What Does The Future Look Like?

Editor's Note: Today's post comes to us courtesy of guest contributor Chris Dobyns.

A few years ago I participated with a group of HR experts who were asked to speculate on what the disciplines of HR and Compensation would look like in 2025.  I believe this effort was prompted in part by the 10^th anniversary of a similar polling that was conducted and subsequently published in Workforce magazine in 1998.

Cracking Open the Time Capsule

I never saw any summary results published, but if those predictions are being held for a “final reveal” in 2025, I hope I’m still around to see it when that time comes.  As I remembered to retain my original predictions from back in 2010, I thought it would be fun to look at those now – since we’re half-way to our future-state year of 2025.

Workplace Disruptions Still To Come

A couple of years ahead of the now familiar term “gig economy”, I managed to correctly guess at the rise in the trend of the unaffiliated workers – although I didn’t equally consider how that trend might affect wages on a long-term basis.

The inherent value of teamwork and collaboration – and resulting innovation for business - continues, although technology has still not yet mitigated the less-desirable impacts of the lack of regular physical interaction, between employees who work virtually.

Global Business – Mergers and Spinoffs

There were certainly no shortage of mega-global mergers over the past several years (Dow Chemical/DuPont, Heinz/Kraft, CVS/Aetna, etc.), but none of my predicted nation-state mergers. 

The unexpected withdrawal of United Kingdom from the European Union (Brexit) in 2016, ran directly counter to the apparent economic and political benefits of membership. While not attributable to any small or simple set of factors, the UK decision may be indicative of a more general focus on greater nationalistic self-interests.

Technology, Cultural and Workforce Shifts

Advances in technology and robotics continue to accelerate, particularly in the forerunner areas to artificial intelligence such as machine learning, intelligent automation and robotic process automation (RPA).  Thus far, those advances have not yet resulted in wholesale job eliminations in the U.S.  Experts still consistently agree that 40 percent of the worldwide workforce (2.8 billion people) may need to be retrained for new jobs in the next 10 years due to job eliminations associated with improvements in technology. 

While inequitable wealth distribution continues to be a significant problem in some countries, a burgeoning middle class continues to expand rapidly– particularly in the largest emerging market economies, frequently referred to as the BRIC countries. 

The predicted instances of broad social unrest and global deflation have not occurred, and generally worldwide unemployment levels remain reasonably stable.  The term Universal Basic Income has appeared more frequently in the literature in the past several years, with a handful of countries (Finland, Netherlands, Kenya, and Canada) already conducting small-scale experiments in guaranteeing a level of basic income to its citizens. 

Increasing worker life spans and corresponding longer periods spent in retirement have put continued pressure on income replacement programs and on the importance of individual financial planning in preparation for retirement. 

Changing Roles, Skills and Career Pathways

Both HR and Compensation should anticipate smaller staffs in the future and, where greater automation permits (and requires), a wider scope of assignments and responsibility along with lesser specialization. 

In a prior posting, I acknowledged being unaware of the shifts in the preferred background and experience that were signaling the emerging trend of candidates for compensation vacancies.  Watch for further trends for new hires in compensation requiring increasingly stronger backgrounds in business acumen, economics science, finance and tax law – all complemented by well-rounded data science/analytics skills. 

Educational institutions and other knowledge providers will need to continue to adapt to these shifts and other disruptions (MOOC, experiential learning, etc.) or risk obsolescence and elimination.

There . . .That’s a Better Fit

The semi-good news for HR and Compensation are some of the positive trends regarding job “fit.”  The use of forerunner AI and other tools/techniques is better optimizing candidate matching and selection. Employers are also increasingly restructuring and customizing jobs to improve both productivity and employee job satisfaction . . . and ultimately talent retention. 

The (Future) Envelope, Please

So, what further predictions will come to fruition in this time period until 2025 – or beyond?  Do you know?  Neither do I.  How do we make investments in knowledge and skills now that will pay off far into the future?  The best answer may lie partly in the quote attributed to Peter Drucker that: “The best way to predict the future is to create it ourselves.”

Everyone probably has a different perspective.  What’s yours?

