Seventy-two per cent of professionals believe technology and AI will generate more revenue than human workers
There are four possible worlds of work that will dominate the world by 2035, according to a survey by Citrix based on current and future workforce strategies and work models.
Their report, titled Work 2035, surveyed more than 500 C-Suite leaders and 1,000 employees in the U.S. and Europe to identify these possibilities.
Freelance Frontiers: The first possibility is a world of augmented workers and distributed organizations. Here, organizations have few permanent workers, and the work that generates the most value is increasingly performed by specialists.
Sixty-six per cent of employees and 54 per cent of business leaders believe that in 2035, humans with chips in their bodies to enhance their performance will have an unfair advantage in the labour market.
Also, 60 per cent of employees expect that governments will seek to regulate labour practices more stringently due to the fall in permanent employment and the rise of on-demand working patterns.
Powered Productives: This is a world of augmented workers and centralized organizations. Here, employers benefit from boosted productivity levels due to successful integration between humans and technology.
“There are millions of data capture opportunities, so business leaders have an ever-evolving picture of their workplace and their workforce. The firms with the most sophisticated human and technology integration and the most adaptable workers perform best, which can create monopolies in some sectors,” says Citrix.
Seventy-seven per cent of professionals think that by 2035, AI will significantly speed up their decision-making process, making them more productive. Also, 83 per cent of professionals believe that by 2035, technology will automate repetitive and low-value tasks, freeing workers to focus on more meaningful work.
This means that workers enjoy more meaningful work, and logically integrated technology improves their performance. The caveat is that workers must decide how they feel about their data being monitored and controlled by their employer.
Today, AI is much more integrated into a recruiter’s suite of tools compared to three or four years ago, according to Corey Shaw, AVP talent acquisition at Canada Life in Toronto.
Platform Plugins: This is a world of replaced workers and distributed organizations. Technology has leveled the playing field for smaller businesses, giving them the reach and scale of much bigger rivals. AI, machine learning and data capture and analysis tools have become so powerful and reliable that they have enabled businesses to drastically downsize their permanent human workforce.
Sixty per cent of employees think that by 2035, permanent employees will have become rare. And the highest growth companies will be run on a platform model. Also, 63 per cent of professionals believe that technology will convey an advantage to small companies, meaning each sector will be fragmented across many niches, specialist businesses.
Top executives believe that shifts towards remote collaboration (78 per cent), automation (76 per cent) and fewer people working from offices (61 per cent) are here to stay, according to a PwC survey released in August.
Automation Corporations: Automation Corporations is a world of replaced workers and centralized organizations. Here, the biggest companies with control over the entire work process have the greatest scope for finding new efficiencies and can adopt new technologies faster, which gives them an edge over their rivals, says Citrix.
Seventy-two per cent of professionals believe that by 2030, technology and AI will generate more revenue for their organization than human workers and will also absorb more of their organization’s annual operating costs. And 75 per cent of professionals believe that in 2035, AI investment will be the biggest driver of growth for their organization.
Fifty-seven per cent of professionals believe that AI has the potential to make most business decisions by 2035, removing the need for a traditional senior management team.
“Permanent employment prevails. Human talent has become more important, even though human labor has become more replaceable. But as more and more roles are automated, roles shift quickly, and workers need to keep retraining to stay relevant,” says the report.
San Francisco-based job finding and recruitment network Torre is looking for employers to sign its Frank Artificial Intelligence in Recruiting (FAIR) manifesto which includes five key components: disclose when you’re using AI; make the factors transparent; disclose rankings to candidates; detect bias; and reduce discrimination systematically.
