The Star Workplace – Technology shifting global workspace mindshift – 9 July 2014-KC
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The Top Jobs in 10 Years Might Not Be What You Expect
We talked to three futurists to find out what the hot jobs of 2025 could be, and their answers may surprise you.
by Michael GrothausFor decades, the U.S. Bureau of Labor’s Economic and Employment Projections have been the bellwether for predicting what the hottest jobs up to a decade out would be. But with the rapid pace of technological change disrupting industries faster than ever before (think: robotics, 3-D printing, the sharing economy), it’s becoming obvious to many futurists that past trends may no longer be a reliable indicator of future job prospects.
“In the last two centuries, we’ve seen two significant shifts in the global labor market,” says Graeme Codrington, futurist at TomorrowToday Global. “First we stripped the agricultural sector of workers, and then we did the same to manufacturing. Now the machines are coming for the tertiary sector, and will begin to strip companies of their white-collar workers in the next decade.”
What that means, says Codrington, is that some of the hottest jobs of today could be obsolete by 2025 (check out the sidebar to see if yours is on the chopping block). Yet all hope isn’t lost, he says. “History tells us that somehow the labor market creates new jobs whenever it destroys some old ones. While it’s easy to see how the overall job market could contract significantly, and certainly many jobs that exist today will not exist in a decade or two, it’s also quite easy to see myriad new jobs being created.”
So just what are the jobs that will be in demand in this brave new world only a decade away? Codrington and two other futurists give us their predictions.
Personal Worker Brand Coaches And Managers
“At TomorrowToday, we’re predicting that nearly 25% of today’s full-time employees will be working ‘on demand,’” says Codrington, referring to the increasing preference of companies to hire freelancers for short contracts when the need arises instead of keeping people on staff.
Currently the on-demand economy is popular in the creative fields or for the odd personal-services job, but Codrington notes that almost any job that can be done at a digital distance will be attractive for companies to opt for freelancers over staff, even when looking to hire “top-end professionals who can solve significant problems for companies.”
The demand for these “on demand” workers will result in an increased need for individuals to brand themselves to set them apart from the competition. To do so, they will need a new set of skills related to “self-management, self-promotion, relentless marketing, administration, and self-development,” says Codrington—anyone who can teach this on-demand workforce these skills will be in great demand themselves.
Professional Triber
Related to Codrington’s personal worker brand coaches and managers will be the role of what he calls the “professional triber,” says Joe Tankersley, a futurist and strategic designer at Unique Visions. Tankersley says that as more companies rely on on-demand workers, the role of a professional triber—a freelance professional manager that specializes in putting teams together for very specific projects—will be in demand.
The professional triber is “the Hollywood model dispersed across the general workplace,” says Tankersley. Just as Hollywood studios don’t themselves hire the individual cinematographer, editor, scriptwriters, and actors to make a movie, neither will companies of the future want to hire individual components of a team to get a job done.
Instead, they’ll turn to the professional triber, or director, to let them assemble the team they think is most appropriate to complete the project. Companies, just as Hollywood studios do with directors, will keep working with the same triber, provided his varying teams keep producing hits.
Freelance Professors
Tankersley also believes that by 2025, there will be a large need for freelance professors as teaching moves into the on-demand realm. “The continued growth of online courses and the introduction of alternative accreditations will spawn a growth in freelance or independent professors. By 2025 all you need to start your own university is a great online teaching style, course materials, and marketing plan.”
Urban Farmers
Though technology continues to move the world into the virtual space, the 21st century may see the return of local farming due to the number of people living in urban areas and the increasing awareness of the detrimental environmental impacts of industrial farming.
“Small artisan farmers will continue to grow in numbers as urban farming becomes a small but significant part of the food chain,” says Tankersley, who believes that individuals and companies will spring up to teach and assist amateur urban farmers lead a healthier and more eco-conscious life.
End-Of-Life Planner
By the year 2100, the planet is predicted to have another 4 billion inhabitants, yet well before then, the average age of a person living here will also increase. By 2025, the World Health Organization predicts that 63% of the global population will live to over the age of 65—some well past their centenary. As the average age continues to get older, Tankersley says end-of-life planning will become a hot job sector by 2025.
