EMCC 24TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE, AMSTERDAM, 11-13 APRIL 2018
In the next decade, we will need new organisational and work models as technology dissolves most of work as we know it, said Ruud Rikhof.
Too many models are based on how things were – including hierarchy – rather than how they are: inter-connected. Increasingly, work will be about shared values and culture, transparent goals and projects, free flow of information and feedback, and rewarding people for their skills and abilities, not position, said Rikhof, co-founder of management consultancy KennedyFitch, in his keynote on the future of work and HR.
He said that in the near future, every industry will be turned upside down by distribution innovations and the dominant technologies of Artificial Intelligence, robotics, biotech, nanotech, medicine, neuroscience, energy and computing. We will be confronted with massive societal and ethical questions that cannot be delegated to government and authorities.
He painted a picture of potential gloom including widespread staff exploitation, risks shifted to workers, employers stopping training, widespread death of careers, commoditisation and a rush to the lowest costs. Potential good news included increased transportability, more on-demand training, ‘boundary-less careers’, more precise worker-work matching and increased worker empowerment.
We need to move away from “dehumanised HR” to “rehumanised HR”, where “soft” matters more than ever, he said, building an employee experience culture, using technology as a means to transformation and disruption, building agile and team-centric models and offering all-encompassing health/wellbeing concepts.
In tomorrow’s workplace, the emphasis will shift from managing employees to leading work, to the externalisation of the workforce, with less than 30% of workers full-time, the unbundling of jobs, the virtualisation of work and the “packetisation of me”, with a disruptive impact on mobility. Expertise will be sourced increasingly from talent pools by skill.
He outlined the role of robots in the shifting landscape, with the robotics industry expected to double in size
by 2022.
- See ethics feature: The Fourth Revolution