Uruguay is currently discussing the draft bill for Social Security Reform in August 2022. It involves a 20-year transition period. We ask ourselves, what will work be like at that time?
Who can predict it? Nobody. In the days before the pandemic, people would wake up, shower, dress, commute a long way, solely in order to sit at a desk in a building to work. Despite this statement, we will present some hypotheses regarding it:
1. Profound changes in work as we know it today, accelerating its transformation process. Different employment situations will be explored in greater depth, including new forms of work outside of traditional relationships, increased employee and collaborator expectations, asynchronous work, fewer workplaces, unified times and activities, discontinuous career paths, greater integration of work with personal life, a less predictable and static labor market, and blurred borders between national labor markets.
2. The everywhere workplace. After the pandemic, many people around the world and in Uruguay (%) will exceptionally go to the office, despite working every day. Workers will demand more flexibility: the ability to work from anywhere and at any time. Building an “everywhere” workplace (and by opposition NOT in the office) will be an essential human management strategy, as well as a business growth strategy.
3. The average worker will suffer. Basic and average skills will qualify workers for only a small number of jobs in the future, which are rapidly decreasing as a consequence of technology and disruption. Data from the Advice Labor Monitor shows this reduction year after year.
4. Supply and demand imbalance. When companies can't find employees and some workers can't find jobs, it's called a skills mismatch between supply and demand. In a world that is changing rapidly, all the time, the mismatch between supply and demand will worsen, as a result of the speed gap between the labor market and formal education.
5. Work as education and lifelong learning. And a lot of attitude and proactivity. To find, change, grow, find purpose, or earn more money. Learning, an irreplaceable skill! How much of what we know is already obsolete? Do we know how to unlearn? The first thing a worker will have to do is learn and remain employable.
6. The New Digital Worker – RPA. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) describes a program that can be configured to do work (in the same way a person would) with computer systems and applications. “Processes” are the work that needs to be done, tasks that can be automated through repetitive activities, creating a future job market where users can download Digital Workers from a website.
7. Employee Experience (EX) aligned with User Experience (UX). Según diversos estudios acerca de las herramientas usadas en el trabajo, hoy aprox. el 49% de los colaboradores se siente frustrado por la tecnología que proporciona su organización para trabajar, y el 64% cree que la forma en que interactúan con la tecnología influye en su motivación. En el futuro digital del trabajo, la experiencia digital será clave.
8. Digital Workplace Migration. The mismatches and inequalities that technology has generated between those who can benefit from it and those who are left behind will affect the availability of talent in countries. Something similar to rural-urban migration due to industrialization, in which the rural world saw its people leaving. A person, a sector of the population, a company, or a country can be affected by this phenomenon, which will be amplified and can widen the gap.
9. Salaries and benefits less regulated, more influenced by the supply and demand of skills. Do I pay you the same, regardless of where you work? Don't collective bargaining agreements in each country apply? And the currency? Do I pay by the hour or by the project? Do you work fewer days and get paid the same? Based on individual productivity?
10. Inequality and governments. The increase in inequality resulting from these transformations will lead some governments to take palliative measures to prevent socioeconomic gaps with undesirable consequences and social unrest.
Some of these hypotheses may or may not come true. But the truth is that in twenty years, the world of work will have changed, a lot, at great speed, and with diverse impacts.
