The Future of Work: Shaped by Technology, Painted by Humans

The?Envision Beyond Journal?is a monthly publication of the?Intelligent Enterprise Institute, the think tank of SAP to help business leaders inspire and accelerate change.

This issue is about?Future of Work. Read and discover new insights on the rapidly changing digital working environment, the mindsets and skills required for future jobs, and how technology can help make the future of work more human.

Don’t miss the?Food for Thought?and?Snapshots?sections below to hear from other perspectives!

by Maya Valencia de Backhaus, Marco Cigaina and Ashia Zahran

"The Future of..." is increasingly becoming a topic of high interest and popular search. Whether within the business environment or other spheres, such as entertainment and pop culture, the representation of the future predominantly consists of how technology will help solve today's problems. There is a particular focus on automation, in which technology and machine intelligence allow for more streamlined processes, more accurate predictions, and less manual effort required for repetitive tasks and challenges. There has always been a heavy emphasis on the advancement of machine intelligence and its influence on the way humans live. However, when it comes to the future of work, there should be a more significant emphasis on the human side of the story.?

The industrial revolution shifted the role people played in the workforce. Craftsman jobs were disintegrated into jobs on the assembly line or converted into a resource that mainly performs specific tasks within the value creation of businesses. Subsequently, the entire education system, job market, life plan, and sense of purpose were driven by this system and tailored to support this role.

Just as the industrial age has changed the role of people and prompted the evolution of manufacturing and production, the digital age will also transform the role humans play in the future of work. The rapid implementation of machine intelligence in today's work environment has helped us become more efficient, enabling us to allocate resources to more fulfilling responsibilities. The future of work isn't just about automation; it's also significantly about human collaboration.

Collaborative intelligence places great importance on the symbiotic relationship between humans and machine intelligence, as the combined capabilities of humans and machines can augment and elevate each other's distinctive strengths. If so, can the future of work be more human, and what does it look like? How can technology support humans through this transition????

In the second decade of this century, worldwide digitalization was considered inevitable. The pandemic accelerated the digital transformation of the workforce as companies were forced to switch to a virtual working environment overnight. Since then, the workplace has been changing at an unprecedented rate. Employees can work from a location and a device of their choice - a phenomenon known as the "digital workspace". Technology is no longer merely a tool to gather, process, and analyze data, but a medium to allow human interactions in a virtual, remote environment.

This new reality presents both opportunities and challenges for organizations and workers of all types, whether small businesses, large corporations, or non-profits, among others. There is an increased need for tools or initiatives that enable individuals to create trust, enhance collaboration, and cultivate a purpose-driven work experience.

This rapid virtualization has also altered the relationship between the employer and the employee. The rise of the digital workspace has limited physical interaction between the company and its employees. People can now connect with colleagues from around the globe without leaving their desks or living rooms and collaborate in real-time across continents. The nature of this long-distance employment has brought forth both benefits and challenges for today's working environment.

Benefits may include increased flexibility, reduced commuting time and costs, and more dedication to personal organization. More priority is placed on mental health and work-life balance. However, on the backside, one of the most prominent issues people experience from working in a digital workspace is digital fatigue, commonly described as mental exhaustion from excessive use or exposure to digital devices.

Many employees have started to recognize the need for a more purpose-driven role within the organization. One that allows for more growth opportunities and personal development, encouraging them to make use of their talents and capabilities, and take on more fulfilling responsibilities. This includes connecting with their expressive states and integrating them across their role in the organization, which has the potential to boost their motivation and highlight the value they bring to work. As a consequence, their job grows into a platform where they can share their unique contributions with the world.???

The rapidly expanding domains of science and technology and an increasingly dynamic business environment fuel the demand for more and more sophisticated knowledge workers. Automation of business processes both within and across the confines of companies will need to keep these knowledge workers away from mundane tasks, so they can focus on activities that create value. However, it doesn’t stop here.?????

Increasing the synergy between human and machine intelligence is going to significantly affect the future of work. It is expected to greatly augment human capacity to cope with massive amounts of data and multi-dimensional, large-scale problems. It also has the potential to create new group dynamics, where humans will fully express their ability to fundamentally rethink and reframe challenges and invent new solution paradigms, whilst machines will help explore combinatorial data sets and accelerate processing decisions. For sure, these changes are going to value any skills that are hard for machines, like true empathy, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, foresight, intuition, imagination, unbounded creativity, and the ability to cope with high volatility, complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty. These changes will also favor a more flexible, goal-oriented, collaborative coordination of work and value authentic and integrative leadership over any Tayloristic approach.

The achievement of such a synergy between human and machine intelligence requires the creation of new tasks and roles. In fact, machine intelligence needs to be trained and maintained; the tasks asked of machines need to be reformulated in ways they can process; the achievements of machine intelligence need to be unbundled, and clearly explained and communicated.

Since technology is able to perform these types of tasks at lower costs and higher speed, it is becoming clearer that companies now face different requirements when it comes to talent. The reframing of existing challenges, the invention of new solutions, and the possibility to confront uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity in the behavior of the industries and markets are the skills much sought in the workforce today. Defining these new roles and positions is not the only challenge for companies. In a virtually globalized workplace, their new strategy should include the retention of talent and the competitiveness of the workplace.????

