LYNDA GRATTON
MARATHON
RU N N E R S
FOUNDER
OF THE HOTSPOTS MOVEMENT AND AUTHOR OF T H E S H I F T: T H E F U T U R E O F W
O R K I S A L R E A D Y H E R E
THE BIG IDEA: PEOPLE WILL WANT TO PACE THEIR CAREERS AS THEY REALISE THAT THEIR WORKING LIVES WILL BE LONGER THAN THAT OF EARLIER GENERATIONS
What springs to mind when you
think of the future? For many of us, it is the technological changes, the leaps in communications, robotics and medicine. For others, it is the changes taking place in our environment: the effects of global warming and the scarcity of resources. I have spent much of my career thinking about the future of work, and I find that the secret to gaining an accurate view of the future is to think carefully about current and emerging trends, how they relate to one another and where they might take us over the coming years and decades. Inevitably, there will be some developments we can’t predict, but for many of the biggest changes we will see, the foundations have already been firmly laid. One of the biggest shifts we’ve seen in recent years is the globalisation of business. Today’s companies have access to a global talent pool, and can choose from the highest-performing workers around the world. The implication of this for workers is that they will have to compete with a global talent pool. Thanks to the internet, today’s high-performing workers can offer their skills to any employer, anywhere. This will put pressure on companies. If location is no object, the best workers can easily go elsewhere if their needs aren’t being met. At the same time, this virtualisation creates an opportunity for a wider range of companies to access the best talent. Already, many of the most ambitious members of the workforce are building portfolio careers, where they work for several organisations at a time. The challenge lies in adapting our existing attitudes and processes around recruitment and working habits to ensure such workers feel valued and stimulated. This, combined with technology, means that work will continue to become increasingly virtual. The knock-on effect of this is that many people can expect to find their working lives becoming increasingly isolated as they work from home offices and only interact with team members through virtual channels. Given that we are a naturally social species, how will we adapt to these isolated working lives? So much creativity comes from the ability to bounce our ideas off others that being forced to adapt to working in a buzz-free environment could be detrimental. It’s my view that creative hubs – spaces where people can work together for short periods of time – will become increasingly important as more people start to work virtually. Social media will also play a role in maintaining the informal, social and creative side of working life. One of the most unavoidable truths about the future is the fact that people’s careers are lengthening. We will have to start thinking about working beyond the standard 20th Century retirement age of 60 or 65. Already, workers in their 20s are faced with the reality that they will be working into their 70s and 80s. So how does that change their attitude to work? For one, they don’t see their working lives as something to be taken in a single chunk, with a happy retirement to enjoy at the end. They realise that retirement may come at an age when they are older and frailer than their grandparents were when they retired – and they want the opportunity to pace their careers accordingly. People will not only be working for longer, they will also be more inclined to take career breaks throughout their life. Accommodating these needs will mean redesigning our approach to careers as well as our perception of valuable workers.
I’ve often described the current point in time as a fork in the road: it’s a time of choices, each of which will have its own array of opportunities and disadvantages. None of us knows precisely what will happen until we take that first step down the path of our choosing, but as I peer ahead for a glimpse of what lies beyond, what I see is a future with the potential to inspire and invigorate. CD ET140103
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