The future of work will see greater collaboration between humans and machines, which means professionals must develop ‘soft’ skills to remain employable and competitive as machines are replacing some human jobs.
The world of work has drastically changed over the last decade. Technological advances, from smartphones and light laptops to artificial intelligence and automation, have transformed and revolutionized business practices and the way people work.
As we enter the new year 2021 how I believe work will change in 2021 and beyond.
Some of the ways in which technology will impact the workplace -
• Will be a rise in the digital workforce – There will be a rise in more companies incorporate a ‘digital workforce’ that utilizes AI, robots, and augmented reality in their workforce. This means technology will aid Humans and not replace them.
• Increased automation of tasks - As more companies embrace digital workers, it only follows that low-value tasks will be increasingly automated. This will lead to a significant decline in manual processes, which will free up time for workers to focus on high-value tasks.
• Increased use of artificial intelligence - Organizations are already using artificial intelligence and as workers increasingly feel comfortable using it, adoption of AI-powered technologies is set to increase in the coming years. The power of Artificial Intelligence is going beyond the work and entering the environment which can drive productivity and optimize the workplace making it more enjoyable.
• Focus will be on high-value tasks – Instead of spending time or sorting and searching for documents, employees would be required to utilize their time on activities that will give a strategic direction involving creative and critical thinking, collaborating with co-workers, coaching others.
• Collaboration between Humans and Robots – Robots will support the Humans by handling task which involves monotonous work like greeting customers, answering their query, fill automated forms and guide the customer to the right department to address it. Humans will spend more time analyzing and connecting the dots between relevant and critical information to make informed decisions.
• More focus on Learnability at the workplace - As more and more collaboration with Robotic, AI interface takes place going forward the human needs to learn and upskill themselves to be able to use these new technologies and optimize their potential going forward.
• More focus on Privacy and Security – Due to the technology advancement and so much utilization of Robots and artificial intelligence in the workplace involving employees, it will become imperative for the organization to focus on how to maintain privacy and provide security to the people working with them.
• Technological Integration – As more companies adopt new technologies to gain a competitive edge and provide better service to their customers it becomes much more important than the organization's focus on faster and easier technology integration to provide a seamless and smooth experience to the end-user.
• Flexibility in the workplace - flexibility in terms of when, how, where, how much, and with whom people work, as well as flexibility in the workplace. Employees across generations are looking for increased flexibility from their jobs. How flexible an organization is regarding its talent, its offices, and its operations will be a key factor in determining success.
• Changing Management and organizational roles – With the technology integration and more collaboration between Robots and Humans, many traditional roles in the management will undergo a lot of changes and will be focused more on human skills and values going forward.
• Increase in the alternative workforce – More and more organizations will be continuously looking for alternate workforce like freelancers and remote workforce to deliver short-term and long-term projects to work at optimal costs and maximum return.
• More Inclusions and diversity in the workplace – As more and more companies increasingly implement flexible policies and hire gig workers and contractors; they will be better able to reach their inclusion and diversity goals. Hiring remote workers, freelancers, and gig workers mean that companies will be able to hire candidates who wouldn’t typically apply for a full-time position.
• Strong focus on mental health – Going forward, the future of work is only human and it is natural the companies will be more focused on the mental health and wellbeing of their employees.
• Greater Geographical distribution of workforce – More and more organizations are actually exploring the concept of WFH across global boundaries and many firms overseas are exploring resources across the globe to form teams to drive results in a more optimized and effective way. Maintain its competitive edge in the market to survive.
• Data-driven power and employee involvement for the better workplace - As we progress in 2021, we will see as more and more organizations are getting technological integrated by using AI, Data-driven decision across the organization, it will not only give the flexibility but also the agility to drive new decisions, communications across the board with ease and timely integration of new improvements and changes going forward. Even you will see more involvement of employee’s opinions in designing HR policies to make the inclusion and diversity properly interwoven into the organization culture as more and more gig workers joining the workforce.
To Align oneself to the changing face of the workplace one needs to focus on building skills to not only survive but flourish in the new normal going forward.
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