differences, the overriding proviso for the demographic force is ‘Well, it depends’, and so as you patch together the future of your work and that of others you need to keep this uppermost in your thinking.

      Having said that, there are some basic rules of thumb that can be applied when understanding and predicting demographic and longevity trends.¹⁴ With regard to the attributes of the generation, the greater the wealth and job security of Gen Y, the more similar their views are to the stereotype of Gen Y. That’s why, for example, educated and professional Gen Y’ers in Mumbai are rather similar in their aspirations and goals to educated Gen Y’ers in Silicon Valley, but very unlike Gen Y’ers who are living in Mumbai’s slums.¹⁵ Here are the four specific pieces about demography that have been patched into the future storylines.

      1. The ascendance of Gen Y: by 2025 this group will begin to make their needs and hopes felt in the workplace. We can expect that their aspirations for a work/life balance and for interesting work could well profoundly impact on the design of work and the development of organisations and working conditions.

      2. Increasing longevity: perhaps one of the most important aspects of the coming decades is the extraordinary increase in productive life – which will allow millions of people over the age of 60 who want to continue to make a contribution to the workplace.

      3. Some Baby Boomers grow old poor: longevity will enable millions of people across the world to continue to make a contribution to the workplace. The challenge will be creating work for them, and we can expect a significant proportion of them to join the ranks of the global poor.

      4. Global migration increases: over the coming decades migration will increase both to the cities and across countries as people move to gain education or better-paid work. We can also expect to see an increase in the migration of carers and supporters from the emerging to the developed countries.

      Demographic and longevity forces will influence our work in positive ways – allowing us to live longer, healthier lives and to work productively into our 80s. It could also be that the ascendance of Gen Y – brought up in a more cooperative and productive way – will have a positive impact on the collaborative context of work. We can also expect migration to allow the most talented to join others in the creative clusters of the world. However, there is also a dark side of demography: increased longevity means that many millions of people around the world do not have adequate provisions for 90 or 100 years of life and will struggle to find work. Migration may enable the most talented to move to creative clusters, but it will also break apart families and communities and lead to the isolation that could be such a crucial motif for the future.

      The force of society

      It would be a mistake to imagine that we humans remain the same as the forces of technology, globalisation and demography swirl around us – leaving us perhaps battered, but fundamentally unchanged. Mankind has changed in the past, and will continue to change in the future. The question is how these changes will manifest themselves. If we look back to the first Industrial Revolution, huge swathes of people moved from the countryside to the towns to work in factories. These experiences transformed the way that people saw their lives and their communities. They changed the way people thought about themselves, they changed the way they thought about others, and they changed their hopes and aspirations for work.¹⁶

      But this process is not straightforward. The future will be elusive when it comes to predicting human behaviour and aspirations. Yes, we want to be ourselves and autonomous … but wait, we also want to be part of a regenerative community. Yes, we are excited about technology and connectivity … but we also yearn to be comforted and crave time on our own. These are important paradoxes, which those at work will be increasingly faced with in the coming decades.

      However, the fascinating aspect of the past, the present and the future is that, while the trappings may have changed, the basic human plot remains essentially the same. As Maslow described all those years back, we want safety for ourselves and those we love; we like to be cherished and find a sense of belonging in the communities we live in; we need a sense of achievement and of a job well done; and for some, we also want a sense of what he called ‘self-actualisation’ – the feeling that we have done the best we could and have fulfilled our potential.¹⁷ This is the basic plot that has defined the lives of people, their families and their communities from the very beginning. What has changed are the trappings, the trappings of technology and connectivity, and the trappings of the material goods that surround us.

      I remember taking my young son Dominic to Tanzania to spend time with the Masai in the Masai Mara. Dominic and I were standing on top of a hill looking over the empty plains below, talking with a young Masai warrior about his life. As we talked we were interrupted by a sound very familiar to Dominic and me – the sound of a mobile phone ringing. From his pouch the warrior extracted his phone and talked in the excited way people across the world talk on their mobile phones. When he finished the conversation I asked him who he was talking to.

      ‘My brother,’ was his reply. ‘He had taken the goats out to find pasture this morning, and he has just rung me to tell me that after three hours walking into the scrub they had found fresh grass for the goats to eat.’

      The trappings may have changed – but essentially the warriors are still as concerned about feeding their goats as they were many centuries ago.

      Here are the seven pieces about society that will play a central role in shaping the future of work.

      1. Families become rearranged: across the world family groups will become smaller and increasingly ‘rearranged’ as stepparents, stepbrothers and sisters displace the traditional family structures of the past.

      2. The rise of reflexivity: as families become rearranged, and work groups become increasingly diverse, so people begin to think more deeply about themselves, what is important to them and the lives they want to construct. This reflexivity becomes crucial to understanding choices and creating energy and courage to make the tough decisions and trade-offs that will be necessary.

      3. The role of powerful women: over the coming decades we can expect women to play a more prominent role in the management and leadership of companies and entrepreneurial businesses as they join the top echelons of corporate life. This will have implications for women’s expectations, the norms of work, and indeed the relationships between men and women in the home.

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