Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

The Changing Nature of the Employer/Employee Social Contract

Over the last decade, employee expectations in the workplace have changed in a variety of interesting ways. Technological advances, a steady march toward globalization, unionization, and societal disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic have fundamentally shifted the nature of the relationship between organization and worker. And while this relationship might not be as straightforward and “quid pro quo” as it was in the past, the evolution opens opportunities for both employer and employee growth, as well as a positive transformation of culture and the employee experience.  

Let’s take a closer look at some of the intricacies of this changing relationship and how employers may need to rethink their workforce strategies to succeed amid these new realities.  

Employees are commodities no more

As Mercer’s Kai Anderson, Ilya Bonic, and Kate Bravery wrote in their recent book Work Different: 10 Truths for Winning in the People Age, employees have traditionally been seen as assets working under a transactional loyalty contract in which pay, benefits, and security were exchanged for time and output as dictated by the company.  

“The pandemic quickened the pace toward what we call the thrive contract – an employment model anchored in purpose, equity, and impact,” the authors said. “Employees demanded a healthier experience in exchange for a commitment to the organization’s renewal.” 

As part of the thrive contract, instead of viewing employees as commodities, employers care for employees in a holistic manner – supporting the whole person and both their personal and professional objectives. And this requires a shift in the very definition of what constitutes full-time employment and what is expected from full-time employees (FTEs). 

The meaning and relevance of full-time employment is changing 

A full-time job is generally one that requires employees to work a minimum of 30 hours a week, but in many countries, there is no legal definition of full-time employment, and specific arrangements are left to the employer and company policy.  

So, while the number of hours is standard, the timeframe in which an FTE works those hours has become far more flexible. Rather than being defined as work from Monday-Friday, 9 am to 5 pm, work scheduling arrangements for FTEs now run the gamut and include four-day work weeks, rotating in office and remote workdays, and shift swapping.  

Some FTEs use the increasing flexibility as an opportunity to devote more time to personal pursuits, while others take on other roles like gig work. Either way, employee work-life balance has become a central concern of organizations who once did not bother themselves with what went on outside company walls. For instance, employers who have implemented in-office mandates are now often expected to make those mandates easier for employees by providing childcare and transportation assistance.  

Furthermore, in the old contract between employers and FTEs, a “job” was well defined. FTEs already possessed most of the skills necessary to perform that job and were compensated accordingly. Today, employers are redesigning jobs in real time to make room for smart technology partners, and employee upskilling and reskilling efforts must keep pace.  

For the rest of the article, head on over to the Dayforce blog.

Kelly Monahan on Why the Future of Leadership is Emotionally Intelligent

Over the last decade, I've had the privilege to work with the brilliant Christie Smith and Kelly Monahan while they were at Deloitte, and then again with Kelly as a future of work subject matter expert for Upwork, where she leads the Upwork Research Institute. When I learned they were writing a book together, I couldn't have been more excited, and Essential: How Distributed Teams, Generative AI, and Global Shifts Are Creating a New Human-Powered Leadership has certainly delivered on its title. I recently sat down with Kelly for a Q&A to share more details about the book writing process and the 21st century leadership advice we can't afford to ignore.

How did you two meet each other and how did this collaboration come about?

Kelly: Christie and I met almost a decade ago at Deloitte. She and I began to partner on research together and figured out pretty quickly we enjoyed working together. I bring more of that analytical research thinking while she brings the executive strategic viewpoint. Our paths then crossed again at Accenture where we started kicking around the idea of a book, but the timing just wasn't quite right. Finally in 2023 we were both at a point to visit this collaboration again and as they say the rest is history!

 

Briefly, what's the origin story of Essential? Why did you both feel you were the right duo to write this book?

