Yellow, Red, Green or Blue: Which world do you want to live in?

The word ‘change’ has become synonymous with progress, development and advancement in recent times. While conventional wisdom tells us that change is inevitable, we somehow still resist it because there is comfort in the known, and safety in understanding what to expect. But these are interesting times we live in, where the world as we know it is changing on a fundamental level: lives, work, technology, economies, countries are evolving, and as PwC’s ‘Workforce of the future: The competing forces shaping 2030’ puts it, “This isn’t a time to sit back and wait for events to unfold. To be prepared for the future you have to understand it.”

The report, which takes a step back and accounts for the various factors that could shape our future, conjures four plausible scenarios, drawn from research carried over almost an entire decade. However, within the foreword itself, it announces, “No exploration of the future of work will ever be conclusive. Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of our age is its ability to surprise and confound.” The report dives headfirst into understanding the several currently prevalent forces that will impact our future, constructs four world-models with distinct features and power structures, discusses their impact on future jobs, and finally spells out what individuals and organizations can do to tide over this ‘change’ as smoothly as possible.  “We should remember that intellectual complacency is not our friend and that learning – not just new things but new ways of thinking – is a life-long endeavor,” says Blair Sheppard, Global Leader, Strategy and Leadership Development, PwC.

The meta-narrative that talks about the future of work tends to focus almost exclusively on technology, artificial intelligence and automation and their impact on jobs and workplace. However, “the real story is far more complicated. This is less about technological innovation and more about the manner in which humans decide to use that technology.” The report identifies such ‘megatrends’ that will have a comparable, if not equal, impact on the future of work. These include technological breakthroughs (automation, robotics and AI and their impact on lives, productivity, life span and quality, social and political structures), demographic shifts (the rapid shift to cities and their importance in job creation), shifts in global economic power (shifting power dynamics due to unemployment, migration, job losses and erosion of middle class) and resource scarcity and climate change (inadequate fossil reserves, extreme weather, rising sea levels and water shortages). 

While these megatrends are undoubtedly critical in understanding the future, the report makes a special mention of how digital and artificial intelligence will change the work of the future. All the four distinct models that the report comes up with have automation and AI as an integral ingredient. It says, “The potential for digital platforms and AI to underpin and grow the world of work is unbounded... While it can create a thriving marketplace, it can grow to take over the entire economic system. And with platform pervasiveness comes vulnerability to cyber attacks or wide-scale manipulation. Closely linked to digital is data. How governments, organizations and individuals decide to share and use it is as a key to all our worlds – even the most human-centric.” Skepticism and uncertainty towards the future is mounting as 60 percent of those surveyed think that few people will have stable, long-term employment in the future. Yet, hope remains as an overwhelming majority of people agree to learning new skills or completely re-training themselves in order to remain employable in the future – the highest so in India (89 percent).

Even with these megatrends in context, it becomes challenging to predict the future as “human response to the challenges and opportunities which the megatrends bring will determine the worlds in which the future of work plays out... (and) public sentiment, and its impact, is difficult to predict, affected by culture, history and many other local factors.” Hence the report constructs four possible ‘worlds’, each with distinguishing features and core ideologies:

• Yellow World: The power resides in the hands of humans, as social-first and community businesses prosper to fund ethical and blameless brands. ‘Collectivism’ gives a new meaning and relevance to business, and work develops a ‘social heart’, wherein humanness is highly valued. 
• Red World: The race to give consumers what they want results in innovation outpacing regulation, and those who win the race influence massive audiences. This fragmented style of business means social bubbles and affinity groups take on a new meaning, large businesses find their scale to be a burden rather than a benefit.
• Green World: Organizations wake up to inculcate trust and social responsibility in their DNA, and work towards finding solutions to demographic changes, climate change and sustainable development through their businesses. 
• Blue World: Large corporations grow bigger and exert influence in other spheres. ‘Individualism’ trumps social responsibility, global corporates take center stage and consumer choice dominates. A corporate career separates the haves from the have nots.

All these scenarios are supported by hypothetical timelines and events, yet assess the very real people strategy, composition of workforce and organizational challenges unique to that setting. For example, the fact that 70 percent of the respondents in the study would consider using treatments to enhance their mind and body if this improved job prospects in the future was incorporated as the use of cognitive-enhancing drugs in workplace by 2030 in the Blue world. Similarly, in the Red world, a lifestyle app developed by Taiwanese students is sold for $49 million in 2021, and by 20130 the number of US workers in full-time permanent employment dropping to 9 percent. However, with such imaginative timelines, the report also clearly lists the people management challenges that will arise by 2030 in all the four worlds. 

As stated earlier, which of the four worlds turn out to be a reality will depend on complex, changing and competing forces. “Some of these forces are certain, but the speed at which they unfold can be hard to predict... It’s clear that automation will result in a massive reclassification and rebalancing of work... By replacing workers doing routine, methodical tasks, machines can amplify the comparative advantage of those workers with problem-solving, leadership, EQ (Emotional Intelligence), empathy and creativity skills.” In other words, creativity, innovation, imagination, and design will gain currency, and employers who work towards protecting people and not jobs, those who nurture agility, adaptability and re-skilling will be better off. “While CEOs are keen to maximize the benefits of automation... Finding the skills they need has become the biggest threat to their business, they say, but the skills they’re looking for are particularly telling: problem-solving, adaptability, collaboration, leadership, creativity and innovation top the list.”

We can achieve the seemingly impossible task of managing the impact of trends shaping the four worlds by facilitating collaboration between governments, organizations and the society, the report says. The trick lies in developing “responsible approaches and policies that govern the impact of technology and automation on jobs, looking for innovative ways to address unemployment caused by technology and allowing people to help themselves.” The report also clarifies that individuals will have potentially the most important role to play in the future. “Inevitably, much of the responsibility will be on the individual.

They will need not only to adapt to organizational change, but be willing to acquire new skills and experiences throughout their lifetime, to try new tasks and even to rethink and retrain mid-career.” It says that understanding the change, preparing for a new world and taking suitable action in a timely manner can mitigate threats to work life. Individuals too seem pumped to take on this new challenge, as 37 percent of those surveyed in the study were excited about the possibilities, 36 percent were confident of success and only 18 percent were worried for the future. Indians are the most excited (51 percent), second-most confident (42 percent) and least worried (5 percent).  88 percent of the Indians surveyed believe that technological development will improve their future job prospects. Furthermore, 74 percent of the total respondents believe it’s their own responsibility to update their skills rather than relying on any employer.

Both of them educate organizations and leaders to be in control of the narrative, begin acting now, give up tunnel-vision, invest in value, embrace technology, assume greater social responsibility and focus on being ‘humane’.

The last two points are particularly important as 73 percent of those surveyed for the study are of the view that technology can never replace human mind, 23 percent believe that doing a job that makes a difference is most important to their career and 25 percent say that their ideal employer has values matching their own. The report, an interesting, unique and imaginative way to understand the future of work, presents a much more comprehensive narrative than the linear thoughts that presently dominate the discourse. It is a must-read for anybody who will be associated, in any capacity, to organizations and workplaces in the next few years; because as much as one can find solace in the known, preparing for the unknown has an unmatchable kick to it. “Those organizations and individuals that understand potential futures, and what each might mean for them, and plan ahead, will be the best prepared to succeed.”