2030

With increasing digitisation and new technologies such as VR glasses, 3D printing and robotics our working world will change significantly within the next ten years. 

Instead of striving for a work-life balance, we will experience work-life blending - the fusion of private and work life. In this essay, I'll explore why by 2030, our work will no longer be physically demanding, However will always be mentally present - and how we can prepare for it.

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The first revolution in our work replaced manual labour: first came the steam engine, then the assembly line, electrical power became available everywhere. The second big revolution that we are experiencing right now is built to support our intelligence and may replace it - with the help of artificial intelligence, machine learning and algorithms.

 

We will not run out of work. However, how we work will change radically - and we are right in the midst of experiencing it. Our work will increasingly be distributed. Simple, repetitive tasks are becoming more and more automated, as can already be seen, today.

In manufacturing robotics are taking over, in other areas - such as the end-user functions in the office - they will be done less frequently by people and replaced by sophisticated artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, our tasks will increasingly be those that require creativity and empathy.

 

In the manufacturing industry, workers are already working side by side with robots and machines, and this will continue to increase. In the upcoming decade, virtual reality technology, in particular, will be change manufacturing as we know it. VR glasses will make the production process more accessible as the worker can view the manufactured product on the go while additional data can be made available in real-time, such as the device's blueprints while servicing. The adaption of VR glasses will also largely depend on how quickly they will minimise in size - and how quickly it will be possible to operate them reliably and wirelessly.​

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Only radical digitised companies will survive

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Another technology selectively used today is 3D printing. In dental technology, the first prostheses are already produced out of 3D printers, just like filigree components in hearing aid acoustics.

3D printing is also scalable: The Bavarian Unipor Group works together with the University of Darmstadt on a process for printing bricks, a preliminary stage for printing houses and buildings. The prototypes of the printed bricks were displayed at global trade fairs in 2019.

At the moment, these are still exceptions - Yet in ten years time 3D production will be the new standard within the trade industry. One can expect to own 3D printers in private homes.

 

These 3D experiments are more than just a gimmick. In the near future, the only companies that will survive are the ones who radically digitise.

It is estimated that within the next five years, all customer services will communicate primarily via bots and place orders via voice control assistants such as current models of Amazons Alexa, Google assistant, or Apples Siri. Those who cannot then be found online will then sink into invisibility and thus into insignificance.

In non-technical work areas, these changes may occur more slowly. But even here, the first VR glasses are already in use for specific tasks.

For instance, In sales - in car dealerships or travel agencies, we already come across them. The more mature the technology becomes, the more natural it will be for us to put on VR glasses and take a virtual walk through the hotel that we want to book.

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The end of the nine to five

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So will the work of the future become easier and reduced because we will experience significant work relief through technology? It is hard to imagine what it means for construction companies if we can "print" a single-family house in 24 hours.

 

Or will the work be more demanding and, above all, more compact? Work-life blending - the fact that we can do our work digitally from anywhere and thus lose the end of a shift - consumes the relief provided by technology and automation.

This applies especially to those who have intellectually exhausting jobs, in his book "Me Economy" Markus Albers writes: "We no longer have to get our fingers dirty, but because our work is becoming increasingly networked and complex. It is no longer physically demanding, however it will constantly be mentally present."

 

For this condition to not drain the individual, we will have to learn to deal with unset working hours and set limitations through agreements and understandings. The solution to this technological regulation is on its way, developers at the MIT are looking into how software can independently recognise whether a call on the smartphone should go through to the caller or not.​

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Atypical Jobs are the new norm

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Companies will also change significantly - especially in their structure. The more complex the world in which they move becomes, the more they have to act strategically. Thus the more their internal complexity will increase, and the more they will develop network structures within themselves. Employees will increasingly work together in changing teams on a project basis, and hierarchies will flatten in favour of these network structures.

 

What we will see above all: is that work becomes more flexible, Part-time and fixed-term employment will continue to increase. While AI will take over routine, mundane tasks, the length of employment relationships will shorten. We cannot explore the future of work without also tackling the question of how we will finance it and how we will design a contemporary social security concept.

 

By 2030, the length of an employee's stay in the company will have faded down to a handful of years, people will change employers more often and their place of residence more frequently. The working world of the future will require much more flexibility and mobility.