 

Kelly: I am using the Elmo fire GIF to describe the way most leaders feel today. Yes, leading teams and businesses have always been challenging. But what's different today is that there is disruption at nearly every level of society today. Whether it's working across distributed teams, dealing with the fast and furious AI developments, government changes and a generally burned out workforce coming out of a pandemic, there is a lot to manage. And, most leaders haven't been trained in the psychology of human behavior at work. We've taught a lot of leaders how to manage a P&L in a relatively stable environment, but haven't done a lot to help them navigate the needs of people in uncertain environments. So, we wanted to provide a research based look at helping leaders navigate the human side of business today. We feel we are the right duo because of generational differences. Christie is a seasoned executive representing the existing leadership paradigm that Baby Boomers have established. I represent the Millennial generation that has often challenged a lot of what Baby Boomers have normalized in business settings. Our hope in writing this together was to bridge the generational gap that we often experience in the workplace and bring both sides of the lived experience of work today.

 

An emotionally intelligent leader in the age of AI may at first seem counterintuitive. Why do you feel human-powered leadership is more important now than it has ever been?

 

Kelly: I think AI is challenging us to ask the fundamental question of what does it mean to be human today. When a lot of the cognitive work can know be done by AI, what should humans be doing. For so long we've used technology to do the same type of things faster and cheaper, but now it's time to upend what we know of work and ask newfound questions like how can organizations better meet the needs of their people? How can leaders suspend their self-interest so that more people thrive in our organizations? How do we optimize rather than maximize resources at the expense of people and planet? We are at a critical juncture in our shared human work experience and I think AI can cause us to ask even more human questions than we've done before.

 

Both of you have very deep research benches. Why do you think it's important for "future of work" people to have quantitative support for their forecasts?

 

Kelly: The reality is if you want to get a seat at the table you need to bring data. For too long the people movement have been overlooked by business executives and board rooms because they've failed to see the link between performance and meeting human needs. This is why we wrote Essential. We wanted them to have the data and science behind elevating humanity at work. At the end of day, yes it's the right thing to do, but as we laid out in the book, it is also the right business thing to do. Businesses that treat their people well outperform in the long-run those who don't.

 

If readers could remember one thing from Essential, what's the lesson you'd want to impart?

 

Kelly: Stay curious! The world is rapidly changing around us and we have to keep an open mind to rethink many of the norms of business today. Relationships, routines and resource allocation can all be done better if we change our frame about people at work. Most people today want to work; they just feel overlooked and forgotten in their work systems. Be the leader that sees their people and remains curious!

 

Thanks to Kelly (and Christie) and please check out Essential at your first opportunity!

Building the Next Generation of Skills Inside Your Company

It’s common for employees to want to build skills at work, but an effective learning infrastructure isn’t as common. As organizations grow, they tend to lose track of their people’s skills. Leaders don’t know the competencies employees have acquired at work, what they can do next, and the skills they can develop to grow their contributions to the organization. 

Employers often don’t dig too deeply either, preferring instead to seek fresh talent externally when a need presents itself. But even if the current job market could support it, it’s difficult to maintain the hiring pace needed to source emerging skills from the outside. This reality leads to persistent understaffing and longer role vacancies.  

It’s imperative to build a skills-based organization that can flex to evolving business and employee needs. But where to start? 

The following five strategies may prove helpful as you seek to solve today’s labor shortage conundrum with your own reliable and already proven workforce. 

Understand the size and composition of your workforce 

Using analytics programs, employers should determine the current internal and external trends in workforce supply and demand. Examine the gap between the skills possessed by your workforce today and the skills your business requires to be successful now and in the future.  

It might be beneficial to use a skills segmentation matrix that includes the variables of scarcity (how common or uncommon the skill is in the market), criticality (how essential or non-essential the skill is for work to be successfully completed), and volume (how much volume of this skill the business requires).  

Seek feedback on your matrix from a diverse group of stakeholders across the organization, and during your investigation, determine the in-house superstars in in-demand areas. You can then enlist the help of these employees in crafting appropriate strategies and training to boost the organization’s overall level of skill competency. 

For the rest of the article, head over to the Dayforce blog.

The Future of Compensation in the Age of Adaptability

In ManpowerGroup’s 2024 Age of Adaptability report, we discussed how workers are expecting greater customization in all aspects of the employee experience – which, of course, includes compensation and benefits.

Since the business world became more structured more than a century ago, fixed and consistent compensation among groups of employees has been the standard, but increasing hyper-personalization is a thread that runs through all our considerations about the future of total rewards.

