The first and perhaps most predict-able feature of the business environment in 2020 is the aging of the workforce. By then, it is predicted, there will be one billion elderly people in an eight billion global population. The Baby Boomers (born 1945-1965), who changed the world in so many ways, will have retired or be in the twilight years of their careers. This may well create skill gap problems, since this generation has been the best educated, most highly skilled workforce in history. Generation X is smaller in numbers, less well educated and, at this point anyway, less well trained. It is probable, therefore, that many Boomers will be asked to delay retirement.
A combination of skill shortages, globalisation and skill transferability points to people migrating more in the future, creating more ethnically diverse workforce. With more melding of the world’s cultures and civilisations, societal and business norms will be more colourful and varied. But it seems unlikely that, as some fear, cultures will become homogenised within the global melting pot. It is more probable that elements of each culture will remain and influence the society we live and work within.
Women will constitute higher percentage of the workforce in 2020 and hold more senior management positions. The more equitable mix of males and females at the top level of organisations will almost certainly speed up the introduction of further ’employee-friendly’ work practices. Surveys have shown that companies where women hold senior management positions are far more predisposed to such practices.
In 2020 the employment and business environments will be more fluid and fragmented than today. Corporate paternalism will be well and truly laid to rest. Core/peripheral workforce divisions will be more common, with many organisations having very small, highly skilled core staff together with ‘peripheral’ contract and temporary employees, and outsourced activities serviced by external organisations. There will also be more ‘virtual organisations’, with the outsourcing of previously core activities such as production and sales.
As far as service expectations and skill requirements are concerned, ‘good’ won’t be good enough. Global communications technology will enable ‘superstar’ individuals and companies to spread their talents across wider market at the expense of smaller, local talent. ‘Super’ teachers, doctors, computer programmers, and communications consultants will put pressure on the incomes of their good-to-average peers. The surviving knowledge workers of 2020 will be global ‘gold-collar workers’ – technical professionals with superior knowledge and expertise and an ability to communicate, market and implement their skills effectively.
Management guru Tom Peters has predicted that 90 percent of white-collar jobs in the United States and, by inference, the western world, will have disappeared or been altered beyond recognition by about 2010-2015. Unlike gold-collar workers, the white collars will be forced to retrain, possibly more than once, in search of new occupations.
Creative ability will also set individual employees and companies apart. Researcher Murikami Teruyasu, of the Nomura Research Institute in Japan, suggests that we are going to replace ‘The Age of Information Intensification’ with ‘The Age of Creative Intensification’.
In 2020, and far more than today, society will expect ‘gold collars’ and companies to use creativity and knowledge to meaningfully address the social and environmental impacts of their actions. Further pressure on the world’s resources and atmospheres will ensure that societal conscience organisations such as Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) will have more influence than today. Compulsion will replace choice and triple bottom lines will become the measure of sustainable corporate success. It is likely there will be measurement of employees’ work/life balance positions and greater emphasis on adherence to society’s accepted ethics and values.
There is little doubt that the business world of 2020 will be considerably more changeable, unpredictable and uncertain than we are accustomed to. The preparation of staff, ourselves and our companies to achieve leading edge within this paradigm will be critical objective. Ian Balfour, chief executive of the New Zealand Institute of Management (Central Division), considers we need to prepare our staff for world in which they will hold many roles in number of organisations in their lifetimes. It is critical to the performance of an organisation, Balfour notes, for every individual to be working to their potential, and this is much more likely when managers/leaders understand and cater to staff needs. “You have to know your people as individuals. In team environment, only by hitting the nail on the head with each person – with each person doing the right thing – will you perform as you need to. We are all each other’s customers and we must deliver to and for each other.”
Balfour’s comments underline the importance, now and in the future, of team work. Of course, there is widespread scepticism about how possible effective teamwork will be in future environment that is increasingly virtual, disparate and distanced. Balfour believes that to achieve what, at first glance, seems impossible, will require advanced communication skills – including intra and inter-organisation connections of all types. “Superb communication skills will be required to harness the enthusiasm, intellects and common purpose of team where members are distanced from each other.”
Many people will work outside of traditional company structures in 2020. According to Robin Gunston, director of the Business Development Club and chairperson of the New Zealand Futures Trust, our knowledge workers are already under pressure to break away from their companies and adopt alternative work styles. “More larger businesses are moving out of New Zealand, and staff who don’t want to follow them are choosing to work for themselves… There’s just no need for those businesses to stay, so we have lost lot of intellectual capital. The choice for those left is to work at home or to form collectives to share resources.”
The difficult task of leading people and organisations will become increasingly complex as businesses fragment, restructure, reconfigure and/or go virtual. The ‘manager’ will be long extinct by 2020, having outlived his/her usefulness. Corporate leaders (‘gold-collar managers’?) will require high tolerances for ambiguity and fluidity, given the state of almost perpetual flux within their operational environments. Keeping track of these changes and finding the right solutions and adjusting to circumstances will differentiate the successful leader from the also-rans.
The corporate leaders of 2020 will need high levels of emotional competence. They will need to be well endowed with self-confidence, achievement and initiative orientated and highly effective change catalysts.
Emotional intelligence (EI) stems from behaviours learned from an early age and has associations with self-image, so it is not quickly learned or obtained. Today’s leaders can assist staff to grow into tomorrow’s leadership roles by adopting collegial managerial style – treating their people as adults – which helps build the individual’s self-esteem and confidence to act. They can also introduce staff to the concept of EI and to the attributes needed by future leaders. Clearly, though, parents and educators will have the key roles in establishing secure and appropriate foundation from which our young up-and-coming leaders can be further nurtured and developed.
From company perspective, there will be need for more intensive staff development focus. In cost/benefit terms this may equate to more of an investment in staff than is warranted from short-term profitability perspective. The ability to take longer-term view of the development and suc
