Work In 2030 Review

In the article “What Will Work Look Like in 2030”, the author proposes four extreme examples of alternative future worlds of work: The Red, Green, Blue and Yellow World. The Red World thrives off of innovation and small businesses grow and thrive. In the Green World, caring and humanity is at the forefront, driven by ethics and morality. The Blue World is where the powerful become more powerful, and workers are continuously monitored, where the best are fought over like sports stars. In the Yellow World, you see a rejection of technology in favor of human driven options.

At first, the Red world sounds amazing with, “Technology allow[ing] tiny businesses to tap into the vast reservoirs of information, skills, and financing that were formerly available only to large organizations…'' However, the idea that full-time employment would only be 10% of a company is a figment of imagination. The amount of training it takes to fully immerse a contract worker at my current company is immense. It takes months to understand one piece of one department. This is one of the many reasons that it would be nearly impossible to have temporary and contract workers as 90% of the workforce. The cost to develop the skill set and having them work independently would not be efficient over time. The Red World would work better if it was exclusively pushing for small companies- allowing all startups the same resources as the chosen Silicon Valley few who ever get a chance of an IPO.

The Green World is a fantasy playing in the mind of every millennial. Work when you want, where you want, save the planet, and be friends with the CEO. For me, this is not a realistic endeavor for 2030, but possibly in 5 generations the world will change, and humanity will evolve. This world would be an ideal one to work in. It would allow growth without stepping over the little guy.

The Blue World has a hyper reliance on capitalist greed and global corporations own all the best talent and intellectual property. Here we would see about a top 10% of people getting the only good jobs left, treated like gods by their employers in an egocentric workplace. This is not a world I would like to live and work in.

The Yellow World is not far off from where we are today. Unions are failing as companies get more and more money to fight them. People have already been replaced by machines, and non-skilled positions are becoming harder to find. Humanity is valued in this world and fair pay is put above all else; however, it is an unrealistic future unless executives take drastic pay cuts.

As for high performance actions for the new World of work in 2030, I would suggest that companies focus on leveraging internal employee potential. This strategy would eliminate the high cost of replacing employees.

You can test their skill set in multiple departments to find the best role where they perform above and beyond expectations. When hiring a new employee, you do not know if they will be the best fit for their first position. This is not the employees’ fault if the tasks are outside of their wheelhouse. Your goal as an employer should be to fit each employee in the optimum sector within the business.

Secondly, using external partnerships would allow the weight to be distributed off of your internal team to a dedicated outsourced group of individuals who are hyper focused on a specific task. This would cut the costs of training your team to reach the same skill level and it would increase your businesses throughput. This transfer of knowledge between the partnered group and your own company would also encourage inventiveness within your own organization. Both of these actions would certainly add value to the organization.