In HR.com’s 2024 report on the future of compensation and total rewards, 70% of leader respondents agreed that updating their organization’s total rewards strategies will help keep pace with changing attitudes around compensation. In addition, 85% said that it’s important to modify reward strategies for individual contributors.

In this piece, we’ll explore compensation best practices as we approach the quarter mark of the twenty-first century, such as agile compensation models, pay transparency and equity strategies, lifestyle and financial wellness offerings, and the involvement of AI in decision-making – which could paradoxically make compensation more uniform at a time when employees are demanding the opposite.

Pay Grades and Salary Bands No More

Traditionally, organizations made compensation decisions based on pre-set pay grades and salary bands, but in the post-pandemic business world, many question whether this model is fair, equitable, or well-suited to rapidly evolving conditions.

My research suggests that the most effective compensation strategies are more agile and allow organizations to recalibrate total rewards based on real-time factors inside and outside the company.  And rather than being assigned a one-size-fits-all title, salary, and benefits package upon hiring, employees can now customize the total rewards package that best matches their individual preferences based on an a la carte menu of options.

As Anita Lettink, a global future of work expert and the author of Equal Pay for Equal Work, told me, this approach works better because we can no longer view employees in homogenous groupings when offering rewards. “People don’t adhere to specific life stages anymore – for example, needing childcare in one’s 30s – so it makes sense to let employees pick and choose on a monthly basis,” she said.

In practice, a new hire may exchange lucrative stock options or company-funded retirement for a lower base salary. In tandem with this trend, more organizations are offering company equity to individual contributors rather than reserving it for senior leaders. Lettink said companies are also launching “employee sharing” initiatives in which workers receive payouts for something the organization created or revenue they helped to generate. “These programs encourage behaviors that are beneficial to company growth,” she added.

Agile compensation models don’t rely on a once-a-year performance review to determine an incremental salary bump or bonus, but rather leverage technology to auto-adjust rewards frequently in keeping with industry and market developments, larger economic factors like inflation, and peer feedback. These nimble strategies involve a broader range of metrics for assessing value including specialized employee skills, innovative contributions to company growth, and supervisor effectiveness.

Pay Transparency and True Equity Will Sweep the Globe

Pay transparency, which refers to openly disclosing the salary range for a given position, is considered a critical step in the journey toward pay equity. Although Lettink correctly noted that pay transparency is driving positive change for employees – especially at the lower levels – many organizations tend to drag their feet until they are mandated to deploy it. However, the concept is gaining momentum all over the world and we should prepare for it to be universal in the coming years.

Despite increased attention to the issue over the last decade, pay disparities based on race and gender remain stubborn problems. In response, a bevy of equal pay regulations designed to promote fairness have taken root. Organizations are ensuring compliance with these regulations by increasing their use of pay equity software to run statistical analyses of their compensation models, develop benchmarks, and derive core insights by comparing internal and external data.

Equity analysis isn’t just for leveling the playing field for women and underrepresented minorities. These tools may also illustrate pay disparities between employees at a specific location, function, or level and employees with similar characteristics inside and outside the company. Objective and ongoing reporting of pay gaps facilitates their immediate resolution and prevents these gaps from becoming systemic and leading to legal liability.

For the rest of this piece, check out the full blog series at ManpowerGroup.

HR Compliance Developments Going into 2025

According to Dayforce research, nearly half (48%) of surveyed leaders believe that increased compliance and regulatory complexity will impede their organization’s ability to achieve its business objectives. This could be due in part to the sheer number of emerging workforce compliance trends and how many different areas they impact. 

This shift requires substantially more oversight than the compliance function needed in the past. To help simplify the situation, I’ve rounded up key workforce compliance trends that should be top of mind for HR professionals through 2025.  

Non-compete agreements 

In certain nations, including Malaysia and Mexico, most post-termination non-compete agreements have generally been prohibited for some time. Then, in the spring of 2024, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission published a final rule that would effectively ban all non-compete agreements between employers and workers. The exceptions to the rule pertain to existing agreements with senior executives, sale-of-business non-competes, and causes of action that accrued before the rule’s effective date of September 4, 2024. 

