Foreword from the Future Foundation
As report author for the Friends Provident Visions of Britain 2020 project, I am delighted to introduce the first chapter of a preview of our lives in 2020. This is the first of six chapters looking at life in the next decade.
The Future Foundation’s role is to anticipate the changing attitudes and behaviours of the people of this country. Throughout 2010, we will be working in partnership with Friends Provident to create a vivid portrait of British citizens in 2020. We will explore and illuminate three broad themes throughout this year as we enter a new decade. Our first theme is the nature of work and we will anticipate 2020 through a report in two chapters.
To create this report, we’ve combined a number of different methodologies with the aim of building the most accurate view of the future. We’ve surveyed the opinion of 1,000 representative Britons and have examined their opinions in greater detail by using focus groups. We’ve interviewed several employment experts to gain their insight into the workplace of 2020. They are:
- Dr Barrie Hopson, Owner of the Ashling Partnership
- Michael Jenkins, Chief Executive at the Roffey Park Institute
- Ian Brinkley, Programme Director - Knowledge Economy, The Work Foundation
- Adrian Furnham, Professor of Psychology, University College London
- Lynsey Brookes, Employment Policy Advisor at the Federation of Small Businesses
Finally, we have combined expert opinion in our ‘Delphi Panel’. This is a way of aggregating expert opinion to create a consensus on what the future will look like. The additional experts who contributed to this are:
- Bernard Brown, Partner, Head of Business, KPMG
- Guy Bailey, Senior Policy Advisor at the CBI
- David Amos, Senior Policy Advisor at the Cabinet Office
- Graham White, Director of Human Resources at Westminster City Council
Barry Clark, Future Foundation
London, 16 February 2010