 

This also shows the importance of constant learning in the future world of work. We will have to learn and continuously adapt to our continually changing environments. In ten years, a large part of the current elementary school students will be working in professions we do not know of today, and that have not yet existed. Learning and working will be closely intertwined; not just to be able to secure our employability. Because if one changes employers more frequently, one will have to think about the next step might look like during the current employment. In general, the permanent position. Which we strive for in jobs today will be replaced by the normality of fixed-term or part-time occupations. 

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Unconditional basic income

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Because social security in the western world depends primarily on the status of work, we will have to redefine its framework. That is why the idea of an unconditional basic income (UBI) has received such enormous impetus in recent years. Moreover, that is what Richard David Precht (German philosopher) suspects in the book "hunter, gatherer, critic: A utopia for digital society" (Jäger,hirten,kritiker) that in the not too distant future we will experience an election campaign for the various models of a UBI. He firmly believes that it will come; the question is how.

 

Such constructs also have a direct impact on the way we work. Are we going to work less? What do we do with our free time? There will undoubtedly be more voluntary work - for two reasons: because the time will be free and because the current change in values will also have progressed. Today we can already see that the world of work is no longer just about profit but increasingly about purpose. The more connected we think and work, the more our actions include what is happening around us. Sustainability will play an increasingly important role, also because the damage caused by climate change will play a massive impact on our economic accounts in ten years.

 

The future of our work will also become more emotional and spiritually centred as we allow this to happen again. The moment we are no longer used robotically in factories, we can go back to being human. Blind consumption is already decreasingly giving way to the desire for sustainability within our lives and society. The ubiquitous digitalisation of our world creates needs for mindfulness and minimalism. This is already true Today: offline is a new luxury - at least in our leisure time, and this factor will continue to increase.

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Bye-bye, office cubicles

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Developments such as co-working have also come to stay. Our work environment has been on its way out of the narrow grey office space with the dried house plants, into the home office, the co-working spaces, the public space and coffee shops. In their early days, the game chaning tech companies like Google or Facebook created exclusive worlds that could be absorbed by their employees completely. Daycare, dry cleaning, gyms, everything was under the same roof as their work. 

Now Amazon is planning a campus in the United States that even the public should have access to, This clearly shows that companies are becoming increasingly accepting on their boundaries, and their network structures grow beyond their limits.

 

However, will all people work in this way? In Europe, One of the biggest concerns of the economy is the lack of skilled workers. The research institute Prognos warns that three million specialists will be missing from the German market by 2030.

 

I question whether the prognosed shortage of skilled workers will worsen in the coming years. For two reasons: On one hand, I believe that the deficiency is partly homegrown - it is a communication issue between companies and potential applicants. Skilled workers can simply not be found because many companies still design their recruiting processes in an old-fashioned manner and do not see it as an act of communication at eye level. Or perhaps because they do not offer enough wages and benefits – for instance, within nursing care. The more the companies change their structure from within, the more their messages will shine outward, which could make recruiting processes more effective.

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silver linings in the silver worker

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On the other hand, I believe that our working models will become more flexible in the next 10 years, which means that other people will also play an increasing role in specialist positions - women, for example. Our work environment will become more diverse, which means more choice. The same applies to demographic change: We are also getting older, in the coming year's many people will retire from their working life. At the same time, we are pushing the pension time back, causing more and more people are working beyond retirement age, the so-called Silver Workers. An example of this is that there are already over 75,000 people on the LinkedIn business network who are 75 or over and still working - and the trend is increasingly rising. While not everyone chooses this voluntarily, it is shown to be a trend within academics.

 

In 10 years our world of work will be a more flexible and fast pace environment. It will be challenging and condensed, and we will have to deal with increasingly sophisticated technology. Nevertheless, at the same time, it may also become a world of work that offers more design options for the individual, depending on the desires or phase of life. In a recent conversation, I philosophised: "We will never experience a time in which changes are as slow as they are today" If we assume that the developments described are exponential, then we are at the beginning of a Cambrian explosion of technology and possibilities. We are facing unprecedented diversity and complexity - this is both an opportunity and a risk.​​

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Will I still be right with these assumptions about our working world in ten years? Perhaps. Maybe not. Yet finally, I wish to reference Friedrich Nietsche, "The future influences the present." And the best thing we can do is to help shape it

 

 

 

Published by Lorraine Laternser 06.2020