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Welcome to the third episode of The Career Crowd Podcast, “Preparing today for the jobs of tomorrow.”
In this episode, Mital, Jon, and Ian consider the positives and pitfalls of working from home and the impact this will have on careers going forward. The lockdown resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic has offered unprecedented opportunities for UK employers to trial working from home (WFH) at scale. However, in the wake of the pandemic, organisations are exploring new ways of working. How will offices be changed? How will the way we work be redefined and what changes will be implemented to provide the necessary tools and technology?
We also discuss what the future working environment looks like and what skills the future workforce will need. Some skills, such as technological as well as social and emotional skills, will rise, even as the demand for others, including physical and manual skills, will fall.
According to Dell Technologies, 85% of the jobs that today’s learners will be doing haven’t been invented yet. The dawn of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Robotics, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Cloud Computing means that young people are more likely at risk of job automation. These significant advances in software will certainly underpin a formation of new human-machine partnerships and have a large societal impact by 2030.
We touch upon the growing prevalence of independent working by freelancing and contracting which will boost the emerging “gig” economy. A 2018 survey conducted by McKinsey & Company reported that 61% of organisations will expect to hire more temporary workers. This has been further advanced by COVID-19 as research suggests a desire for people to change their careers within this disruptive change. The gig economy has experienced significant growth as gig workers have delivered necessities to home-bound consumers, and those whose jobs have been eliminated have turned to part-time and contract work for income.
In effect, workers in a gig economy are more like entrepreneurs than traditional workers. While this may mean greater freedom of choice for the individual worker, it also means that the security of a steady job with regular pay, benefits—including a retirement account—and a daily routine that has characterized work for generations are rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
We end the episode with a recurring segment that we like to call “Career Fear.” In this episode’s “Career Fear” segment, we focus on the fear of a skills gap and how education might be transformed in the future.
And of course, we want to hear from you! Drop us a line and tell us how you feel about the episode. What is the impact of home working? How do we adjust for the future? What career fears have impacted you?
We cannot wait to bring you more content, more guests, and more information to help you and your career to Stand Out from the Crowd!
Episode Resources
Link 1: CIPD – Working from home: assessing the research evidence
Link 2: Bloomberg - Work from Home to Lift Productivity by 5% in Post-Pandemic U.S.
Link 3: McKinsey – Skill shift: Automation and the future of the workforce
Link 4: Freelance UK - Freelancing in the UK in 2021: A market overview
Link 5: BBC – Uber drivers are workers not self-employed, Supreme Court rules
Link 6: Dell Technologies – Realizing 2030: A Divided Vision of the Future
Link 7: Forbes – How COVID-19 has transformed the gig economy?
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