Marge: “Homer, the plant called. They said if you don’t show up tomorrow don’t bother showing up on Monday.”

Homer: “Woo-hoo! Four-day weekend!”

Recently, I became a very proud father. The positive affect of our new arrival in the first few months – to say that it was difficult to concentrate on work, is an understatement. Our newest addition to the family and the prospect of more has had me asking lots of questions on the future and the future of (my) work. Peter’s previous post is therefore timely to my own interests on HR and the Future of Work and has motivated me in the meantime to offer up some perspective and possible debate on some discussions I have had with leaders and management thinkers recently.

The business environment is dynamic and moving perhaps too fast for Human Resources, Marketing and Communication professionals to continue driving strategy in isolation whilst trying to achieve alignment between employees, products and customers. Will function’s blend in the next 10 years? Will it mean people spend less or more hours working? Will it mean taking on 1 or more additional jobs?

An excerpt from 1983! Slowly and painfully industrial work culture is being transformed by the twin revolutions of microelectronics and information processing. We must learn to move beyond the old industrial culture which has conditioned our thinking and our behaviour. So, when we say things now like; “recruiting has gone social, employees are networking like never before and enterprise systems are becoming more social” this offers some perspective on how much has been learned since 1983 and what is now conditioning our thinking and behaviour. By 2020, Generation X — that relatively small group born from 1965 to 1978 will have spent nearly 20 years working with baby boomers in senior decision-making jobs. Thankfully that will end. I say this as I categorically belong to generation X! By 2020, Gen X will finally be in charge which I believe will bring about alot of positive change in the way we work.

Leadership from a generation with new values will see much faster evolution in diversity, both gender and generational. 10 years ago, Facebook did not exist and 10 years before that we did not have the world wide web. What jobs will be born a decade from now? Unemployment is at unprecedented levels for many countries. When employment returns it won’t look the same and this has huge implications for HR, most especially for the large market enterprise/corporation that many have come to love/tolerate/hate. A much more flexible workforce is evolving, where freelance and collaboration are normal, creating a lot less security in the world of work.

Success will be defined not by rank or seniority but by getting what matters to you the employee – working from home or anywhere, skiing at Zell am See, the four day week, two jobs, etc. Many businesses already want more short-term independent contractors and consultants, an abundance of which are now available due to the recession. Businesses will require fewer traditional employees because short term and independent are cheaper. Seniority will not matter so much. Why? Because seniority is about the past and not the future.

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts. In my own mind it’s a safe bet that now and in the future anything less than high performance service will continue to be outsourced to someone with a better price. Mind you, I continue to hear horror stories about outsourcing (which includes many of the household brands in outsourcing) on inflated short term costs and companies having to re-justify their satisfaction/feedback to the board …. that they will ‘definitely’ save money/benefit in the longer term (one of the key reasons to outsource is to save money), lack of common and necessary capabilities, affect on corporate culture, etc.

In the future collaborative systems and decision-making in multinationals will involve team members from around the globe and the project leader of a given project may never have met in person. Leadership will have to be culturally dexterous on an international scale and that is why you will hear talent functions buzzing around mobility, diversity, employer value proposition and international career/project opportunities. A big part of that “know-how” that we often talk about will be leadership’s ability to motivate and reward people who are very different to themselves.

What does this mean for HR?

Some of my recent posts highlight or touch on HR/Leadership know-how and capability gaps and some of the discussions that ensued highlight history and some of the existing challenges. Large organizations are more complex, operating multiple business units, in different locations, cultures and timezones. They contain complex organization structures with diverse people populations. HR people find themselves addressing such issues and leading change in situations where other internal business functions are not ready. It means new skills and ways of working are required to avoid further delay, project upsets, costs and employee/customer dissatisfaction.

HR professionals that really want to impact into the future design and implementation of collaborative systems and the evolution of social systems/the networked organisation/work need to start spending more time understanding how collaborative systems-decision making work, how these systems need to work to be successful in their business, and then recommend the solution(s) to support the business.

Some of the new roles in the evolution of the HR function:

• Influencing corporate profitability/bottom line.
• Employer value proposition/brand management.
• Change management expertise and leadership through downsizing or growth.
• Corporate collaboration efforts by creating and leading cross-functional teams (in key functions) to advance corporate strategy.

What are your views on the future of work?

Below is a recent slideshow added to youtube that I found on the subject. It follows a similar thread to the shifthappens/Did you Know? presentation from an interesting “new age” service provider called oDesk.