“As boomers grow older, they will reshape the last phase of life as they have every other phase. We can expect to see a major push to redefine end of life. New ‘business’ opportunities will range from life memorial planners as funerals become more elaborate than weddings, and even euthanasia guides as more boomers opt to decide when life ends.”
Senior Carer
The aging population will seriously start affecting world economies in the next decade, agrees Codrington, and a workforce built around caring for the aging population will be one of the hottest sectors of the economy, with demand for employees well outstripping the supply of workers trained in the field.
“My mother is one of many women in their 50s and 60s, many divorced or widowed, who are being recruited across the EU and UK to spend a few months a year looking after the elderly in those countries. Life expectancy is increasing by about 1.5 days a week at the moment, and more than half of all the people who have ever turned 80 are still alive.
In countries with socialized health care, the government provides personal care for these people, and is going to need more and more carers in the next few decades. By 2025, what is today mainly physical care will have extended to psychological care as well.”
Remote Health Care Specialist
Unsurprisingly, not only will the world need more carers in 2025, but there will be a need for people who can be remote health care specialists to offload some of the work of local or regional health care specialists who need to commit their time to caring for patients with more urgent diseases.
“This is a fairly new hot job in 2015, but will continue to grow and develop,” says Codrington. “It encompasses a range of health care professionals who either design devices and systems that can proactively track health issues and/or are involved in remote or virtual health care relationships with patients.”
Interestingly, Codrington believes that by 2025, the highest-paying jobs in this field will all be held by Apple employees. “There is no doubt that with their iOS 8 released Health app and their integration of myriad health apps with the Apple Watch, Apple are making a play in this space, and by 2025 are likely to be the world’s leading remote and proactive health care company.”
Neuro-Implant Technicians
It may sound like science fiction, but advances in neurotechnology are set to explode in the next decade. Luke Skywalker’s robotic hand, digital telepathy, and even downloading your mind to a computer, could soon come to be. All this means neuro-implant technology will be a hot growing career field.
“Our knowledge of the brain is developing faster than almost any scientific field at the moment, and by 2025 our ability to understand the brain will be exponentially improved from today,” says Codrington. “We will need a vast range of disciplines to be focused on neurosciences, including brain surgeons, neuro-augmentation and implant technicians and developers, brain backup engineers, real-time MRI scanners and interpreters, and neuro-robotic engineers to build mind-controlled robots and machines.”
Smart-Home Handyperson
Moving away from the health sector, Codrington says the burgeoning Internet of Things industry, which is expected to be a $19 trillion market by 2020, will create a number of new jobs not just for engineers, but for technically adept handymen and women. Specifically, Codrington believes there will be a huge market for smart-home installers.
“Aluminum siding salesmen were followed by the double glazers, the air conditioners, the gasmen, and a whole host of others, going door to door over the past half century helping ordinary people improve their homes,” he says. “It might not be door to door anymore, but there is going to be plenty of work for those who can bring various aspects of the Internet of Things into our homes in the next few decades.”
Virtual Reality Experience Designer
Part of the expansion of the Internet of Things into our homes will involve the increasing use of virtual reality for both work and play. Offices could become obsolete if you can just log in virtually from your home office and interact with your colleagues as if you were in the same room. And when it comes to virtual reality for home entertainment, well, that 72-inch television and PS4 are going to look positively archaic in 2025. Virtual reality will be as much a part of our lives as the Internet and our iPhones are today—and that means people who can design the best VR experiences will be in huge demand.
“In every part of our lives, virtual reality—using much more advanced systems than Oculus Rift or MS HoloLens—will have become everyday by 2025,” says Codrington. “We will need VR experience designers in every part of our lives to design and implement virtual reality experiences for us. From training and conference experiences in the workplace, to global tourism and fantasy running trails for our leisure, to even virtual relationships like the OS in the movie Her, virtual reality will need directors, actors, developers, and designers to make virtual reality very real for us.”
John Danaher, a lecturer at NUI Galway’s School of Law and an expert in the philosophy of law and emerging technologies, agrees. “With the growth of virtual reality software and hardware, I think there will be a niche for people who can design special experiences for people in virtual reality environments,” says Danaher. Why virtual reality experiences in particular and not real-world ones? Well, because “virtual reality will provide more opportunities for creative thinkers.”