Expanded leave requirements 

Globally, the parameters of paid and unpaid leave are constantly in flux. Most interesting is the increase in laws that allow employees to take paid time off (PTO) for any reason. Generous accommodations for new parents and senior caregivers are also becoming an expectation for employers of a certain size. Just this spring in Japan, Parliament passed legislation requiring companies to offer flexible working options to employees with young children to help them balance work with child rearing. 

Minimum pay thresholds 

In the U.S., the beginning of 2024 was marked by an increase in the minimum wage in more than 20 states, and more changes are occurring in individual states and localities as the year progresses. Canada continues to raise its minimum wage every year, while European countries continue to realize the effects of 2022’s Minimum Wage Directive, which took aim at in-work poverty. If you have employees in the U.S., you should note that in April, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued a rule updating overtime pay requirements. This rule increases the minimum salary threshold for employees to be exempt from overtime pay, with the first phase having taken effect on July 1, 2023 and the second phase on January 1, 2025. 

For more compliance happenings, read the full article on Dayforce.com.

Essential New Read: The Skills-Powered Organization

My friend Ravin Jesuthasan is a leading voice on skills-based employment. His latest book, The Skills-Powered Organization: The Journey to the Next-Generation Enterprise, which he cowrote with Tanuj Kapilashrami, is an essential read for leaders who are in the difficult spot of touting the importance of skills without fully understanding how to shape their organization accordingly. This Q&A with Ravin captures some of the highlights, and I hope you’ll pick up a copy for a deeper dive.

Ravin, now did you come to collaborate with your co-author?

Tanuj and I have known each other for about 4 years. We both sit on a couple of committees at the World Economic Forum and have long had a common interest in how skills can unlock significantly greater productivity, agility and engagement. My interest and the ideas in this book stem from and build on the four books I have written with my good friend John Boudreau. Perhaps most importantly, we wanted to write a practitioner’s guide. A book that was rigorous with research and frameworks AND clearly demonstrated how leaders can make these changes in their organizations

Can you share why you have focused your content on skills?

The growing volatility and velocity of change in the world necessitates a different set of building blocks for work. The IMF estimates that uncertainty over the last 3 years is up 2.5X over the previous 30 years. For companies, crisis is no longer a one-off event, but a recurring one. Think of the 4 shocks we are experiencing today: 

• The climate crisis
• The energy impact from the invasion of Ukraine.
• Geopolitical issues with China and the Middle East
• The technology shock and especially AI

All independent events but with massive feedback loops. Each of these 4 shocks is world shaking, but cumulatively happening in a 18 month period, puts us in unprecedented times. In Work Without Jobs, John Boudreau and I introduced the concept of a new work operating model and this books builds on an extends that idea with a deep dive into why skills need to be the currency of work; in order to enable organization to respond (and thrive) in this rapidly changing world of ours

What does this journey look like for a typical organization?

In our research we identified 3 core capabilities of the skills-powered organization. The capability of work design is essential to understanding the true demand for skills and how they can best be connected to work. Talent development is pivotal to ensuring skills are acquired in a timely and efficient manner based on the demand signals from work design. Last, talent deployment is the critical capability of enabling the expression of the demanded skills across a variety of work engagements with optimal efficiency, effectiveness, and impact

How did Standard Chartered Bank get started and what can its experience teach us?

As I mentioned, the thing that was attractive to me about partnering with Tanuj was to tell the story of a progressive organization that was bringing these ideas to life and fruition. Standard Chartered is a 170-year-old, leading international banking group with a rich history and legacy.

For Standard Chartered, the skills-powered journey started with transitioning the narrative from jobs to skills. It began with a commercial business case based on its own strategic workforce planning analysis, highlighting the jobs and skills within the organization that would soon no longer be relevant (which it refers to as “sunset” roles). This might be due to changing client expectations or the evolution of technology and automation of tasks. New jobs and skills would also be created and demanded as a result (“sunrise” roles). The strategic workforce plan (SWP) also highlighted the broader impact of the changing demand for skills—the disproportionate displacement of junior roles and the resulting cost implications as the organization shifted from a pyramid to a diamond shape.

