Introduction:
With the emergence of the Corona virus pandemic otherwise known as Covid_19, the first quarter of the year 2020 has delivered a rude awakening to the whole world particularly the ‘work’ environment all over the world.
While the work environment of some first world countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, Singapore, South Korea, China and Japan may not have been too taken by surprise since they are not only responsible for innovating and fully embracing the internet and the world wide web, but many of them have since started exploring Artificial intelligence (machine intelligence or intelligent machines) to see how they can be used to replace human beings in work places, many work environments of third countries like Nigeria have consistently remained on the peripherals barely accessing the vast potentials and opportunities made available by the internet and the world wide net (www).
WORK DEFINED
According to the Global Language Network (GLN) in www.thegln.org, the origin of the word “work” is closely related to “torture”. The oxford dictionary however defines work as an activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result. It is an effort, labor; or toil directed towards producing or accomplishing something. It isa productive or operative activity usually embarked upon, as a means of earning a livelihood. This could be within a private or public-sector enterprise. For example, on a week day, a typical paid employee wakes up in the morning, freshens up, gets dressed, eats breakfast and goes to his office, to work. After spending the day at their job, they go home, eat dinner, and do other things before retiring for the day. In this sense, work can be anything – construction, teaching a class, treating patients, driving a bus, typing documents on the computer, managing a business etc.
OFFICE WORK & EMPLOYEES EVOLUTION
Jacob Morgan in his book: “The Future of Work: Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization” succinctly states that work, as we know it is dead and that the only way forward is to challenge convention around how we work, how we lead, and how we build our companies. Employees which were once thought of expendable cogs are the most valuable assets that any organization has.
The Past & Future Transition of Work
S/N THE PAST THE FUTURE
1. Work 9-5 Work anytime
2. Work in Corporate office Work anywhere
3. Use Company equipment Use any device
4. Focused on Inputs Focused on outputs
5. Climb the corporate ladder Create Your own ladder
6. Predefined work Customized work
7. Relies on email Relies on Collaboration Technologies
8. Hoards Information Share Information
9. No Voice Can become a leader
10. Focused on knowledge Focused on adaptive learning
11. Corporate learning and teaching Democratized learning and teaching
Table 1: Evolution of the employee Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2014/09/02/the-evolution-of-the-employee/
1. Truly flexible work
According to Upwork – Future of Work Report, hiring managers are expecting 168% increase in the amount of work done by the flexible talent in 10 years. Managers are aware that it isn’t just how many hours you sit in a chair, but how much you produce. There is no longer a need for most employees to work from an office or to work 9-5. Unilever is doing a great job of this where they are rolling out this concept of (what they call) “agile work” to their 175,000+ employees around the world. MTN along with many corporate organizations in Nigeria worked from home during the lockdown resulting from the Covid_19 pandemic.
2. Work in corporate office vs work anywhere
All workers working in corporate offices from 9am-5pm is now a passing norm where in the past, workers were expected to compulsorily sit in the office and work till 5pm. With the emergence of the understanding that it’s not just how many hours a worker puts in while sitting in the office from morning till evening, but how much work actually gets done. Again, this was proved possible both in public and private organizations in Nigeria during the lockdown, when officers of certain grade levels were asked to come to work at home while some others were instructed to work from work at home.
3. Use any device
Gone are the days of company sanctioned phones and computers. This is becoming obsolete. Instead, the future employee will be able to use any device they chose to get their jobs done. Companies like Ford, IBM, and Intel have been among those leading the way in allowing their employees to use many personally owned devices like tablets, Palmtops, laptops, touch screen devices, pagers, hard drives, flash drives, smart watches, smart phones like iPhones, androids etc. for work.
4. Focused on Inputs vs Focused on outputs
In the past, the focus was on what is put in, operated on by the system or the number of hours clocked in; however, for the future, the focus is on outputs which is the amount of what is produced by an employee. For example, how much work a staff was able to achieve within a day or weekly.
5. The death of “climbing the corporate ‘ladder”
When you start working for a new company, usually you start off at the bottom of the proverbial totem pole. You have to climb the ladder for a few years in the hopes that one day you will reach a position that you are happy with. In other words, you begin for example, as an admin assistant, admin officer, admin coordinator, then admin manager, senior admin manager, admin director, and so on, and so forth. However, with the emergence of the freelancer economy, which at its simplest, is made up of the buying and selling of the skills and services of freelancers who basically are high-skilled professionals that are self-employed, operate independently but take on contract work for companies and organizations to provide their expertise on specific projects, and with collaboration platforms, and new management approaches; employees are now starting to shape how they work as well as their career path inevitably creating their own ladder of career growth into the business they freelance for.