Sex Worker Coach
Danaher also believes that an increasingly hot job in the future may actually be one of the oldest professions on the planet: sex work.
“Erotic labor may be a niche area for humans in the future,” says Danaher, who has written at length about technological unemployment and sex work. Danaher is one of the many futurists who believe that robots and software will increasingly put the population out of work as the century progresses. After all, robots don’t need breaks, don’t get sick, and can generally do things better and faster than humans already. Yet one area where humans currently excel over robots is sex—which is a good thing, considering many people may be turning to sex work to support themselves since a lot of today’s jobs might be redundant by then.
“I think, given the choice, most humans will prefer to have sex with another human rather than a machine. This could have interesting consequences for the sex work industry, which has always existed, be it legal or otherwise,” says Danaher. “Increased automation in other industries will drive humans toward niche areas in which they have an advantage over machines. Sex work could be one of those areas.”
But Danaher says even in sex work, there will be robots and virtual reality devices that offer some possibility for sexual gratification too. That’s why he feels there will be a need for sex worker coaches to train sex workers to compete with their digital counterparts. “This will increase the market for people who can train humans to be effective sex workers,” he says, and also notes that he believes the threat of technological unemployment will lead to further legalization of sex work around the world.
3-D Printer Design Specialist
3-D printers have been a boon to the manufacturing and prototyping industries for years, yet the large majority of the consumer population seem to have little interest in learning to use them. Danaher doesn’t believe this apathy from the general public will dissipate by 2025, but he does believe an increasing number of people will come to appreciate the advantages of 3-D printing, which means they’ll hire people to design and print their objects for them.
“I’m not sure that these people will make much money, given that the designs will be easily copied and shared, but there may be a premium at the high end of the market,” says Danaher. “The rich will pay their own designers to create bespoke products for them. Just as companies already hire specialist designers, imagine having your own personal Jony Ive to design your 3-D-printed furniture.”
SIDEBAR: Top Jobs Today That May Disappear By 2025
Many jobs in 2015 that are considered “hot” likely will be much diminished by 2025, according to Graeme Codrington, a futurist at TomorrowToday Global. Is yours on the chopping block?
Front-line Military Personnel Will Be Replaced With Robots: While maybe not a “hot job” today, there are still many young people in many countries around the world who are incentivized to sign up for military service as a viable career option, says Codrington: “The U.S. military will lead the way, but will soon be followed by other advanced military forces, including China, Russia, and Israel, to replace front-line troops with robots, drones, and other mechanical fighting machines. Wars will be engaged remotely.”
“This will, of course, create new military jobs in the new engine rooms of these wars, with drone operators, robot designers, and cyber warfare experts in high demand,” he says. “But the front-line trooper will find no place in the military.”
Private Bankers and Wealth Managers Will Be Replaced With Algorithms: “Already we’ve stripped the financial industry of its most iconic personnel: the stock exchange floor traders. Now we’ve even taken most of the backroom traders away too, as stocks, currencies, and commodities are all traded by complex—and lightning fast—algorithms,” says Codrington. “The next group of financial experts to be replaced by machines is going to be private banker deal makers and the personal wealth managers. Their primary jobs involve information arbitrage—they know where to find you money, or find return on your money. When the machines know how to do this, we will dispense with the people fairly quickly.”
Lawyers, Accountants, Actuaries, and Consulting Engineers Will Be Replaced With Artificial Intelligence: “Any professional that is mainly involved in dealing with information is going to be replaced by algorithms and AI,” says Codrington.
AUTHOR: Michael Grothaus is a novelist, journalist, published author and former screenwriter represented worldwide by The Hanbury Literary Agency in London.
Source: Fast Company magazine
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They spoke of leading in a VUCA world, on how you recognize / reward failure, and about Invitational Leadership – the heart of our ‘Leading in a Changing World’ book now available on Kindle and Amazon.
The book is also available to order in paperback (Contact us ), and for orders of more than 50 we are able to customize the book to include an opening letter from your CEO (for no extra charge). Do speak to us if this is an option you would like to explore.
