Member Article

A glimpse into the future …

By Paul Tooth, co-founder and CEO, BrightHR

Culturing limbs, designing the weather and counselling robots tend not to feature as part of most people’s average nine to five, but they may in the future!

We’ve just conducted some research* that has delved into sectors such as communications, robotics, space, environment and medicine to analyse not only how technology is shaping the way we work, but the types of work that will be critical for the future.

And it unearthed a bizarre line-up of brand new roles set to take over the workplace.

Working with futurist experts, we’ve been able to unveil ‘100 jobs of the future’- and space architects, body part managers and robot councillors may not be as far away from reality as we might think.

From the findings, ten of the most extraordinary future job roles were:

• Human to Machine Interface Programmer
• Drowned City Specialist
• Virtual Lawyer
• Avatar Manager
• Mind Reading Specialist
• Robot Counsellor
• Space Architect
• Weather Modification Police Officer
• Body Part Maker
• End-of-Life Planner

In the world of communications, Virtual Clutter Organisers, In-House Simplicity Experts and Machine Linguists appeared amongst the line-up, while in biology and medicine, doctors and scientists were upgraded to Old-Age Wellness Managers, Synthetic Life Designers and Obesity Consultants.

Vertical Farmers, Insect-based Food Developers and Drowned City Specialists featured in the energy and environment sector, while in robotics and space, we can expect the workforce of the future to consist of Robot Trainers, Solar Flight Specialists and Spaceport Designers.

Further to this, our research begged the question of whether machines would produce better solutions to problems that the average human and our futurologist, David A.Smith, and chief executive of strategic futures and research organisation, Global Futures and Foresight, said in many sectors, ‘yes’.

He told us that ‘as a result of advances in machine learning, the task of interrogating large amounts of data is likely to become fully-automated, making jobs with any systematic component vulnerable’ and ‘in fields such as law, accountancy and medicine, machines are likely to produce generally better answers than humans’.

So what does that mean for us mere mortals? We’ll probably be okay he says because ‘while job substitution by machines is alarming for those caught up in it, we know, from experience, that we have always been able to adapt and find new roles for ourselves.’

Good to know!

Another of our experts, Professor Linda Gratton of London Business School and The Hot Spots Movement, believes this trend is likely to become even more pronounced over time and that employees need to think more creatively about how they achieve career progression.

Gratton says studies suggest that a third of jobs in Europe will be replaced by technology over the next two decades. She explained to us that ’as middle-skilled roles disappear, workers may find that the ‘rung’ above them no longer exists, and that the career ladder may begin to look more like a career web …the ultimate implication being that workers cannot now expect to gain seniority by moving ‘up’, but rather moving sideways by gaining additional complex skills.’

It means employers and recruiters will be affected too and must change the way they find talent, looking to seek the right attributes rather than experience, and empower their workers to become more agile through on-the-job training.

Ultimately, it’s our very humanness that will make us valuable employees and contractors in the future. Developing new skills and offering more diverse services can help some ‘under threat’ areas such as accountancy to future proof their industry.

*BrightHR’s ‘A Future That Works’ report was compiled by professor of management practice at London Business School, Lynda Gratton, and futurologist David A.Smith.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Paul Tooth .