Additionally, it highlighted the potential impact on gender diversity due to the higher number of women currently employed in sunset roles and with many sunrise roles being currently more male dominated. The tangible economics of “build” versus buy versus borrow versus bot,” and the far-reaching impact of decisions related to upskilling and reskilling, created a compelling foundation for the board and the global management team who made skills a critical element of the overall strategic plan.

What do you believe leaders who want to build a skills-based organization should do first?

As we often say, you have to eat the elephant one bite at a time. There are 3 things we defined as being pivotal to this journey:

1. Establish a North Star to anchor your journey: So, what do we mean by a North Star? It is a clear statement about your vision to guide your direction and program of work to becoming a skills-powered organization. A North Star is simple and enduring—it is your touchstone to ensure you remain on track and is clearly aligned to addressing specific business needs.
2. Experiment, experiment, experiment: We have seen through the Standard Chartered examples the power of prototypes and experiments in enabling the shift in mindset, skill set, and toolset. Experiments are critical for testing and applying the design principles underpinning the skills-powered organization before they are deployed across the organization
3. Focus on the key enablers of success: Too often organizations believe the answer to any problem is to throw technology at the problem. We define 8 critical enablers for this journey (including AI and technology):

•  Leadership (where every change journey starts)
•  Governance
• Employee engagement in the journey
• Culture and change management
• The HR function and its role
• Functional processes, such as finance, IT, and legal
• Technology and AI
• Foundational enablers (e.g., skills taxonomy and data)

Thanks, Ravin! 

The Future of Leadership in the Age of Adaptability

In ManpowerGroup's 2024 Age of Adaptability trends report, we discussed how the pandemic forced an immediate overhaul of management as we knew it. While societal disruption, advancing technology, and sustainability reshaped work, leaders needed to steer organizational change without tangible models from which to draw. They also needed to promote upskilling and reskilling, inclusion, and satisfaction among their employees while managing a geographically dispersed and distributed workforce.

Leaders who had done things more or less the same way for two centuries were suddenly operating in the dark. It takes a special kind of person to do this effectively, and this person is what we will refer to as the 2030 Leader.

The 2030 Leader

In 2030, the majority of leaders will be members of the millennial generation, or those born between 1980-95. In the early aughts while entry-level workers, the millennials made their mark early with their insistence on a more empowered, enlightened business world. As an ethnically diverse generation raised on computers, the millennials have adapted seamlessly to the integration of smart machines into the workplace and more naturally engage with diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) issues.

In general, these circumstances make millennials the ideal candidates to shepherd our organizations into the second half of the 21st century. But of course, everyone is different and some leaders will be more competent in 2030 than others.

I believe that the future of leadership will be co-created by young trailblazers with several core traits including flexibility, humility, emotional intelligence, global perspective, and technological curiosity. Let’s describe these one by one.

Flexibility: The years 2022 and 2030 were characterized by what many termed the “RTO wars.” Entrenched baby boomer leaders wanted the workplace to return to post-pandemic norms, while many employees weren’t having it. Although a majority of organizations settled on a compromise of 2-3 days in the office per week, the RTO wars still exist.

But by 2030, millennial leaders are likely to have put an end to them. Rather, they will be more inclined to accept a reality that includes a variety of employment arrangements that are to some degree customized to each employee. These leaders will be comfortable with the constant change inherent in a rapidly evolving world and are likely to staff accordingly – creating project-based, time-bound teams from a variety of internal and external sources (retired part-timers, fractional executives, subject matter experts, etc.) as business needs require.

As time goes on, leaders will become more proficient in best practices for managing distributed and remote workforces. And millennials will be the first generation of leaders to successfully model effective work/life integration, with a holistic orientation toward work, family, and leisure.

Humility: Back in the 1970s, a management researcher named Robert Greenleaf proposed the notion of servant leadership, a style in which leaders display personal accountability and put the needs, aspirations, and interests of their followers above their own. Never has the concept of servant leadership been more relevant, as ManpowerGroup Chief Innovation Officer Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic argues that the challenges of this century mandate that leaders are selected on competence rather than confidence, humility rather than charisma, and integrity rather than narcissism.

In 2030, organizations will still be in the position of needing to pivot quickly if an established strategy isn’t working, which means that leaders will need to adopt an agile mindset, admit when they’re wrong, and solicit advice from a much wider range of stakeholders – including individual contributors deriving insights from AI-based tools – than they have in the past.