This fresh perspective and new opportunities have forced a change in the definition of purpose, setting of goals and tasks in the organizations. Human Resources is no longer required to simply manage the employees of a company, but to empower employees and accompany them in defining new goals. It should aim to create an environment where employees can truly discover what value they can add to the organization. Think of it as a playground of sorts that will force the employees to explore and discover how they can thrive and support the company to navigate the changes and uncertainties the world is facing at a speed that was not imaginable even five years ago. Companies need to allow the employees to involve their “Whole Self,” including not only existing strengths but also potential capabilities. Knowing how to manage them within this environment is as important as the automation of business processes. It is vital to the functioning of long-distance employment in a virtual world.

Education is already adapting to these new needs and new ways of working. The new generation that consumes higher education post pandemic no longer limits learning to a certain occupation and the requirements needed to fill the corresponding positions. New skills include how to critically perceive data, how to solve new problems and new challenges, how to move as citizens of the world in a hybrid environment, and how to make sure that machines work for you and not the other way around.

Early learners today are already undertaking a completely different approach that is shaping a generation of researchers learning to solve problems and challenge the presented information instead of simply following instructions. Toddlers and p re-schoolers are developing a different sense of identity, technology, community, and learning.

It is no longer about learning the technical elements of a process, but about being able to systematically frame facts and concepts that will allow them to navigate a world swept in?dynamic and constant change.

New domains of content are gradually emerging. There is also a stronger influence from domains that allow the new generation of learners to develop their creativity, resilience, empathy, and emotional capabilities. Smart Apps and adaptive learning software support?????this way of learning, which shows how technology can help the next generation tap into what it means to be human.

Technology has the potential to drive a convergence of big data, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things. Their intersection will empower more flexible ways of working that will allow people to make decisions based on their own judgement and intuition rather than relying on rules-based processes or algorithms alone. Technology can and should be used to help humans focus on their strengths rather than their weaknesses. However, the current reality shows that many people still view technology as a threat to humanity.

From Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, "2001: A Space Odyssey" to cult classics including "The Matrix" and "Terminator," or even more recent examples, such as "The Mitchells vs. the Machines," the portrayal of artificial intelligence in mass media is primarily associated with how AI is inherently malicious, and machines will eventually take over the world. Consequently, the continued advancement of AI and the rise of automation are interlinked with the notion that AI will ultimately replace the human workforce.

What is lacking is the understanding that technology should be used to enhance human skills and help us work smarter, not harder. It can free up our time and resources so that we?????can focus on things that matter the most: people and relationships. That’s where the true value lies. While it may feel like employees are being left out of the equation, this new wave of technology is giving employees the tools to thrive in the future of work. They empower them to make faster decisions, work autonomously and remotely, and even learn new skills.

To recap, machine intelligence has the potential to offer personalized flows of information tailored to individual needs and ambitions, act as sophisticated, context-aware digital assistants for both work and private life, provide engaging learning experiences with proactive recommendations and tailored content, and much more. In this evolution, well-being and work-life balance will need to be an inherent integration rather than an afterthought: think about the possibility of detecting signals of burnout and reacting to it; or a digital assistant that constantly balances your individual needs as a professional but also as a consumer, a citizen, and maybe a spouse or a parent.

Moving forward, we expect that interoperable, immersive, and interactive virtual spaces will further change the way remote work is done. However, enterprise systems need to evolve to make that an individual choice: each of us, depending on the type of task, the circumstances, and our own temporary emotional state should be able to choose the right amount of immersivity and interactivity of our own personalized digital workplace.

Such a digital workplace needs to be increasingly open for cross-company collaboration and the contribution of independent knowledge workers. In fact, the growing importance of business networks and ecosystems may further push trends like crowdsourcing and the usage of temporary workforce - not just for operations, but also for business innovation.

Investing in the creation of this environment and nurturing an infrastructure where?employees can truly thrive and not lose time, effort, motivation, and energy in mundane tasks will determine the success of the company.

As individuals, we will have to do some investments, too. As part of the workforce, we should consciously review the skills that brought us to where we are today. We should analyze the resilience gained through all the challenges and changes we have experienced in the last years and how the pandemic and the latest perturbations have given us a completely new set of tools to adapt and solve problems.

We need to engrain human values in the new dynamic communities of work, making them inclusive, ensuring diversity, respecting privacy, balancing the needs of the different generations, and building a more profound and shared culture for a sustainable economy, environment, and society. We need to reflect on how our time and present effort could be creatively used to enhance the process of building such communities and the world around us.

• Bain & Company?thinks that the working future is more?human, not less. It’s time to change how we think about work.
• Work has?changed—and so must?leaders, argues McKinsey.?Discover here?how to lead in a hybrid environment.
• "In the future, there will be a tsunami of information for humans to absorb. This will be impossible to grasp?—?never mind make decisions with it." Read?here?why augmentation will redefine human decision making.
• Virtual reality (VR) is gradually becoming more integrated into our immediate day-to-day environment.?Explore?here?the growing popularity of?virtual reality across various industries and its impact over the coming decade.

As machine intelligence becomes more integrated into the working environment, humans will spend less time and resources working on repetitive tasks and dedicate time towards responsibilities that are more meaningful. Watch the video below to discover what people envision future jobs will look like:

The?Intelligent Enterprise Institute?helps business leaders understand the transformative potential of different forms of intelligence and use it for their organizations and life. It provides a platform to inspire and accelerate change, supported in market trends and SAP’s vision to help the world run better and improve people’s lives. By generating new insights and bringing together unheard voices and unique perspectives from leading thinkers and doers of the world, the Intelligent Enterprise Institute aims to foster different qualities in enterprises and their stakeholders alike taking it into action for desirable outcomes.?