Experts explain how huge societal shifts will transform the workplace
The Chancellor’s plans to shrink spending on public services and administration mean businesses must decide what sort of organisation they are going to be in future, according to journalist and commentator Will Hutton.
Hutton said last week’s autumn statement, which revealed proposals to proportionally reduce public spending to 1948 levels, had been an “extraordinary moment in the political life” of George Osborne.
“He put an incredible challenge down to his allies in government and the Labour Party about what kind of society we are going to be,” he said.
Hutton pointed out that the Chancellor’s plans, which will only come to fruition if there are no changes in government or government policy, mean that in 2018 “you will have had to decide what kind of company you are going to be”. One that promotes fairness and supports its workforce to encourage higher productivity, asked Hutton, or one that shifts pressure onto the individual, ignores employee voice and continues to widen the wage gap between employees at the top and bottom of the scale, for example.
“It is a recipe for the top 20 per cent but not the rest. If done right there are great possibilities but I don’t think a 1948 state is the way to do it,” he said, adding: “If you are going to do capitalism you have to anchor it in business purpose. Will people step up to the plate? I think it is the way the world is going but it’s going there slowly.”
Hutton was speaking at the final seminar in Zurich Life's Future History Now project, a series of films, articles and events looking at how the world and the workplace will look in 2018.
The event, hosted by broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby saw panellists including futurist Peter Cochrane, Penny de Valk, chief executive of careers consultancy Fairplace Cedar, and wellness expert Dame Carol Black explore how they believe changes in technology, demographics, policy and society will have impacted the workplace.
According to de Valk working lives are going to need to be transformed to the point where older workers are working part time extensively, diversity is celebrated, work is meaningful and the traditional concept of retirement is unrecognisable.
“Skills will be our future source of competitive advantage,” she said, adding: “Generation Y are gobby and stroppy but we really need them and we need them engaged. They will not stay working for organisations that they don’t like and don’t trust. Serving time is not a concept they get. They expect work to be meaningful and they want to make a difference.”
Black outlined her wishlist for 2018, including a more widespread focus on engagement, better understanding of public health and wellbeing and improved attitudes towards mental health, while Cochrane described the changes that we might see in technology, including advances in artificial intelligence and 3D printing.
“In 2018 everything was predictable in 2013, what we can’t predict is what people and society will do with it. We dictate the pace at which we subsume technology,” he said. “The number one security threat is human but in 2018 the new threat is the smart machine.”