Executive Summary
Our research indicates that the workplace of 2020 will be starkly different to that of today. These changes will be structural and permanent and will create a new workplace which will offer opportunity to many. This report unearths five of the most important changes:
- The Elite and the Excluded. A fast widening gap between the skilled and the unskilled.
- Elite Employee Power. The balance of power shifts decisively towards elite workers.
- Invaluable Training. The benefits of training will be appreciated by elite workers – the cost of it may have to be shared by all.
- The 2020 Labour Cycle. Outsourcing will continue, but the number of foreign workers will diminish.
- The Measure of Knowledge. New measures of assessing employee productivity will be critical in the 2020 knowledge economy.
Envisage the workplace of 2020. The most striking difference is that there are more skilled and highly-educated workers. The tightening labour market (such a feature of the years from 2012 to 2020) has forced up wages and at the same time employers have worked hard to retain and develop their ‘core’ permanent employees. The skilled employees who fill the desks in this workplace have enjoyed a decade of opportunity as their bargaining power has steadily grown. Most line managers are aware that the quality of people management is a critical skill.
On this spring morning in 2020, there are more people present in the office today than is normally the case. Many workers are here for specialist training from dedicated and highly-qualified training staff. Attendance at the course is not mandatory and it doesn’t need to be. Staff are here because they want to be – almost all recognise that they need to develop their skills if they are to maintain their privileged positions and lifestyles.
Many are fully aware just how privileged they are – there is a growing group of younger people who have struggled to find work since leaving school. With few qualifications, the options of this group are limited. A range of both employer and government retraining schemes have mitigated the problem but youth unemployment is an ongoing political and social issue. This has had the effect of emphasising the value of education to young people and their parents.
Back in the workplace, monthly metrics are being gathered by what used to be the human resources function. These metrics monitor the productivity of the employees through measuring the quality of knowledge and ideas within the organisation. Management bonuses are based, in part, on these metrics.
As our staff return home on that spring evening in 2020, they reflect on how their working lives have changed – their active and continuing pursuit of knowledge has been rewarded in an economy that is under-supplied with talent. Consequently there is also an opportunity for less qualified individuals to ‘cross the divide’ and to become knowledge workers. Becoming a member of the elite worker group requires not just knowledge but the desire to gain and develop knowledge.
Compared to ten years ago, elite workers enjoy a more supportive management style and more flexibility. For the skilled and educated work has changed and changed for the better.
