The Future of Work: Five predictions for the tech industry

We keep hearing the words “future of work” but what exactly is the meaning of this phrase? Let’s find out.

What is the future of work?

The ‘future of work’ defines predictions about what work habits, workplaces, and practices might look like in the approaching decades.

Views vary, but many business and tech leaders agree that huge changes are on the horizon—changes that will most likely be driven by technology, work preferences, machine learning, and full automation. This will soon create an entirely new concept of what ‘work’ even means.

The future of work is now being shaped by two powerful forces: one is the growing adoption of machine learning or AI and the other is accepting a flexible workforce. Here is a list of a few predictions that we feel will shape the future of work in 2023 and beyond. ?

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

According to a report filed by Stanford University in December 2019 Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are growing three times faster than Moore's Law.

Moore’s Law was first conceptualized by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. It’s a phenomenon in Silicon Valley that processor speed doubles every 18 months. Moore's Law clarifies the reason of the cost of computing falling so dramatically. In the past decades. Initially, AI developed at Moore's Law pace. But in 2012, AI computational power started doubling every 3.4 months. This means more jobs could be automated much sooner than we thought. And that was before the pandemic.

COVID-19’s disruption has completely changed the concept of how work is performed in the industry, and this extends to automation. Due to remote working, a lot of configurations were required to secure worksites, and growing automation among the workforce became a need that could not be delayed. COVID-19 ?caused organizations to reconsider how work is done, and the wheels of progress that was already been turning started working faster.?As per a Deloitte survey - 78 percent of tech organisations are employing Robotic Process Automation and 16 percent plan to do so in the next three years.

The need of the hour is an all-encompassing approach– one that augments resilience and adaptivity with humans front and centre.

Rise of Remote and flexible jobs

The work-from-home had started gaining popularity around 2018-19. But when the ?2020 pandemic, hit it facilitated the “fast forward” on this trend—and for many now, there’s no going back.

A survey by the Slack of 9,000 workers across six countries found that 72% favour a hybrid remote-office model with only 12% wishing to always work in an office setting. The survey also found that 13% would like to always work from home if they had a choice.

It’s not just workers who are happier working remotely, there are many businesses that have also discovered that giving tech workers more freedom results in more productivity and better retention, while also growing their bottom line by eradicating the need for large office spaces.

Of course, there will still be many people who do not want to work remotely or who can’t due to the nature of their jobs. But for employees who are happy with a job that allows them to work from anywhere, the prediction looks sunny.

?Small teams and ‘tribes’

For agility and growth many organizations now have the tribe culture. In the concept of workplace tribes—small, interdisciplinary mission-capable teams or groups of employees work on specific projects or business modules. This model is now also known as the Spotify model and is considered as one of the most progressive agile work models.

It’s a small team that is completely autonomous comprising individuals with different specialists necessary to create a product. There are programmers, Product Design specialists, frontend and backend developers, testers, managers, business analysts, and more. It’s an agile team that delivers tangible results, the planning can be flexibly adapted- a much-needed aspect in the tech and digital world.

Training and development

In the digital and tech world, things change overnight, and the best establishments work to keep their employees on top of those changes. It is therefore vital for the workforce to be able to handle ever-evolving situations quickly and effectively to keep the organization efficient.

Training and development help in employee retention and engagement. And studies by the Dale Carnegie institute indicate that a highly engaged workforce can lead to exceptional productivity improvements – as high as 202%.

Rise of contractors, freelancers, and nomads in the tech space

Though some workers will be happy with a full-time remote job, many others in the last 2 years have realised they have the tools and capability to work for themselves. There are many professions in the tech industry that can be performed on a contract or freelance basis.

As a result, tech industry experts are predicting that there will be a rise in freelance and contract workers. It is also anticipated there will be more competition coming from international contract workers in almost every country. There are now more than 2 million freelancers working in the UK alone.

Conclusion

If you are looking to grow your workforce with the best talent, get tech consultation or new job opportunities in the coming months, Adroit People Ltd UK is here to help.

Talk to one of our career experts today, and we’ll help take a big step forward into the future of work. (Phone: + 44 (0) 20 8429 5156 | Email:?[email protected] )