Social Machinery

2020 workplace won’t look the same as today. We will see a more flexible, freelance based, highly collaborative and far less secure work world. It will be run by a generation with new values — and women will increasingly be at the control

Technology and the ageing population will be the main drivers of change  for bringing opportunities and new ways of work like more flexible career paths and nomadic working environments. Future worker will be highly specialized and the lack of personal contact might change the culture of organizations as an important of their jobs will be teleworking. Finally will seeing a blurfed division between home, work, retail, information, entertainment.

Let me share the top 10 likely truths for the future workplace in this post.

Trends affecting the 2020 workplace

1. Women taking control- By 2020, 1 out every 3 workers will be women. This will change company culture in a depth manner mainly because female management style is different. According to the workplace-research group , Fortune 500 with the most women in senior management had a higher return on equities — by more than a third. Studies also suggest that women manage more cautiously than men do and they focus on the long term. Also they’re consensus builders, conciliators and collaborators, and they employ what is called a different leadership style,  heavily engaged, motivational, extremely well suited for the emerging, less hierarchical workplace. Women will move rapidly up the chain of command, and their emotional-intelligence skills may become ever more essential.

2. Eco-Workplace- Today there are more than 750,000 green jobs in the U.S.  Analysts predict that for the next two decades, green employment could provide up to 10% of all job growth. Green Jobs Worldwide will reach 25 million by 2020

3. Telecommuting – Telework will be part of the normal structure for many jobs. Things like Hot desk, video conference, smaller offices, reduced commuting and the expectations of higher productivity and lower absenteeism will shape the workplace. Today in IBM one of every three employees works from home generating more than $100 million in savings per year. Additionally, remote worker can lead to a more satisfied and flexible workforce with lower turnover rates that in turn reduce recruitment costs. Also governments in the future will create incentives for companies to enable remote working in order to reduce traffic congestions, decrease carbon emissions and allow flexibility due to a forthcoming labor shortage. For instance, the Netherlands created tax incentives for organizations that enable remote working.

 4. Anywhere/Anytime companies – Anywhere connectivity has the power to change the face of corporations and transform the lifestyles of its workers. Companies will be capable of doing business anywhere, at any time. The connectivity technologies making this possible will be wide-spread by 2020. Nevertheless, the transformation of the current workforce into a highly effective, fluid, flexible team that can react quickly to market and industry conditions as well as collaborate and operate on a global level is the toughest task for the future organization.

5. Changing demographics: An increasing skill worker shortage in several industries is expected due to retiring baby boomers and ageing population in many of the developed countries. By 2020, 25% of all Europeans will be over 60 years old, compared to only 10% in South East Asia.  An aging workforce may either want to retire, to continue working a shortened workweek or in flexible hours, or to work remotely. At the same time, a younger workforce with higher expectations for a work-life balance, which differ from those of older, more established workers, are launching careers.  

6. Society- Generational divide, will create a disparity in work styles between younger and older workers. By 2020. Learning how to manage these very different cultures and expectations is one of the toughest issues companies will need to address.  

7. Technology-The most notable enabling technology will be high-speed broadband anywhere allowing nomadic access to any type of information. Collaboration technology such cloud computing, enterprise social networks and wikis will be wide deployed. Rigid offices working spaces from today will disappear giving space to hot desk, collaborative spaces and telecommuting colleagues. The office environment will be more interactive; Walls could become screens showing diaries, documents or video conferences.

 As emerging technology by the year 2020, you won’t need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer. Instead, users will open documents and surf the Web using nothing more than their brain waves. The brain waves would be harnessed with micro-developed sensors implanted in people’s brains. Also during the next decade we will see mind-blowing developments in brain enhancements drugs that will help workers to improve their memory capabilities and brain power thanks to advances in genetic science.

8. Smart workplace - Future workers will be able to work from anywhere spending less time in a physical location and more time being on the move. A seamless smart environment will be ready to support you and the way you work.  The number and size of offices could be shrunk as smart scheduling software will keep a higher occupancy rate.

9. From outsourcing to crowdsourcing- Crowdsourcing is the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by one person and outsourcing them to a group or community in the form of an open call. 2020 enterprise will take a job once performed by a full-time employee and send it out to a sometimes large group of people, who could be freelancers or contractor. These people will form a network, take the job and perform various parts of it in collaboration with others. New anywhere technologies enable work to be sent anywhere. Crowdsourcing also dissolves the old division between professionals and amateurs. It’s a new twist on the outsourcing model

1o. Social networking for enterprise – Will be at the epicenter of the 2020 worker. A toolkit of social networks, tagging, wikis, blogs and enterprise search provides a blend that enables employees to identify individuals, chats rooms, blogs and document repositories needed to be successful at their job. Additionally, the use of presence and location services enables workers to select the individual resource available at any given time. This is particularly important in an environment where employees could work from different locations every day and aren’t assigned to a specific office infrastructure.

Bonus point :Converging working and living – With more people teleworking from home, the office will become an extension of our homes, and vice versa, with wireless technologies affording new horizons of possibility. The office will become valued more for its “social and cultural role” rather than a place simply to work.