Future Of Work

Future Of Work

The pandemic has accelerated a change in the way we work and the pace at which we get work done. This has only ever been seen a few times across the past century before this.

The pandemic saw hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs overnight, industries coming to a halt, and employees shifting to a work from home model with no clear indication of when (if at all) they may be able to go back to work.

According to the International Labour Organisation, 81 million people across Asia lost their jobs due to decreased economic activity from Covid 19 in 2020.

The not normal became the new normal.

These new habits and practices including working from home and virtual calls that have been adopted across the working world are most likely going to become permanent shifts in our working methods.

This is something many people believed impossible before the pandemic forced it to become possible. The new digital era has finally arrived.

However with all changes come challenges.

Some of the challenges currently present for the future of work include:

1) Even with a large amount of job losses as documented above, according to Deloitte Switzerland, the professional global job market has moved from an employers market to an applicants market.

The focus of a large variety of employers across different industries has been a switch in how they view their strategies in attracting and retaining talent. With the change in an employee's typical career path, people are seeking and gaining broad experiences and moving their careers paths in an irregular direction.

2) Another challenge posed by the changing future of work is the extent that companies go to in order to understand the type and scale of impact that new technologies of digital and automotive nature are having and will continue to have on their business strategy and workers in the future.

It is a company's own choice as to whether it embraces this change and puts people and money behind its research into this area or whether they choose to bury their heads in the sand and pretend it's not happening.

The former can help firms embrace a stronger advantage against competitors if they embrace the change. The latter can help a company go out of business.

3) The success of a company in the future working world depends on the efficiency of its digital transformation. What was once a nice to have is now a must have for companies of all sizes and in all sectors across the globe.

With digital transformation comes change, and with change comes the need for reskilling of employees and a shift in the culture of an organisation from the top down.

According to Ronald Von Loon, Business leaders should approach reskilling and upskilling as an economic opportunity, and not just an initiative for future survival.

It is through examining highly disrupted areas and areas that will be highly disrupted in the future, that executives can decide how to reskill their employees and what type of reskilling they will need.

With challenges like these outlined above and many more in addition to these challenges, it is through initiatives like this Hackathon that we as the next generation can truly make our mark on the future of work.

We can have a direct impact on the types of technologies that are used, the way we work and why we work and ultimately, when we are the leaders in small, medium & large companies globally, we will have made a difference at the time that change needed to occur.

By Startup Weekend Global

October 12, 2021