Group items tagged

There's been a lot of talk about the future of work. But what exactly is it? Although the future is tough to predict, especially at the speed with which we are all moving, there are some common elements that have started to emerge.

In CanadaWorks 2025, Deloitte's Human capital practice and the Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA) examine the fundamental drivers of change to help us safeguard a healthy and prosperous Canadian workplace in 2025.

Introduction The meaning of work The "Future of Work" has been the subject of an enormous amount of research, both byacademics and other commentators. Large numbers of books, reports and journal articleshave been devoted entirely or in substantial part to this topic. Globalization and technologyin combination are resulting in dramatic changes in how work is done and where it isundertaken. Work can now easily be broken into smaller tasks and redistributed around theworld. Dramatic improvements in real time communications, including the development of "virtual worlds" , are transforming the concept of what it means to be "at work", althoughthere is sometimes a tendency to exaggerate and sensationalise in order to sell books andnewspapers. 1

The modern workplace is constantly evolving. The water cooler and the 9-to-5 grind are quickly becoming relics of the past; what is in store for the future? The Conversation has been running a series, the Future of Work, which looks at the way technology, globalisation, and demographic change are rapidly transforming the way we work in the 21st century.

For the ChosunBiz Insight Forum on 'Smart World, Smart Work' Seoul, Korea, December 14, 2010

The Wall Street crash was still a year away when in 1928 John Maynard Keynes spoke to an audience of Cambridge undergraduates. The great economist told the students that by the time they were old men the big economic problems of the day would be solved.

The claim that robots are taking our jobs has become so commonplace of late that it's a bit of a cliché. Nonetheless, it has a strong element of truth to it.

Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife Finally, some statistics to prove the stereotypes right. According to a recent survey from Millennial Branding and Payscale, Millenials really are most likely to be employed in service industry jobs. So, all those jokes about post-graduation latte pouring and t-shirt folding haven't been in vain.

Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife Finally, some statistics to prove the stereotypes right. According to a recent survey from Millennial Branding and Payscale, Millenials really are most likely to be employed in service industry jobs. So, all those jokes about post-graduation latte pouring and t-shirt folding haven't been in vain.

As both political parties are reminding us right now, America is in an unemployment crisis. The latest sunny news: a new report says that even if you land a new job, it's likely to pay low wages.) Each week, we're bringing you true stories from the unemployed. "Just to be clear, the day before you graduate, you are the future of America. The day after, you're on your own." This is what's happening out there.

he White House likes to talk about manufacturing, and it's easy to fetishize the honor in "making things," but when you get right down to it, it's a services world, and we're all just living in it. The manufacturing sector makes up about a tenth of GDP. It's a crucial, productive, and fiery tenth. But it's just a tenth. The vast majority of us are working for the government, administering health care, serving food, manning an aisle, or doing something else while sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day. The Services Economy isn't a new development, but it's deepening with each passing decade. Between 1990 and 2008, we created 27.3 million net new jobs. Health care and government alone accounted for 40 percent of that growth, according to economist Michael Spence. Adding in retail, food services, hospitality, and construction*, these sectors accounted for two-thirds of job growth over those two decades.

On Sunday, I learned that a "wantologist" -- what, you don't have one? -- is somebody paid to figure out what you want. Arlie Russell Hochschild, writing in the New York Times, quotes Katherine Ziegler, wantologist, helping a client to figure out what it is that she wants. The conversation went something like this:

onnected, location-independent, autonomous, global, piecemeal: There are plenty of adjectives that have previously been employed to describe the future of work, but the author of a book on the topic is throwing another contender into the ring - adult. Time to grow up then

Career Choices of Generation Y & Z and their Employability

"If you're a good developer but you can't read and comment on a ticket, than we can't work with you," declares Brian Alvey, former cofounder of Weblogs, Inc. and the current head of Crowd Fusion, which makes content managements systems for a range of deep-pocketed clients.

At first, there seems a discrepancy: we hear incessant talk of low job growth and economic distress, but see people tapping expensive smartphones and buying the latest social-mobile app. Indeed, the technology and design industries seem unaffected by the recession, set to continue on the same course of planned obsolescence they've been on for decades. But a second look reveals that advances in these sectors are helping people adjust to life in a pared-down economy, in a world where the environment has become a main concern. Our recession isn't happening in a vacuum, and advances in design and technology, Read more: http://www.utne.com/science-technology/the-future-of-work.aspx#ixzz25PFuNAlN

Some 40 million workers across advanced economies are unemployed. With many nations still facing weak demand-and the risk of renewed recession-hiring has been restrained. Yet there are also long-range forces at play that will make it more difficult for advanced economies to return to pre-recession levels of employment in the years to come. As a result, we see that the current disequilibrium in many national labor markets will not be solved solely with measures that worked well in decades past. To help develop appropriate new responses, MGI examines five trends that are influencing employment levels and shaping how work is done and jobs are created:

What was discussed

he enhancements discussed ranged from technologies that are starting to have impact in the near term (such as pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement and nutrition) to those further downstream such as artificial exoskeletons and sensory enhancements. For me, the highlight of the day was the animated discussion that ensued as attendees reflected on the potential implications of enhancement technologies. How should they be regulated in the context of work? Who would pay for them, or decide what becomes available? And is 'enhancement' even an appropriate term to use?