Insights from several articles on the Evolution of Organizations from 2019 through to 2022  

We will try to be constructively critical of some of the material, in particular Liberty Global’s Deloitte 2021 take on the Future of Work discussion paper (Liberty Global, 2021)[i].  It’s important to note that the report was released in March of 2021 which was a little over the 1 year anniversary of the Covid19 pandemic and before much data and understanding of the situation were more widely available and open to distribution.

The over-arching theme in all the papers and videos can be boiled down to a generalized function of David Caughlin et al’s Job Analysis, Job Design, and Job Crafting video and accompanying books[ii]  (Bauer, Erdoggan, & Caughlin, 2020).  What we see in Deloitte’s study as well as the World Economic Forum report[iii] (Schwab & Zahidi, 2020) is more a reaction to the pandemic, rather than a symptom of future of work.  There is also the fact that at least from the Deloitte paper these studies focused primarily on the impact of the pandemic on a very small group of senior level interviewees – 26 – relying on their anecdotal and personal experiences rather than collecting the information directly from those employees who report to the interviewees.

Another point that was neglected in both Deloitte and WEF papers is the geographic and economic significance of these studies because most locations reacted differently to many other parts of the world to the same pandemic (Mathieu, et al., 2020)[iv].  One cannot apply the same future jobs conclusions to Sweden as they would to China for example.  Or USA to Poland etc.

Finally, some of the themes are absolutely logical, altruistic, virtuous, noble, and compassionate.  They are also ironic and can even be viewed as hypocritical.  Allow me to explain, WEF and Deloitte both punt the importance of equality and diversification – they give examples of age and cultural backgrounds; age mainly because of the difficulty of upskilling, and cultural backgrounds more in terms of remotely employing developing nation candidates.  But there is more to it; there is diversity to include more women in some sectors that are male dominated; there is also ethnic diversity; LGBTQ support and inclusion; age gaps to name a few.

The challenges begin when two of these themes clash.  For example, women in Pakistan will not have the same rights as women in France; whether we agree with Pakistan’s stance or not, that is part of their culture and as a tolerant society, France should accept it, right?  So if a French company decides to remotely employ a woman in Pakistan, they will struggle to a) find one, and b) expect her to succeed in a culture and society that is not at the same stage as France’s in relation to women’s level of freedom of expression and support.  The other issue becomes values, and speaking anecdotally as a person who has lived in strict societies, even a woman in Pakistan will struggle to accept, for example, a LGBTQ colleague and may tolerate them for the sake of earning a salary for her family.  So the clash occurs when one has to decide that if we are accepting of other cultures for the sake of diversity, then we should also accept their stance towards certain diversity issues that are unacceptable yet for them; which ironically goes against the future of work guidance or assumptions provided but the WEF and Deloitte papers, and pretty much all of social media.

The conclusion is that

1. Remote work is not as easy as it theoretically sounds;
2. Future of Work cannot be only seen through the lens of ‘first world’ perception and opinion.

Do we tolerate intolerance?  And if we don’t, wouldn’t that mean we are speaking against ourselves and our values?  But if we do, then that goes against our values as well.

My direction would be to  keep it logical and functional and focus by stripping out all the noise mentioned above and go back to the roots of what makes a job a job.  This is why I feel Job Analysis, Design and Crafting are the main important ingredients which all serve one purpose in the end: sales = revenue = Salaries = food and shelter = modern-day living.  Create job diversity by providing the freedom to choose how, where, what and why you want to work without enforcement of another nation’s values and ideologies.  That is true freedom.

How will these factors affect our own work

We have worked internationally and have been fortunate to live and travel to many parts of the world from developing nations to established nations (Africa and South America, to Canada and Finland).  We worry about the future of work and its effect on human nature if it’s going to be predominantly remote and via ‘the Metaverse’.  At the same time, We are guilty of being quite excited about the technology; how amazing would it be to potentially be able to transport yourself into the digital world of your making?!

Having been in the consumer goods and services business with a higher focus on manufacturing and supply chain optimization, we can confidently predict that until all manufacturing becomes robotic, the only effects we will feel will continue to be based on political disruptions.  China’s zero-covid policy either must end or China will suffer the exodus of international business manufacturing[v].  This has already begun, if you reach out to your colleagues in your networks, you will find many projects involving diversifying production locations to CIS/European sites, South America, North Africa, and the \’sub-continent\’.  We have ourselves done feasibility studies on American, Canadian, and South American sites – which was nowhere to be seen in the WEF or Deloitte studies.  Those locations will require many locally seated personnel who cannot work fully remotely.  \’What about minerals and materials for production\’ you ask; read any future tech paper as well as UN and, ironically, WEF, and white papers like the one from Compensate, and investments are headed towards recycling existing waste for manufacturing in local sites.  That is in part what we plan and studying consult on.

Other impacts on future of work in the category of soft careers, like Software engineering, UI testing, Full Stack developing, graphic design and digital marketing, and anything that can be done with a good connection can be performed remotely unless it’s too expensive; so, they will employ people where it’s cheap.  This can become detrimental to quality, and it has already – look at how buggy software is on launch today in 2023 vs 2006 when even though things were less complicated, time to market was much longer.  We believe that the future of work will become more remote for first world countries, but it will not change much if at all for the rest of the globe.  You may add to the futures story from here…

 

---

 

[i] Dagelet, Frans; Havas, Attila; Wevers, Marjolein; Deloitte, 2021. The Future of Work is Here, URL: https://www.libertyglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2021-03-Liberty-Global-Deloitte-Future-of-Work-discussion-paper.pdf, accessed 8 November 2022

[ii] Caughlin, David Ellis; Sep 6 2020, Job Design and Job Crafting; Online Video; URL : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkqtuErFRzk. Accessed 10 November 2022

[iii] Schwab, Klaus; Zahidi, Saadia; October 2020, The Future of Jobs Report; URL https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2020.pdf. Accessed 6 November 2022.

[iv] Edouard Mathieu, Hannah Ritchie, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Cameron Appel, Charlie Giattino, Joe Hasell, Bobbie Macdonald, Saloni Dattani, Diana Beltekian, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser (2020) – \”Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)\”. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus,  [Online Resource].

[v] Sharma, Ruchir, October 24 2022; China’s economy will not overtake the US until 2060, if ever, Financial Time Article; URL: https://www.ft.com/content/cff42bc4-f9e3-4f51-985a-86518934afbe. Accessed 11 Nov 2022