The Future of Work: What Does the Next 100 Years for Businesses and Employees Look Like?

In order to predict the future of work in America, we must first review and learn from the work previously done in America. It is important to learn from history, to ensure that the same mistakes are not continuously made. 100 years ago, in 1920, the majority of individuals entering the workforce were farmers or skilled craftsmen—factories were of a huge benefit to society, and people were offered jobs in increasing numbers (Encylopedia.com, 2019). The installation, set-up, and creation of each and every item coming out of a variety of facilities was done by a human being, and not necessarily safely. Safety concerns were not taken into consideration, just as long as the job got done. Over the last 100 years, things have changed dramatically. There are now safety parameters, and requirements that facilities must adhere to in order to stay in business. Facilities have even sometimes chosen to automate certain tasks due to their potential safety concern posed to individuals. Thus, this opens up a whole new world—what should we expect to be automated? Will this impact our work lives? Will we be able to have a better work/life balance? That is what we will review within this paper.

Automation of the Work Force

Over the course of the last few years, it is estimated that approximately 20% of the workforce has already been automated (Press, 2019), and there is still many more tasks waiting in the wings to be automated in the future. Press (2019) says that according to their sources automation can actually be extremely dangerous and compares it to “a chainsaw being in untrained hands.” With automation comes many complexities and potential options, especially when one such example of automation went horribly wrong when a plane began to be uncontrollable and the cockpit crews were unable to understand what the plane was doing—thus, it is stated that even as things become automated we need not forget that we need humans to run these automations (Press, 2019). Taking humans out of the mix could be extremely dangerous. While automation itself, has issues to resolve… what does this look like for humans and their jobs?

Press (2019) predicts that there will no dramatic job loses, however, individuals will experience a change in the content and quality of their jobs. While some may actually enjoy this fact, some may actually not prefer this due to the ideology of their preferred career dramatically changing. The work life balance is expected to change to a balance based on task requirements, rather than a standard set schedule in the coming years (Gourami, 2019). Gourami (2019) does not expect that people will necessarily work less, but instead it will require that some periods are busier while other periods can be half days, vacation days, and family days.

What Types of Jobs are More Resistant to Automation and Why?

There are a multitude of jobs that reasonably could not be made to be automated. What kinds of jobs are those? Well, they are the jobs that require a personal touch in nature. Someone to direct an individual’s path or provide that one-on-one attention necessary for human growth. Teachers and educators, programmers and system analysts, healthcare workers and carers, social workers, lawyers, project managers, designers, and artists, (Mitchell, n.d.) would not be able to be automated due to the level of care and expertise required to make society function. You could even assume that law enforcement officers, military service members, daycare providers, human resource personnel and more could not be automated. While tasks performed by these individuals could be modified, the job itself would need to be performed by a human being for a multitude of reasons—safety precautions, legal purposes, career growth, and much more. In an automated world, things can get very lonely if we never have interactions with other individuals.

How Will Automation and Continued Technological Advances Impact How You Work?

This learner recently changed careers from a career in Human Resources for Law Enforcement, to being self-employed as a writer. This learner understands that through the future of change, Human Resources tasks or even law enforcement tasks could be made to be automated, as long as they are still run by humans. Personnel reports could be made automated, screening resumes could be made automated, but having a career growth conversation with an employee, or doing an investigation into policy violations would need a personal touch. However, one could argue that investigations could seemingly be made to be automated also by having a multiple-choice selection and answer and then being given the action necessary to perform regarding the discipline—however, this learner would want to explore this option more before pitching it a company or automation service.

As a writer, it would be nearly impossible to automate the writing of non-fiction and fiction novels, or even poems. Engineers and programmers have explored the idea of artificial intelligence, but it takes more than that to create an imaginary or romantic story plot. A computer will not necessarily be able to understand romance and all the intricate problems faced by lovers in order to create a compelling story that readers will love. Even if so, the editing process would require a real human to review the novel prior to it being published to ensure that the story makes sense. This learner could see the editing process being made to be automated in some fashion, much like Microsoft does through it’s editor review process, but the writing would need to be done by a person.

Why One or More of the Employability Skills are Essential for Remaining Competitive in the 21st-century Workplace?

To focus on one singular skill that would be important to take into the future of the workplace, this learner would suggest initiative. Reason being is that as things are continually changing, there will be new thoughts, new ideas, and thus new problems and new challenges. Employers will need people that can respond and react to change quickly, and someone that is willing to step up and make those changes. If an individual has a hard time formulating ideas, or thoughts and will not follow through on required tasks, then it would be hard for an employer to keep on an employee that they seemingly have to “hand-hold” through every workday.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the future of the workforce could go a multitude of ways. The preferred way to handle the ever-changing workforce and the automation of mundane tasks, would be to always ensure that a human is present in case something were to go wrong. It would also be beneficial to have multiple abilities to override a system in case of malfunction or other challenges or changes that could come up. It is also extremely important to not forget about the people aspect of the workforce, the better work life balance, with a heightened sense of tasks requirements at a time, will leave individuals following careers that they are extremely passionate about—because during these times of high task requirements, if you are not doing what you love, you will quickly lose steam and will fizzle out.

References

• Encyclopedia.com. (2019) The Business of America: The Economy in the 1920s. Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/business-america-economy-1920s

• Gourami, S. (2019) This is How the Future of Work-Life Balance Will Look Like. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/soulaimagourani/2019/05/03/this-is-how-the-future-of-work-life-balance-will-look-like/?sh=589f672034ce

• Press, G. (2019) 2020 Predictions About Automation and The Future of Work From Forrester. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2019/10/30/2020-predictions-about-automation-and-the-future-of-work-from-forrester/?sh=724e75dd1318