Workforces the world over are now demanding more than just a living wage. Whether in developed or developing countries, there are calls for supplementary benefit systems, opportunities to make meaningful progress throughout their working lives, the means to supplement basic wages with additional earnings, and treatment with decency and respect during and outside their working hours, within or outside of their regular workplaces.
Work locations must not merely eradicate harm to health, but actually enhance the physical and mental health of the workforce. The best working environments are those that can even enhance the happiness and sense of fulfilment of the workers themselves. Creating a dedicated and happy workforce is an essential element in the promotion of higher productivity, which, in turn, can lead to higher returns both for workers and employers, and therefore a win-win situation for all concerned.
In all societies, advanced or least-developed, work systems and styles are rapidly changing. The pace of change is accelerating, while the lowest levels in the job hierarchy are being replaced by various degrees of automation or even artificial intelligence. These trends require re-training of basic workers, which in turn, offers opportunities for upgrading the content and qualities of work. The elimination of routine, monotonous work needs to bring fresh opportunities for the least privileged, but will also require commitment by both public and private sectors to offer scope for re-training and a new approach to the definition of fair and decent work.
A recent report commissioned by the UK Government has indicated that even advanced societies have a long way to go, in order to assure access to fair and decent work for all. This report, “Good Work: the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices”, was presented in July 2017 (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/627671/good-work-taylor-review-modern-working-practices-rg.pdf). The report offers interesting guidelines towards achieving fair and decent work, although it is admitted that there is still a long way to go, in order to achieve the desired objectives. Some of the conclusions may serve as useful benchmarks for the rapidly-evolving Thailand environment.
Quality of Work
There is no single criterion for what constitutes quality of work for all people. Even for a single person, there will be different motivations at different stages of life and working situations. Level of remuneration is only one aspect in determining quality of work. As societies advance, money received can become less important than personal development, work life balance or flexibility. Many people, even in least developed societies, find that a freer, more flexible lifestyle is more important than basic remuneration. In a formal working environment, workforce consultation and a meaningful say in what they do, are important motivations for work satisfaction.
Labour Market Evolution
The characteristics of the labour market are changing fast, in terms of gender, age composition, employees / self-employed, working hours, and frequency of job mobility. In general, and world-wide, the trend is towards greater mobility, flexibility, and moves away from the traditional lifetime career and single lifetime employment.
This can mean that employees have greater autonomy, employers less authority. There are increasing incentives to offer better working conditions for employee retention.
Legal rights and legal adaptation
Legal reform tends to move more slowly than social change, and traditionally tends to favour those in authority against those under their control. Legal reform can redress the balance, although if labour rights for employees against employers come to favour the former over the latter, the result may deter employers from taking on staff. Recent trends in Western countries have resulted in sometimes ridiculous judgements in favour of employees. The result may be preference for contract employment and so-called “zero-hour labour contracts”, which eliminate rather than enhance fair and decent work practices. Fairness needs to operate on all sides. Otherwise it will be lost on all sides.
Fairness for the Self-Employed
Salaries and wages are not the only attractions offered by employers. There are also invariably, and often compulsorily, provident funds, health benefits, even holiday benefits and education subsidies. Especially if transferable from job to job, these benefits provide a strong incentive for the employed as compared with the self-employed.
Societies such as Thailand which have strong agricultural and artisanal components in the workforce often fall short of benefits for the self-employed. This creates a strong necessity for the public sector to offer quality health, education, retirement and other benefits that otherwise may be available only to those working for government or well-established private sector employers.
Education for Innovation
Lifetime education is essential and inevitable in the fast-changing world of technological innovation. This clearly necessitates a base level of initial education on which to continue the building process. The nature of education needs to change, from the amassing of knowledge, that will become obsolete over increasingly short periods of time, to the underlying ability to learn new skills. Learning how to learn and how to adapt to new situations will be the determining factors. Instead of imparting yesterday’s knowledge to tomorrow’s students, educators will need to be at the forefront of changing skills. Fortunately, the imparting of knowledge will increasingly become self-learning from online sources. While this will not take the teacher out of the education process, it will at least transform that teacher into an advisor and facilitator rather than the imparter of knowledge.
The linkage of business with education will also become the essential component of vocational education. Such education will need to take the form of apprenticeship, combining formal education with practical experience. This has long been the case with many professions such as accounting or legal services, but needs to become a universal practice.
Career Selection
Satisfaction and progress in working life depends on matching aptitudes to job requirements. However job requirements will increasingly change over time and lifetime work experiences. However it is better to make a good start in working life than an erroneous one. Accordingly early stages of education need to offer exposure to the range of occupational opportunities available.
The lifetime learning process needs to be matched by lifetime occupational adaptability. With many of today’s occupations likely to disappear over time, it will not only be desirable for personal advancement, but also essential for lifetime employment, for workers to be able to change employment. Forward-looking societies already make provision for such flexibility. It will be challenging for developing societies to be able to afford such occupational re-education, but ways will need to be found to make this possible. Change is inevitable and universal: no society can avoid its impact.
Christopher F. Bruton is Executive Director of Dataconsult Ltd, chris@dataconsult.co.th. Dataconsult’s Thailand Regional Forum provides seminars and extensive documentation to update business on future trends in Thailand and in the Mekong Region.
