Experiences and expectations of Work and Education are changing, resulting in a mix of new opportunities and dangers.

The worlds of work and education are experiencing seismic shifts as globalisation and new technologies have changed the nature of labour markets and altered people’s expectations and experiences. While this has increased the ability of economies and companies to respond to changing circumstances, it has often been at the expense of individual workers’ welfare.

Careering

Careers have fragmented as people follow a variety of zigzagging paths to pursue and meet their changing goals.

Because companies are no longer able to guarantee permanent employment the concept of a job for life has become an anachronism. Careers are no longer about progressing through one company but about jumping between jobs as and when the need or opportunity arrives. As a result employees are less loyal towards their employers and more concerned with developing their own skills and experience base. While this motivates some workers to give 110 per cent in order to maximise the opportunities offered by each employer, for others it means that jobs are always engaged in with one eye to the next opportunity.

Flattened hierarchies

Hierarchies within organisations have flattened, giving workers more autonomy but also more stress.

Technological advances mean hierarchies within organisations have been flattened to create more efficient systems that concentrate time and energy on creative problem solving. This has put greater focus on the utilisation of networks to carry out tasks both inside and outside of organisations. Unfortunately this has also increased the amount of work that many employees are expected to manage, and left managerial systems so lean that they are frequently overloaded with work when the unexpected happens (as it often does). Many countries are working longer hours as a result and engaging in a continuing debate on how their people can balance their work and family issues and whose responsibility it is to manage the balancing.

Changing work

More people in both developed and developing countries are engaged in the service sector.

Technological advances mean that the type of work people engage in has changed. Manufacturing jobs have been moving to developing countries due to cheaper wages for decades, leaving the service sector as the principle employer in many developed countries. However, many service sector jobs are now also being outsourced as higher levels of education in countries such as India means the same tasks can be performed for a fraction of the cost. To survive, companies have to focus on ever more intangible goods, such as consumer or brand experiences, to differentiate themselves from the competition, requiring a new set of skills from employees.

The response

People’s mindsets and social protocols are changing as a result of the seismic shifts within the world of work.

Education has also had to change in response to these seismic shifts. More and more people across the world are entering education and staying there for longer. People are additionally re-engaging with education throughout their lives as they retrain themselves in response to the latest developments. The new mindsets, social protocols and enterprises resulting from these developments have an effect far beyond their origin in the workplace, making the evolving world of work one of the most fascinating to explore.