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Stuart joins TomorrowToday as Business Development Manager for Africa, the Middle East and Asia to continue the company’s ongoing success of providing leadership development services to many of the top companies in South Africa. Stuart comments “I am very excited to start this new challenge within TomorrowToday and look forward to working with the team to further develop their already extensive service offering. I am fortunate to be joining such a respected company that prides itself on being at the forefront of leadership development.”
Graeme Codrington, co-founder of TomorrowToday Global said “Stuart’s wealth of experience and industry knowledge has already made him a key addition to the TomorrowToday Global family. We view his appointment as a sign of our commitment to being the leading company in our industry. Our global expansion and the increasing demands from our customers led us to look for an addition to our team who will fit in with our ethos of innovation and exceptional service, and it is very fortunate that we were able to find someone of Stuart’s caliber to fulfill this role.”
Contact:
Stuart Lewis
Business Development Africa, Middle East & Asia
+27 (82) 777 8702
stuart@tomorrowtodayglobal.com
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Investec has released a short summary video and 20 minute audio podcast of the event which is well worth listening to. Click here for both of these.
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Having said that, the list is a real who’s who of the futurist world, and includes all of the world’s leading thinkers on trends, business and industry predictions and the future.
We’re thrilled to announce that Graeme Codrington, of TomorrowToday Global has been ranked 24th in the latest update in November 2015.
You can see the full list here, and get details of how it’s calculated.
Thank you to everyone who takes the time to interact with Graeme and the rest of the TomorrowToday Global team. Please feel free to follow us all on whatever social media platforms suit you best. And please share, repost, retweet, like and/or favourite the work that we do that really makes a difference in your world. Your support helps us to keep doing what we do.
Keep looking to the future.
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Move over, baby boomers and millennials – ‘founders’ will be shaping the future
Baby boomers and slackers gave way to millennials. Now we’re told that ‘founders’ are the future. Adam Lusher asks, do we want these tech-savvy upstarts running things?
by Adam Lusher, 3 December 2015First there were the baby boomers, who begat Generation X, who were succeeded by the millennials, who were born in the early Eighties and in the Nineties.
And now, largely begat by Generation X – or at least those sections of it that didn’t grow up to be dinkies (dual income no kids), but may have been yuppies or slackers – has come … well, what exactly?
The race to label the next generation of teenagers began in earnest this week when the television channel MTV proudly announced that it had come up with the term “founders” to denote youngsters born after December 2000.
Founders, MTV assured us, like to stand out from the crowd – in the manner of role models and near contemporaries such as the actress, dancer and “21st Century Girl” singer Willow Smith. And they are called founders, explained MTV president Sean Atkins, because they are going to rebuild systems that have been disrupted: by things such as Facebook and Google, which have reconfigured the news industry.And by Youtube, which has unsettled the television industry – to the point that the abrasive New York Daily News enjoyed the irony of MTV’s “marketing dolts” naming a generation that “no longer pays much mind” to a once revolutionary (to Generation X), but now conventional TV channel.
But isn’t this generation-labelling just a load of pop psychology from a pop TV channel, and does it really matter anyway?
According to Dianah Worman, of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, it matters an awful lot and not just to the “marketing dolts”. (She doesn’t call them dolts. She suggests “they know more about us than we know about ourselves”.)
Ms Worman, the author of the report “Gen Up”, about how generations interact in the workplace, says that appreciating “generational diversity” is a vital skill for all manner of businesses – and for life in general.
“Businesses, and certainly the leading edge players, are starting to take this increasingly seriously,” she says. “It fits into the way you recruit and retain the best talent, how you behave towards customers and clients, and the way we engage with human beings. You do that better if you understand them.”
And nor is “generational theory” just psychobabble. Dr Graeme Codrington, the co-author of Mind the Gap, a book exploring generational differences, has suggested that elements of generational theory can be traced to at least the 14th century, when the Bedouin scholar Ibn Khaldun devised his cyclical theory of generational fortunes.
The first generation rises thanks to its desert toughness, the second enjoys the resulting rewards of luxury and power but retains a sense of the old virtues thanks to direct contact with the elders. The third lot are just decadent. Decline sets in.