Chris Dobyns, CCP, CBP is currently employed as a Human Capital Strategic Consultant for the Office of Human Resource Strategy and Program Design for one of the largest U.S. intelligence agencies. The Office of Human Resource Strategy and Program Design is responsible for organizational effectiveness, personnel assessment, compensation and incentives, occupational structure, recognition and rewards, HR policy, human capital program design, implementation, evaluation and assessment and internal consulting. Chris has worked in the area of compensation for more than 35 years, and has been employed in various compensation-related positions by a number of large, private sector companies including, Sears, Roebuck, Arizona Public Service and Westinghouse Savannah River Company.

Original image "What Lies Ahead" courtesy of Chris Dobyns.

Comments

[Katherine Macrone]

I am curious if you or any other group is studying the current shutdown effects on pay and motivation and the long term effects (if any) on attracting, retaining, and motivating people who are working without immediate pay now. Obviously higher earning people are better able to weather this financially but there are a lot of people working who are lower wage and they are still coming to work. What is driving this? Pride? Fear? Lack of Other Opportunity? Retirement? I would LOVE to see an article on this!

[Joe Thompson]

Chris,

Here is my hypothesis: The continued influx of AI/ML/RPA into the workplace will help usher in a rethinking of how we think about paying for positions. One impact of AI/ML/RPA is that is seldom eliminates whole jobs, usually only portions of jobs. This theoretically frees the individual to focus on other work, other duties, etc. It also creates a challenge since organizations may find themselves with a slew of "partial" jobs whose remaining duties and responsibilities cannot readily be combined in predictable ways. Instead, those jobs may become flexible "general practitioner" roles able to be surged when and where exigencies demand.

From a compensation lens, the challenge will be pricing "jobs" that do not have static duties/responsibilities. The value of a position may become less about the on-paper position and more about the capabilities of the incumbent in the position.

In short, Chris, my prediction is that AI/ML/RPA will help usher in more person-centric vice position-centric compensation (more rank-in-person pricing) than we have been used to seeing.

Oh, and a second big-picture prediction: better data science will trigger more granularity and more targeted salary increase data. Instead of the "salaries are expected to rise by 2.9%," we'll see forecasts which are much more specific with respect to industry/occupation/location than we get today.

[Chris Dobyns]

For Katherine, that's a good suggestion. We're certainly not conducting any such type of study, since that role resides with other federal agencies. In more than a slight tinge of irony of course, those same agencies charged with performing such a study - are themselves currently furloughed. I'll assume that some of the quasi-governmental entities (Partnership for Public Service) will undertake a post-mortem study (sorry, it's the only word that seemed appropriate), when the shutdown concludes.

From past experience though, I know our organization has generally experienced an uptick in turnover and an increased difficulty in attracting new hire candidates in some period after prior shutdowns (at least until memory fades ...).

[Chris Dobyns]

For Joe, I think your predictions synch up surprisingly well with what I previously speculated on, now almost eight years ago.

The slew of remaining partial jobs dovetails with my guess about the rise in the need for more broadly-knowledgeable generalists - and the wane of specialists (at least in HR and Compensation . . . but probably in other disciplines/domains as well).

You'll recall that on the market pay granularity, we've repeatedly pitched the exact shift in salary data collection and reporting you hint at, to a couple of the survey data providers - to target market pay trends by discipline/domain/function. So far, nobody has signed-up to that being a good idea.

The only point that we slightly diverge on, is your perhaps overly-optimistic perspective on the future of jobs. We're a little more pessimistic about this, and while we'd like to envision both the changes in work and the hoped for altruistic predisposition by employers - we think that's woefully unrealistic. Given the increased ability to automate both routine and increasingly complex jobs - we don't see any set of circumstances that would predispose employers to do anything except eliminate people from the work equation, as that becomes increasingly possible to do so.

[Chris Dobyns]

Since I received a sidebar question, it might be beneficial to clarify it here - since I can see how what was written in the article might have been unclear.

The total worldwide workforce is estimated to be around 2.8 billion people (the U.S. workforce is around 158 million). So, in the reference above, automation might be anticipated to effect about 40 percent of these populations, respectively, in the next ten years.