The Future of Work is…inclusive
We’ve asked our Work Futures interdisciplinary team to complete the sentence ‘The Future of Work is…’ . This is Jeff’s perspective on the future of work and what it means to him.
The future of work is many things to me. As a teacher, I’m constantly pondering the skills our students need to learn for that future. It’s a topic I spend my work time doing research on. And like everyone, I wonder how my own and my family’s work is going to change in future years.
In the realisation that work is so interwoven with my life and absorbs so much of my thinking time, I’m sure that I am much the same as most people. Work demands our attention because it is fundamental to our sense of identity and to our well-being. And it requires our on-going attention because it never stays still.
So, if I had to choose one way to complete the sentence, it would be to say that: The future of work is a topic that we cannot avoid thinking about; and critically, a topic that any decent society must be thinking about all the time.
How should that happen?
First, the future of work has to be thought about holistically. At times in recent years, analysis on the topic has often narrowed to questions such as whether technology will cause the death of work. It’s essential, of course, to do this detailed work. But to do justice to the topic, a much broader approach is required.
This means recognising the multiple dimensions of the future of work, such as: How much work will be available? Who will get to do that work? What types of work (jobs) will be available? What will be the conditions in those jobs? Where will the jobs be located? How much monetary compensation will workers receive for doing the jobs? How much intrinsic satisfaction will they derive from doing the jobs? What will a worker’s career profile look like?
It also means recognising the multiple drivers of the future of work. Technology will remain a major influence on work, as it has been since the Industrial Revolution. But international trade will also be important in affecting the demand for labour (even if via a stepping back due to the COVID-19 pandemic); and demography and continuing growth in income levels will direct much of the new job creation that occurs (such as the effect of the aging population on the demand for care). Demographics also affect labour supply; for example, the impact of delayed retirement in the older population. What happens to labour supply will depend as well on influences such as education and training, immigration and social norms. Finally, reform of institutions and policies, which mediate the impact of other drivers, will affect the future of work.
Second, thinking about the future of work should draw on knowledge from all relevant disciplines, which is just about every discipline. What we do in our jobs, how we perform in those jobs and what it means for our lives and society, can only be fully understood by using what every field of study has to tell us. As one example, the meaning I take from my work may depend on economic factors, but will also certainly depend on the society I live in and my own psychology.
Perhaps the best developed research agenda on the future of work at present is the MIT Taskforce on the Work of the Future. It’s notable that it is chaired by an engineer, economist and industrial scientist. It comprises a political scientist, computer scientist, anthropologist, psychologist, sociologist, media, international relations and industrial relations experts, as well as electrical and mechanical engineers. This seems the right way to go about trying to understand the future of work.
Third, a major challenge is to improve our thinking about what the future of work means for policy. As the world of work evolves it creates winners who, for example, benefit from higher demand for the types of skills they have. But that evolution inevitably also causes some to be harmed or left behind, such as workers who are displaced by technological change or globalisation.
Policy in Australia has had a deal of success in assisting the creation of winners. Witness the rapid increase in the proportion of the population with a Bachelor’s degree of above, from 5 per cent in the early 1980s to about 30 per cent at present, without which the Australian workforce would not have been able to take advantage of new technologies requiring that higher level of skill.
So far, we have not had the same success in assisting those who are harmed or fall behind. We do not have policies for effectively assisting displaced workers. Students at the bottom of the class are dropping back compared to high achievers, and hence are further away from having the skills needed for high skill jobs. This is where our thinking needs to improve in the next decade.