ONLINE: Arnaud Bacros: The Future of Work 

What will work look like in 2030. Are we still talking about ‘going to work’ or more about ‘doing the job’. And in the end ‘who is doing the job’ … Dell Technologies and the Institute of the Future, a non-profit Silicon Based Institute published the result of their research and Arnaud shared it with us during an online Zoom-call.

Guess it or not, most of the participants were very interested in the subject. Everybody feels we have arrived at an important milestone for what concerns working methods, enhancing efficiency while (re)finding work-life balance… How will we do this? 

Currently employees from Dell Brussels work for 95% from home. Talking about Dell in general, 30% of the workforce work from home.  

Recent studies however show that 5 to 10% of the employees work regularly remote of which 17% once every other week. This is not that much…why?

• Depends of the content of the job
• Lack of trust from employer
• People enjoy social contact, people miss the office

When talking about ‘work’ we are no longer talking about a ‘place’, today it could be anywhere, any time… “Work is not a place, it’s a combination of tasks and a series of skills” says Arnaud Bacros. 

The report by the Intitute of the Future focusses on 3 major facts:

1. New, emerging technologies are shaping the future. There are new ways of performing and collaborating. If you know 85% of the current jobs didn’t exist 10 years ago, we shouldn’t be surprised ‘re-skilling’ is booming.

2. Need for 3 major shifts in HR

• Make use of inclusive talent
• Empower the workforce
• AI fluency 70% of business leaders would welcome people partnering with machines/robots to surpass the human limitations 85% of business leaders predict people will learn new skills in-the-moment as the pace of change accelerates

Human and machine partnerships create optimal teams

Employees will collaborate differently and it will improve workforce productivity

In the future we will need AI ‘trainers’, ‘explainers’, ‘sustainers’

3. Dilemma’s: potential pitfalls:

• algorithmic bias (need for more diversity)
• Digital Skills Gap (need for continuous learning)
• Workers’ rights and protections

The expression Collaborative AI becomes very powerful.

Humans are capable of doing a job     -       A robot is capable of doing a task

For a job different skills are needed :

• Repetitive skills (will be heavily automated in the next years -> humans will supervise)
• Quantitative skills (50% automated – Human-Machine partnership)
• Functional skills (people skills will not be automated in the next 20-30 years)

Use new technology to add value to your job. We will become more powerful when embracing various ways of working and collaborating with e.g. robots.