6. Anyone can be a leader-All Employees could also be Leaders
As mentioned above employees were thought of as being expendable cogs which meant they had no voice within the organization. Once again, collaboration technologies play a crucial role as they give any employee within an organization the chance to be a recognized leader by sharing their ideas, thoughts, concepts, etc. Any employee that is able to build a following with the content they share internally is capable of being a leader; something which was not possible before especially not at the scale that collaboration platforms allow today. Think of how many people have become leaders as a result of social platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube or Facebook, now employees can do the same inside of their companies. Think about the power of the influencer’s voice on social media platforms, like Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. Imagine having that same voice with millions of followership inside a company? The advantages are enormous.
7. Predefined Work vs Customized Work
Were in the past, work was previously predefined, limited or established in advance, it will become customized to suit a particular individual or personal specifications or the task.
8. Relies on email vs Relies on Collaboration Technologies
Internally, email is also shifting from being the primary form of communication to being the secondary form of communication while collaboration technologies are taking over. These are web applications that allow users to create, analyze, exchange, and share information in a collaborative and interactive manner like internet forums (also known as discussion boards or message boards) which serve as a discussion platform on the internet to facilitate as well as manage online messages, online chats which is an online discussion platform that facilitates as well as manage real-time messages, instant messaging, Google hangouts, video conferencing, Skype and Zoom which focus on enabling business communication etc., Crowd sourcing which making it possible for work to be done simultaneously by many people — no matter where they are is also a form of collaborative technology. These tools came in very handy for many companies and organizations during the Covid_19 lockdown where emails weren’t just able to meet organizational communication needs
9. Hoards Information vs. Share Information -Sharing is caring or Sharing is Growing
Employees in the past, use to hoard information and keep it to themselves. There was no incentive, scalable way, or reason for employees to share what they know with others. Knowledge is power and if employees keep their ideas to themselves then they have the power. Employees were also not encouraged to share or think creatively; their job was merely to show up to work and perform their task. That was it! For the future employee the exact opposite is true. Collaboration platforms are making it easy for employees to share information and organizations are creating incentives to do this ranging from internal incubators to entrepreneur programs to open innovation programs.
10. Knowledge vs adaptive learning
Knowledge is now nothing more than a commodity. To the worlds smartest person, all you need to do is pull out your cell phone where you have access to anything you need to get answers to. This means that for the future employee it’s not knowledge that is the most important but the employee’s ability to learn new things and apply things learnt to new situations and scenarios that come up. In other words, always being able to learn how to learn and stay adaptable. This is far more important and valuable than what you “know. ” In other words, adaptive Learning is the Key.
11. Everyone is a teacher and a student:
In most organizations, if you need to learn something you go for training. If in developed countries, you sign up for and attend a class that may be a few days or a few weeks away. Today (again thanks to collaboration platforms) any employee can take out their cell phone and download a “how-to” for anything ranging from setting up a modem to programming something on excel. Simply being able to connect employees to each other provides a way for democratized learning and teaching in ways that was never possible in the past. Thanks to sites such as Udemy, Coursera, and Khan Academy, we have the ability to learn what we want to learn and teach what we are uniquely qualified to offer to others. Everyone is therefore a teacher and a student as no one has a monopoly of knowledge since access id readily available to any and everyone.
DOWNSIDES OF THE FUTURE OF WORK
While the future of work obviously provides numerous advantages for the work world, especially for high skilled experts and the teeming young population in Africa and other developing world, and for curtailing the huge costs of running and maintaining over loaded and bloated public and private sector workforce, the future of work still has its challenges especially for participating workers in third world and developing countries for whom, efficient and stable infrastructure is largely elusive. Basic public amenities and services like free internet supply, cost of technological tools and devices which are unaffordable due to high poverty levels, the challenge of international payments, perception of Africans, especially Nigerians as fraudulent, which deprives many of job prospects and finally, the lack of consistent power supply are lacking. Such challenges put freelancers at a disadvantage as they are unable to effectively compete, not being able to meet deadlines, or are forced to do so with alternative sources of power at exorbitant costs which affect the returns they earn from the jobs.
CONCLUSION
The above challenges not only negatively affect the future of work but put developing countries like Nigeria at a risk of not being able to be competitive, but also put the nation at a risk of being left behind or ostracized from global participation and relevance in this emerging sector. Obviously, we as a nation have a long way to go in other to remain globally relevant. To remain relevant and participate effectively, government needs to create an enabling environment for both our current workforce and teeming population of unemployed and underemployed Nigerians not only to maximize the vast opportunities inherent in the information age, knowledge, digital and freelancing economies.
Thank you
Dr. Chinedu Odebeatu ACIPM, FCE, KSC
Business development Manager
First bank of Nigeria, Nnewi BDO
