The future of work is being debated by enterprise leaders and economics gurus worldwide.  With digital advancements, AI, automation and the gig economy, the pace of change is accelerating, creating uncertainty for job roles and job security.  The new working landscape is evolving at an unprecedented rate, forcing business leaders to explore new business models that better integrate man and machine. With a greater flow of knowledge, creativity, collaboration and connectivity, the transformation from workplace to ‘exchange space’ will continue and organisations that embrace the digital age will be best placed to outpace their peers and capture new markets.

Sindhudurg Consulting thrive in helping their client’s future-proof their organisations to meet the challenges of the next generation working life.  Please browse this website to discover some factors governing change with strategies that Sindhudurg Consulting can enable your organisation to adopt and adapt to be ready for the future.

EY Global Chief Innovation Officer Jeff Wong states that technology is driving much of the change, but process and people are a critical component to innovation.  Organisations need to interrogate the interface between technology and the individual and to look at re-skilling and aligning a new workforce which can work alongside machines in a way that complements, not competes, to achieve greater value.

Artificial intelligence and automation will play a significant part in reshaping the workforce but the fear of machines leading to job losses, termed ‘automation anxiety’, is misplaced.  Machines will not displace human beings but complement them, either directly or indirectly, with the objective of increased output and productivity.  Technology creates demands for new skills to support automation, such as IT security and data analysis.  This technology shift will prompt organisations to consider what skills are higher value?  Non-routine jobs that require cognitive knowledge, social intelligence and creativity are less easily replicated by computers or off-shore resources. These non-routine jobs will remain the areas for potential future growth.

Leadership development programmes, involving top executives in learning initiatives can lead to dramatically transformative models, demonstrating that different skill sets are required to cope with technological changes. The rapid implementation of intelligent technologies and humans working together in new ways, coined ‘applied intelligence’, offers huge opportunity to drive new growth. Leaders in the digital age need to experiment around the interface of machine and human and use innovation to create the right culture for humans and intelligent machines that allows them to collaborate, rather than co-exist.  Business leaders must align their workforces to new business models and invest in innovative re-skilling programs if they are to capture increasing returns.

HR must play their part in the re-education of the workforce and supporting staff through the uncomfortable process, reassuring them that automation and AI will create digital fluency where the sum of man and machine is greater. Finding the right people to sit alongside changes to technology infrastructure to bridge the gap between machine and customer and building a data-centric team to support digital investment to turn insights in to actionable data, are amongst the challenges they must rise to.

To equip employees at all levels to work with intelligent machines and scaling up, companies should invest in innovative forms of re-skilling. This broadening of the talent continuum gives employees an opportunity to engage in a multi-channel workforce strategy that leverages a mix of traditional full-time employees, joint ventures, contractors, freelancers, crowds and robots.  

Agile organisations need to assess and reassess the mix of human and machine talent as an essential element of their business and strategic planning, knowing that getting it right could significantly affect their productivity, competitiveness and positioning.

The flexibility to create and disband project teams through a contingent workforce lends agility and competitive advantage through reduced overhead. Leveraging team-based models and decision-making protocols rather than building traditional hierarchical business models is allowing successful organisations to reap the benefit of this new working model. Sourcing multi-disciplinary teams with the ability to augment, reduce or adapt disciplines with no downtime, leads to greater capability to facilitate changes in project requirements and supports the team working model. Agile companies can rapidly shape new business models, improve output quality and manage costs.  These new alternative talent models lend themselves to new management styles that allow organisational leaders to take better advantage of team-based decision-making. 

Innovative platforms are emerging allowing candidates to constantly keep their profile available for new job opportunities, with real-time data and actionable insights for job-matching. Hiring will become faster with companies having greater accessibility to talent and the ability to measure job compatibility as well as intelligence, desirable personality traits, problem solving ability and other assessment.  New tools are evolving to help recruiters find the best talent for their organisations with recruitment led by data driven insights and multi-level candidate profiling with greater transparency into job applicants through a combination of social media tools, video and psychometric data. 

Organisations must invest in learning as a culture and look to their recruiters to better understand future job requirements, pre-skilling applicants for progressive roles, if they are to encourage digital fluency. Workers should make education a part of their career, ensuring versatility in their chosen discipline through knowledge assimilation and social skills to offer them the best advantage for continuous work.     

In considering transferable skills and job mobility, organisations can create a better employee experience, reward and recognition for an employee, driving brand loyalty and better talent retention and advantage. 

Organisations that can capture the potential value unlocked by technology and unprecedented data availability are anticipated to outpace their peers.  In harnessing a mix of data, technology and people, untapped markets can be explored through creating new opportunities. Data-driven business models that focus on customer value creation by relying on new data streams, technologies and human talent can redefine the competitive market.  Fully integrating human skills to leverage soft skills, such as social interaction, creative thinking and complex problem solving, can help to scale impact and accelerate growth. Technology should be viewed not only as a way to create efficiencies and cut costs but as a way to unleash exponential growth in abundant markets. 

David and Goliath have co-existed in the business world for centuries and the emergence of nimble enterprises demonstrate that Exponential Organisations will not monopolise the digital landscape.  Start-up initiatives that embrace digital transformation and focus on changes consumer needs will skilfully navigate the technological minefield to emerge successful.