Dr Codrington has also suggested that in the early 20th century the sociologist Karl Mannheim helped to make generational theory a respectable academic subject. While young people did learn values from their parents’ generation, wrote Mannheim, their different experiences of society produced a “visible and striking transformation of the consciousness”. So each generation acquired its own “collective mentality”.
But for all the academic pedigree, no-one was suggesting generational labels could be applied with wild abandon.
For one thing, you had to look out for “cuspers”, people who fall into the overlap between two generations – people such as David Cameron, born 1966, on the cusp between the baby boomers and Generation X.
Dr Codrington has written that their dual status makes cuspers “great generational mediators [which] makes them extremely valuable in multi-generational workplaces.” Perhaps that’s why Mr Cameron is having slightly less problem with party unity than out-and-out baby boomer Jeremy Corbyn (born 1949).
The theorists of MTV and their followers should also beware of “ethnographic dazzle”, a term coined by the anthropologist Robin Fox to describe how surface differences blind us to our basic human similarities.
And if applied crudely, says Ms Worman, generational labels could provoke a “stereotype threat” reaction, “because none of us likes to be labelled. We want to be treated as the individuals we are.”
Although at least one “founder” questioned by Time magazine didn’t seem to mind MTV’s label that much. “Considering the other names out there,” said Griffin Picciani, 14, “it’s a lot easier to remember.”
Which seems more Generation X slacker than founder.
Source: The Independent
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“Keith Coats, founding partner of TomorrowToday Global, also took a turn at the podium, getting CFOs thinking with his ideas about change, the future, and how leaders need to adapt in order to survive. “Turbulence is the new operational norm… we are living in disruptive times. The majority of our future will be shaped by things we cannot predict today,” he told the captivated audience.
The problem with the future, said Keith, is that the further you look into it, the fuzzier it becomes. But it’s that kind of complexity that you need intelligent frameworks around. “It’s about asking the right questions – that’s how you ensure a successful strategy. The role of the leader is to ask intelligent questions.”
The keynote speech by Chancellor Wiseman Nkuhlu also spoke about the need for CFOs to have the right information to more intelligent decisions for the future of the company. “The CFO should be the first to see signs of emerging deviations from the norm and therefore should be the first to alert the CEO…last, but not least, sloppy financial reporting is another shortcoming that should be avoided at all costs.”
During the awards, reporting for the future, and the technology needed to do so, came up again and again by numerous finance leaders.“
Connect with us here to have Keith, or one of our team, present at one of your upcoming events.
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This hard-hitting new position paper, researched and created by a team of top multi-industry veterans, is a definitive industry analysis that closely examines the unique dynamics within the super-innovative and disruptive FinTech sector. As money is intricately connected to every part of modern life, it is a basic thesis within TomorrowToday Global that as money changes – lives change. The white paper considers the broader impact on society as a whole – not just for bankers.
You can download the white paper here
“Through this groundbreaking white paper, we’ve now precisely identified the most crucial ways that FinTech will disrupt even the most established financial service organisations,” asserted, Graeme Codrington, Futurist, Board Advisor, Author and International Speaker, TomorrowToday Global, and Co-Author of the white paper. “Designed with digital users in mind, FinTech & the Digital Disruption of Financial Services, has documented the paths being used by powerhouse industry leaders to counter FinTech-led threats and opportunities. We’ve also set out our 3 to 5-year predictions that make for fascinating reading.”
“Millennia ago, someone was first offered a disc of metal instead of two chickens for their goat. This was the transition out of the barter economy. Today, we stand on a similar threshold as we move into the digital future of money,” observed, Raymond de Villiers, Futurist and International Keynote Presenter, TomorrowToday Global, and Co-Author of the white paper. “Fintech isn’t a minor inconvenience to a historic industry – it’s a significant disruptor that’ll change the way in which we live and manage our lives.”
