FUTURE|WORK

The Future Of Work Will Be Determined Through The Shape Of An ‘S’

The new ‘S’ shape is determined to rule in the future of work

Learn, unlearn and relearn- S shape

The future of work is completely changing and is going to take a new shape after the pandemic is completely over.

The future will follow this pattern in the S curve -LEARN UNLEARN AND RELEARN

While many people lamented over the fact that due to Covid-19 they could not go out anywhere, some people loved the idea of work from home.

My son and daughter-in-law were both working from home. My daughter-in-law said, working from home was a boon for her. Like family, they had never had lunch at the same table. Now both the daughters have lunch with their parents and enjoy family time.

Moreover, she had invested her time in learning a foreign language and doing additional courses to be a better teacher. In other words, upgrading knowledge, unlearning old systems and acquiring new skill sets are good for the job.So she said she had to learn, unlearn and relearn.

S shape of careers

What now? What do you think of the future? Where do we go from here? I got no answers so I set about thinking. What will be the future of work besides learning, unlearning, and relearning? Will some systems change? or methods of employment become different?

I asked an employee of a multinational software company what do you think about the future. He told me that in his team people had objected to coming back into brick and mortar offices and said that they would resign if asked to come back.

They were happy working from their hometown and did not want to disturb the household in any way. Let the children study in the same school and the wife teach in that school.

They would like to work from a remote area but were willing to travel whenever the need arose and go for meetings whenever they were held. He agreed that all work was not possible from remote areas.

The employers also have begun to think that if most of the work can be done from remote there is no point in buying property and investing money in such assets.

How do we define success? What is my next step in achieving success? Most careers will be in an S shape.

People will not define jobs by going up the career path in the same company. They will determine their convenience and change jobs more frequently. They will work if their conveniences are met. The new moto will be to consider comfort first before rising up as managing directors of the same company.

If an employee is willing to derive new skill sets the sky is the limit. He will prefer a company where he has autonomy even if the company is small it will not bother him. Thus he may move from small to a large organization and back again to a small and then again to a big one without any remorse that small organizations will not give perks to them.

The distinction of branding between small and big is likely to become narrow.

A career is not a sprint but a marathon and it will continue with leaps and bounds if a person is willing to continue to learn new things due to rapid change in technology.

Patience is the key so no one can go ahead if they lose out on the learning. In the attempt to try various roles, it’s easy to forget to take time to understand and learn.

In any new role, the learning curve is fast and increases quickly in the beginning but it gets saturated and reaches a plateau. The goal is to maximize learning from a role given to you, before deciding to move on to the next because again there will have to be learning and unlearning and relearning in the next job.

In today’s disruptive world, you also need to constantly learn, unlearn and re-learn. You must have the right qualifications to open new doors. If you do not have the ‘right’ qualification, the opportunity will not be available

Role of S in networks and technology of organizations

By networks, I mean that organizations in the future will have collaborations, amalgamations, acquisitions and the organization that you are working for may make several changes and turns and twists.

Networking will be useful to experiment with your expertise and find out information of value as to how other organizations are solving their problems and finding solutions. In the twists and turns of collaborations, you have always to manage and learn new things.

Amongst some technological changes we experienced, yesterday there were records, then we had cassettes, after that there were CDs and then now you have pen drives which are micro size.

We have also moved from typewriters to electric typewriters, computers to laptops and mobile phones.

Cars have moved from petrol to diesel and natural gas. In the new age, we are experiencing electric cars and driverless cars.

To be relevant in some of the new-age technologies to be adopted are artificial intelligence and machine learning, cybersecurity, data analytics, and robotics

Technology will keep on changing. What is new today will become old tomorrow. Relevance is the only answer to it finally.

The takeaways

• The goal of convenience: The first and foremost change that will be experienced in the work front is that people will take the convenient route to reach the top. They will change their direction several times to achieve this goal but they have to learn to be relevant in order to achieve this goal. They must learn, unlearn old systems and relearn and come up with new ideas.
• Learning new skills: People generally take up a job and learn fast but then saturation sets in. When this saturation stage happens they have to quickly unlearn what they are doing and adapt to new systems before they can change their career paths so they have to move in a serpentine manner and upskill themselves constantly.
• Collaborations and networks are the buzzwords today. There will be a fast-changing world now so it is important to have strong connections and ties in some organizations outside of the organization you work in. The main thing is that you have to keep yourself qualified with the new information that you get.
• Technology changes: Technology will keep on changing as it is dynamic in nature. It will move forward, get saturated and change direction forming an S. Everyone who wants to go ahead will have to adapt to this change.
• S shape of work: The S shape of the future will keep people on their toes as they cannot be saturated. They have to keep themselves qualified if they have to change jobs and be willing to learn, unlearn and relearn.

To conclude

The ‘S’ shape is the future of work as knowledge will increase fast, be saturated and move ahead again.

There will be a direction in the change of work and people will prefer convenience over direct straight career paths stagnating in one job.

There will be quick changes. One has to be relevant by having the right qualifications. To survive learn, unlearn and relearn with the new motto.

The future of work is bound to follow the ‘S’ Shape of work

Experiment, go ahead, saturate and change your direction, Move up again.

©Dr. Preeti Singh, 2021.