A feature article titled Future of Work published on Time.com looks at how the future of our work is going to be like, what changes will sweep through the corporate world, and how we work tomorrow.
The U.S and the rest of the world will continue to manufacture products and provide services. The cubicle will soon be extinct (at least for most jobs), and there’ll be an increasing pressure on energy usage. Everything will be measured (if it can be measured), digital communities will be on the rise, business trips will be expensive and hence best avoided, and coming to work will be frowned upon.
Here are some very important trends that are already a reality but they’ll change the way you work:
Pay it forward. Save the Planet
We’ll need a cohesive energy program to save the planet. “Green jobs” will be a reality as there are already more than 750,000 green jobs in the U.S alone, according to a report from the U.S Conference of Mayors. The author duo point out the fact that the reality remains that not every job created would have something to do “renewable energy”, “solar job”, or other such green jobs. We believe that while the jobs themselves might not be green, every business can adopt “green ways” to work.
The way we spend energy, the day’s not too far when we’ll have not much left. According to Green ICT, 18% of office workers never switch off their PCs while another 13% leave them on during nights and weekends. This alone adds to 700,000 tons of CO2 emissions. At the same time, the cost of running data center facilities is increasing by 20% each year while the total IT spending only increases by 6%.
On DailyFinance.com, Eric Wahlgren notes that employers are now pushing for one-day business trips to save on corporate budgets. Energy use is now being limited. According to GreenBiz.com, there’s a discernible shift towards the cloud to save energy costs to the extent of up to 47 to 50%.
Everyone Works from Home
Cisco, the network technology giant, turned every desk telephone unit into a mobile hot desk – this means that Cisco got rid of dedicated workspaces especially for salespeople, work-from-home staff, contractors, and telecommuters. That alone saves Cisco a whopping $8000 to $16000 for every home-based employee.
Now telecommuting might not work for every business. Field visits, in-person discussions, lab research, and a lot of other such jobs will require “presence” but otherwise, most companies are already knocking down the post-industrial revolution inspired, “Come to the office and work” model (With Yahoo being an exception, of course).
Online collaboration software for work and projects, live meetings, web-based trainings and/or meetings, presence management, and even online conferencing are all great ways to get work done by a geographically diverse pool of talent.
Social Recruitment Is the Future
Call it “Social Recruitment”, “Digital Staffing” or what have you but the future of recruiting isn’t going to be resume shortlisting and in-person interviews. The world is spending more time on the social web today. Americans alone, according to Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic of Harvard Business Review, spend an average of 15 minutes on Facebook alone (a social media behemoth with 1 billion users and counting which is equivalent to 15% of the world’s population). We didn’t even include Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, etc.
On each of these social sites, however, we leave our “personality footprint” – traces of our personality and online behavior, which is a close determinant of our actual personalities, styles, and behavior.
Hence, recruiters are increasingly looking at our personality footprint on social media. Further, it’s plain easier to recruit socially. Recruiters benefit from the networking effect (100 people know another hundred, and so on). Recruiting is less biased and more focused on skills, attitude, and performance. Finally, the presence of tools to help helps recruiters work more efficiently and quickly.
What do you think some of those changes are that will change the way you work? Please feel free to share with us.
