Case in point: Future of work

Abstract

Old Definition of Work:- Institutions around the world have been built around the model of scalable efficiency. Companies measure their efficiency based on the Return on Assets achieved year on year. This concept of organisation suited the needs and requirements of previous century where the transactional costs with external entities were higher. Thus, creation of institutions or organisations made it is easier to coordinate activities between individuals under one roof and the number of transactions also decreased. Work has been defined in this model of scalable efficiency as 1) Tightly defined task – Task decomposition led to work being distributed across employees in a clear and concise manner. 2) Highly Standardized – Standard Operating Procedures and Manuals were created, and it was ensured that any form of tacit knowledge whatsoever is removed. 3) Highly integrated tasks – Seamless coordination between departments and individual employees became important.

Work in Industry 4.0:- Automation has the likely prospect of 5 million jobs disappearing by 2020. As industries become more capital intensive, unskilled jobs as well as technically skilled personnel (white collar workers) could lose their jobs to automation. Ex- Number crunching can be replaced by automation, securities brokers in the trading area of commerce banks may be replaced by technology. The “Factory of the Future” is going to use advanced technologies such as advanced data analytics, Big data, cloud computing, Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence to increase companies’ productivity. These innovations are going to be capital intensive and their implementation will depend upon the comparison between productivity addition/cost of technology with a similar parameter for labour. At the same time, new forms of work such as digital nomads and crowd workers are getting developed. There has been a significant decrease in transaction costs as employees connect using telecommunications. Digital nomads work remotely and unlike traditional workers are not loyal to a single company. Similarly, crowd working has increased the level of outsourcing with companies preferring to outsource non-core tasks of industries to online employees than a permanent one. New Definition of Work:- The work in Industry 4.0 should be redefined to incorporate the new demands and challenges of Industry 4.0. First, if efficiency and productivity remain the main parameters of performance measure, then we don’t stand a chance against the robots. Automation will make creativity, intuition and compassion far more important. Instead of mental and physical effort, social factors are going to be more significant. Employers will require their employees to be more adaptable to the dynamic environment and unlike old days, perform a wide range of jobs. At an individual level, multi-skill development is going to be of prime importance. Thus, the new definition of work and workplace is going to be broader and shall may also include parameters like diversity and inclusion.