24 Trends Reshaping the Workplace

"Wired and ready to go: Caterer Peter Corrales, owner of Barocco to Go in Greenwich Village, uses IBM speech-recognition technology to assist in inventory management. technology will continue to improve productivity and change the way we work says author John A. Challenger."

"New technologies are changing how

we work, and demographic forces are

altering who will be working in the

decades to come."

Technology and demography are the two principal drivers of change in the economy, with implications for society, public policy, and even the environment in which we will work and live.

Technology will play an ever more important role in shaping the workplace of the future, as computers get smarter, faster, smaller, and so inexpensive that everyone can own one. Already, we see how the nonstop, technology-driven, global economy is tearing down traditional concepts of time and space. The Internet permits a person to conduct business anytime, day or night, with a company that might be 10 time zones away.

Portable laptop computers, cell phones, pagers, and wireless Internet connections allow people to work anywhere at anytime. We have more control over our schedules. As a result, many more may choose to take off days in the middle of the traditional workweek, when golf courses and shopping malls are less crowded, and work weekends instead.

In addition to technology, the rapidly changing demographic makeup of the population may have great impact on the future of the workplace. Skill-short companies will be compelled to open up more opportunities to older workers, for instance. Employers will have the challenge of getting the young and the old to work together harmoniously in order to maintain continued growth.

Technology

1. