Executive summary
An introduction to the second report in the Visions of Britain 2020 series.
We have found a number of stark changes between the workforce of today and the workforce of 2020. By 2020 people management will be a much more demanding task – in measurement, in motivation and in maintaining a sense of what the organisation is.
Our research into the workforce of 2020 shows that three types of worker will make up the majority of the working population by 2020: graduate workers, sandwich-generation workers and elderly workers. As well as discussing the pressures on each of these audiences, our report shows that the leaders of companies will face new and very demanding challenges by 2020. Challenges that require completely new skills. This report illuminates disruptive change in four areas:
- Greying of the workforce. Older workers will hold all the aces (and most of the knowledge) while inexperienced graduates will need to become more enterprising to find work.
- More money, more problems. For our worker of 2020, money has become less important. In the backlash of the banking crisis bonuses have become less popular and packages are simpler.
- (In)flexible working. Flexible working doesn’t solve all our problems – indeed we imagine it will mean longer hours. For many of us, financial pressures mean that we’d rather work longer hours and earn more.
- Unproductive metrics. Business feels compelled to create metrics to measure the value of what it does, and what its people do. By 2020 more enlightened companies will recognise that measuring the knowledge economy may actually limit it, at the cost of creativity.