Operating across 6 continents, TomorrowToday Global’s findings are trusted by some of the largest enterprises in the world like; Microsoft, IBM, Visa, DHL, Nestlé, Rolls Royce, BMW, Volkswagen, Petronas, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, BP, Vodafone and the London Business School. When compiling “FinTech & the Digital Disruption of Financial Services,” the TomorrowToday Global’s talented team of industry commentators enjoyed unprecedented access to a host of the most influential decision makers in the sector while maintaining the highest levels of professional external objectivity. The opinion leaders are top-ranked personnel and industry award winners in key roles all the way up to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) level in distinguished entities including; UBS Wealth Management, Credit Suisse, the Swiss Life Group, RMB Private Bank and Avaloq.
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In September I attended the Global WIN Conference in Rome. One of the plenary speakers was Keith Coats. A South African, he’s now based in London and is a founding partner of TomorrowToday Global, a strategic insights firm. His plenary talk was on-point for the challenges faced by leaders and business today. He focused on something he calls Adaptive Intelligence, making clear that this is a cultural challenge rather than a strategic one.
After listening to Keith, I bought the book he and his TomorrowToday Global partner Graeme Codrington have written together. What follows is my review of the 2015 Edition of their book Leading in a Changing World.
Leading in a Changing World is a small compact book, which makes it a quick read for the time-pressed leader. Don’t let that fool you in to thinking its message is simplistic, because it’s not. This is not a book to read then be left to gather dust on the overcrowded business book shelf. It’s one that needs to be read, re-read, digested, reflected on and, perhaps most importantly, acted on. The sub-title Lessons for future focussed leaders gives an indication of what’s to come. It’s really asking us as leaders to pay attention to what’s written, reflect on our own leadership, and observe the way we respond and react to the environments we’re in as well as the wider world around us.
With an Introduction, 14 Chapters, Conclusion and Author Bio’s, the authors set out up front that ‘the way in which we review and measure leadership practise no longer works’ and ‘that the only way to change all this is for leaders to step back, rethink things and be willing to change’. They challenge current thinking by stating that the art and science of leadership itself may have to change and offer a roadmap for leadership to become adaptive in order to be effective.
The authors own up to the fact that on one level there’s nothing new in this thinking yet point out that what is new in this era is that leaders need to ‘intentionally build systematic frameworks’ for a bigger picture and understanding to then be able to act.
In Coats’ plenary at WIN he described adaptive intelligence as 2 things:
Perhaps we should do just that.
I thoroughly recommend it and look forward to many more people in senior leadership roles taking up its challenge.
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The content includes the following:
Make sure you download the report now, and share it with your CEO. They’ll thank you for it.
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Read how each of these industries need to face turbulent times:
If you would like our team to contribute to your industry publication, please contact us. We’re always keen to do so.
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He recently wrote an excellent article on the Future of Cars for the Geneva Motor Show publication. It was originally in German, but has been translated into English. You can read it online here, or download the original PDF.
Even if you’re not a petrol head, Markus’ insights are well worth reading.
If you’d like Markus to work with your team on future thinking, future mobility or the lessons we can learn from luxury brands, contact our team to set up a meeting with him.
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The introduction to the report says this:
“Renowned futurist Graeme Codrington shares his top tech predictions for 2017 with us.
Robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning… the subjects of science fiction are fast becoming the reality of IT decision-makers. Working with organisations across the public and private sector through 2016, and helping build their plans for this year, we thought an objective view on the increasingly complex and rapidly evolving ITC landscape would be of value.
And so, in conjunction with our own internal trend-watchers, we interviewed internationally recognised futurist Graeme Codrington on what he thinks our world will look like in 2017. This is a high-level summary of the top trends he foresees affecting large organisations over the next 12 months, and some ideas on how we think you can practically respond to these predictions.”
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AI will revolutionize the workplace, says futurist from CNBC.
Graeme was also featured in the CFO Magazine, in a feature on whether machines will ever be able to do the job of the CFO (spoiler alert: they will). Read it here.
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How will your office’s tech stand up to the demands of the employee of 2025?
By Graeme Codrington
To remain competitive, organisations must begin to prepare for how work will change as a result of emerging technologies.
As a futurist, it’s my business to look into the future and think about how it’s going to affect the way that we live our lives, the way that we work at our offices, and the way that society functions. However, I also realise that for most people, peering this far ahead just doesn’t happen. It takes enough to just focus on the present or perhaps the week ahead in our increasingly hectic lives.