For the rest of this article, visit ManpowerGroup's Global Insights blog.

The Future of Jobs in the Age of Adaptability

Around 20 years ago, leaders started to ask me if nascent AI-based technologies would eliminate the need for human workers. My response then was the same as it is now: not quickly and not totally.

Nevertheless, human jobs are transforming at a rapid rate. According to a 2023 McKinsey report, in the period from 2019 to 2022, the labor market in the U.S. alone experienced 8.6 million occupational shifts. This is a 50% increase from the prior three-year period, and by 2030, an additional 12 million shifts are projected. McKinsey also estimated that 30% of all hours worked by humans today could be automated by 2030.

It might be simpler if the march toward an AI-driven future meant that all human workers would eventually lounge their lives away on cruise ships – depending on technology for their very existence as in the 2008 Pixar movie WALL-E. In reality, though, humans will continue to work as we always have. The work will just look different.

The exact manner in which human jobs are evolving is driven by organizational concerns around profit and productivity. As we shared in our 2024 Age of Adaptability trends report, companies seeking to boost flagging human productivity must focus on finding the right blend of people and technology. We can do this with a thoughtful approach to job redesign and how human work can best be distributed and evaluated in the near future.

Job Redesign

I briefly talked about job redesign in the first article in this series. Job redesign is the process of rearranging or replacing tasks to better align work with real-time conditions inside and outside the organization.

While leaders may be focusing a lot of attention on job redesign now, the need for it is not unprecedented. For example, the bookkeeper job, once essential for every organization no matter how small, was redesigned in the 1980s to reflect the widespread adoption of accounting software. Back then, if you were a bookkeeper who wanted to remain gainfully employed, you had to determine how to add value beyond the software’s capabilities.

To be fair, job redesign is a more complex proposition today because the onslaught of AI-based technologies in our workplaces is impacting a larger number of jobs. But the transition shouldn’t be overwhelming, as the progression to more complete AI integration is occurring more slowly than most people think. Despite the excitement around generative AI, for instance, practical use cases are still limited. Industry analysts at Gartner even predict that in the next few years, we are likely to fall into a “trough of disillusionment” regarding what AI-based partners can do and what they can’t.

Many organizations have already learned the hard way that strategic job redesign does not involve blunt force – or bringing in a new piece of automation or an AI-based software program and letting go of all of the human employees related to that function. The most effective job redesign initiatives assign smart technology components to handle straightforward, repetitive tasks while human employees remain to provide essential oversight.

Firms like Accenture have already quantified how this shakes out. According to a recent analysis on the impact of generative AI, a current human customer service role can be broken into 13 distinct tasks. Of those 13 component tasks, four must still be fully performed by humans, four could be fully automated, and five involve human and machine partnership. Although Accenture didn’t say this, I’ll point out that the five partnered tasks require substantially more human skill than the four transactional tasks technology is replacing.

For the rest of this article, check out the ManpowerGroup Global Insights blog.

The Future of Skills in the Age of Adaptability

In ManpowerGroup’s 2024 Age of Adaptability trend report, we shared how current demographic shifts are exacerbating labor shortages. Specifically, by 2030, members of Generation Z (born 1996-2012) will compose 58% of the workforce and a majority of the large baby boom generation will have retired.

The resulting knowledge deficit means it’s paramount to forecast the future of skills and use this understanding to fill gaps as efficiently as possible. However, for all of the talk about skills-based organizations – which deconstruct traditional roles, break them down into component parts, and then hire people to handle each part – the progress toward this shift in protocol isn’t as rapid as some would prefer. Between now and 2030, the evolution to a true skills focus will be gradual, and not as simple as merely declaring yourself a skills-based organization.

In this piece, we’ll explore how in the near future, the composition and acquisition of an in-demand, workforce-wide skills portfolio can move organizations toward the goal of a skills-based organization.

Skill Composition

The future of skills is complex and rapidly evolving. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs Report, 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted within five years.

