Change is nothing new. The past two decades have seen the workplace transformed by digital advances. Gone are many traditional structures and practices, replaced with new ways of doing business, designed to support collaboration and digitally-enabled remote and flexible working.
As the technology behind AI and robotics becomes more sophisticated, the number of jobs that remain untouched by automation will decrease. “To keep pace, businesses must rethink how they organise work, reinvent jobs, redeploy staff and implement robust plans for the future,” says Lynda Gratton, professor of management practice at London Business School (LBS).
There are also emerging social trends and shifting demographics to consider. Millennials (those born between 1980 and 1999) will make up around 75% of the workforce by 2025; a generation of technologically literate employees with clear views on where, when and how they should work. There are also more women in work compared with 30 or 40 years ago, and a growing number of dual-career couples who require more flexible working.
Workforces of the future will look different from those of today, in part due to the fact that people are living longer and therefore staying in work longer, potentially into their 70s. “Work then becomes a different proposition: a marathon rather than a sprint,” adds Gratton.
To future-proof working practices, leaders and managers could consider working with LBS’s Executive Education team to create a custom programme, which addresses your specific challenge, to help transform your organisation.
LBS works directly with leading global organisations, including Nestle, ING, Sanofi, Microsoft, Emirates and Danone, to create bespoke custom programmes tailored to their individual strategies for the future.
A collaboration between LBS and Microsoft, for example, resulted in their sales team being better equipped to build greater trust and credibility with their global clients. A custom programme enabled Danone to empower their senior executives through experiential learning, and another helped financial services group Nordea to develop a pipeline of next-generation strategic leaders.
For many organisations, however, one of the biggest challenges of workplace transformation is reconciling the implementation of new technology to improve efficiency and output, with a workforce that views it as a potential threat to their jobs.
The combination of AI and robotics has the capacity to automate almost any work that is routine, repetitive or narrow. However, Michael Davies, guest lecturer at the LBS, makes the important distinction that it is the work being automated, and not necessarily the jobs – which is certainly a more positive outlook.
“The change that will happen as a result of the impact of technologies such as AI, IoT [the internet of things], cloud services and smart devices, can be characterised in two words, ‘unleashed creativity’,” he says. “What you are actually doing is freeing people’s time up from doing routine work, to spend time producing better quality outputs, better results, better customer service.”
This is already becoming evident in a number of large organisations, including Fujitsu. “Having founded our own European Centre of Excellence for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) we are applying automation to some of our own services, such as managing IT incidents for our customers. This is equally freeing up our own staff to focus on more complex and challenging work,” says Duncan Tait, CEO of Fujitsu EMEIA and Americas. “By undergoing the process of automation in our own business, we are gaining insights that we can then share with our customers.”
Automation and AI is transforming the way people work in other industries too. In call centres, for example, new technology is enabling companies to significantly increase the volume of customer queries to online platforms, and therefore reduce phone calls. This frees up agents’ time to engage in more fulfilling work, such as managing more complex customer issues, skills training or moving into a new area of the business.
In turn, employees are more interested in their jobs – and when engagement levels rise, so does staff retention and productivity levels, and the ability to attract new employees.
Taking all of this into consideration, says Davies, the future of work looks bright. “The challenge will be getting from here to there, and organisations must find ways to adapt,” he says.
Key to this will be the up-skilling of the workforces of the future. Fujitsu has addressed this by implementing schemes such as reverse mentoring, where younger, digitally native staff share their skills with older workers. “We want to ensure that perpetual learning becomes central to our company culture, to ensure that all of our workers maintain relevant skills as technology progresses,” says Tait.
As the world of work evolves, lifelong learning will be essential for both a successful career and a successful business – as will the support of government, educators and organisations. At LBS, leaders can gain access to the latest global business insights and best practice from some of the leading authorities in business management – helping leaders to effect significant change. As Gratton says: “I think people should be prepared to take time out to learn something new. The investment they make in themselves is absolutely crucial for the future of work.”