For businesses though, it certainly isn’t too soon to start thinking about the future. For IT leaders, the foundations for the services that businesses need in 2025 are being laid right now. Preparations need to start now if businesses are to think big and get the most from their networks. That’s because employees are expecting more from the technology that they use. You can already see the growing divergence between the technology that people are used to using in their homes to communicate with their friends, do their shopping, and watch TV, and those that they use during the working day.
It’s perhaps no surprise then that when we surveyed employees across the UK, we found that just 3% described their workplace as ‘leading edge’. By this, we meant that they had high specification computers, laptops, and software, as well as super-fast and reliable internet connectivity and the use of cloud-based software and collaboration tools. Currently businesses are failing to lead the way with the technology that their employees are accustomed to using, and that they know they will need as the ways of collaborating and working become more technologically complex.
By 2025, most businesses will have a new generation of employees that expect even more from their workplace technology. They’ll also be working in a world where teams are more diverse and geographically dispersed. Some may also find themselves working alongside robots and early forms of artificial intelligence. All of these things require stable infrastructure and reliable internet connections.
However, you don’t need to look to 2025 to see how important reliable and stable technology is to be able to use the latest tech in the workplace. Damningly, 47% of employees aged between 18 to 24 years old said that slow computers and laptops were keeping them from doing their jobs. Meanwhile, 48% said that unreliable internet connections were impacting their ability to work. When networks are unreliable, they can’t be integrated into usual working processes. So it comes as no surprise then that just 7% of the employees that we surveyed said that they regularly use video conferencing at work. Meanwhile, just 17% use business grade instant messaging tools.
This demonstrates just how primitive the workplace is compared to how you live the rest of your life. Most of us wouldn’t think twice before FaceTime-ing our family in Australia, or sending a Whatsapp to your best friend arranging next week’s drinks night. The disconnect between the way that we communicate in the office, and the way we do the rest of the time, has become so vast that people now just naturally lower their expectations.
Amongst those teenagers on the cusp of joining the workforce, a more visual form of communication is the norm. As Snapchat has become the main platform for communication, teenagers have become accustomed to written messages being accompanied by the human touch of seeing someone’s face. Yet they face entering offices where faceless and expressionless email is still the primary method of communication. In fact, 45% of UK workers believe that over the next five years, email will continue to be their primary form of communication.
Some businesses might be wondering why all of this matters? After all, email isn’t broken, and you can always phone someone to speak to them. While it is true that these technologies are not going to disappear overnight, they will only be a part of a much greater suite of services that businesses need to offer their employees to work and communicate effectively.
Each new generation entering the workforce is demanding more from their employers and are fighting internally to try and catch up with the way that they’re used to using technology. For many kids today, if they want an answer to a question, they don’t sit down at a computer and Google it, but instead they ask Alexa. How long will it be until this is expected in the office?
If businesses don’t keep pace with the way that new workers use technology, it could become a serious problem for attracting and retaining the best talent. After all, why work for a company where you’ll be constantly fighting out-dated technology when you can work somewhere that seamlessly integrates into how you were already living your life?
Of course, businesses need to ensure that they’re separating out the passing fads from those technologies that will deliver a tangible impact for years to come. However, most business professionals agree that communication and collaboration is crucial, and that not enough happens in the workplace of today.
The year 2025 is closer than you might imagine. Knowing what your employees might need is no mystery. After all, your new cohort of graduate employees in 2025 are the young teenagers of today. Meanwhile, the latest developments in consumer technology give us a window into their business applications, whether it’s VR video conference rooms, or company chatbots to fulfil basic HR functions like booking holiday.
To support these services, the preparation needs to begin now. Otherwise, existing infrastructure risks being totally overwhelmed. Preparing for that future now is not just vital to remain competitive, it’s also critical to survive.
Graeme Codrington, Futurist to TalkTalk Business
Source: ITProPortal, 17 October 2017
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Our team has recently been mentioned in a number of press releases and media items. Here’s a brief roundup if you’re interested in what we get up to:
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As part of my work as a futurist for Talk Talk Business, we published this 