But what skills will be most essential in a world of global, distributed, and automated work, where more surprises are likely around the corner? WEF’s 2023 research found that the hottest skills from an organizational perspective include cognitive and analytical thinking, creative thinking, self-efficacy (resilience, flexibility, and learning agility), curiosity, empathy, social influence, and quality control.

It’s notable that technical AI and big data skills ranked of lower importance than all of these. Why is this the case when AI-related skills are the third highest priority in company training strategies from now until 2027 (nine percent), and the top training priority for companies with more than 50,000 employees?

Leaders may be realizing that it’s not the hard AI and automation skills themselves that are most critical, but the ability to have an effective partner orientation toward working with smart machines. In other words, honing our human “soft” skills is the best way to differentiate our capabilities from AI’s capabilities and provide competent and ethical oversight to the technological “employees” in our workplaces.

In a 2024 LinkedIn Pulse article, systems engineer Arif Sheikh agreed with this take, suggesting that as AI-based technologies automate a greater number of tasks, the value of traditional human skills might at first seem to diminish. But this perspective overlooks the foundational role such skills play in personal development, social interaction, and professional experience.

Sheikh suggested that individuals who learn to navigate social interactions without social media before relying on these platforms will have better outcomes. “This highlights the importance of direct, human connection – a nuance that AI, for all its sophistication, cannot fully replicate,” he said.

In any case, it’s likely that by 2030, the most marketable employees will be those whose skillsets are a blend of job-specific competencies and those that make it possible to work successfully with machines and other humans in a variety of contexts. This means that in terms of training dollars, we might want to put the horse before the cart.

We should also note that within the next ten years, a majority of jobs will have a green component, which may require the development of new skills such as carbon footprinting, sustainability consulting, and climate data analysis across a large swath of industries and functions.

For the rest of this piece, please visit the Manpower Group Global Insights blog.

 

The Future of AI in the Age of Adaptability

For the next several months, I'm going to be featuring a "Future of..." series I'm working on with ManpowerGroup as part of its new Global Insights team.

Within the next five years, we anticipate that the democratization of AI-based technology will lead to greater accessibility across the organization and that employees at all levels will be empowered to integrate AI into relevant job tasks as they see fit. 

As we discussed in “The Age of Adaptability” report, businesses anticipate a 23% churn in jobs over the next five years between the creation of new roles and the reduction of others. But, because more cross-industry examples will emerge detailing how best to deploy AI, organizations won’t be as mystified by its presence and impact on the workforce. AI will increasingly be seen as a force for good!

One might imagine that a futurist has extreme ideas about the future of AI. And while it’s true that I believe AI-based technologies will be true partners in work moving forward and will play a role in the development of the metaverse and immersive work environments that Manpower recently researched, I don’t think the AI of science fiction is likely to come to fruition anytime soon. We are still far from achieving what’s called artificial general intelligence, which is a form of AI that thinks and creates on its own, essentially surpassing human abilities in all types of work.

Since AI-based technologies are not in a position to take over all human jobs as is still feared, this piece will focus on the technologies that are available now – namely generative AI applications and talent intelligence applications – and the role they can realistically play in the workforce in the coming years.

Generative AI Has Legs, But It’s Not the End

Generative AI is capable of generating text, images, or other media by learning the patterns and structure of input training data and then generating new data that has similar characteristics. A workforce-related example involves the development of sophisticated digital assistants that can use an existing arsenal of HR information to respond more accurately to online employee queries, even if they weren’t trained on those exact questions.

The technology has been introduced to the market at a very rapid pace. ChatGPT was released in November of 2022, and then shortly thereafter, OpenAI released a large language model called GPT-4 that was a measurable improvement over the original ChatGPT. Microsoft, Google, and other big technology players are quickly getting in on the action. 

But generative AI is not necessarily the massive breakthrough people think it is. Its release is more the result of a logical linear progression, as we’ve had smart chatbots for quite some time now. Although there has been significant media interest in ChatGPT, it’s not substantially different from what came before. In its current state, generative AI still requires a great deal of human oversight and regulation, and the majority of organizations are just figuring out how to use it effectively for various business purposes. So, if you haven’t cracked the code yet, you shouldn’t lose sleep over it. You’re not behind.

For the rest of this piece, head over to the ManpowerGroup's Global Insights blog.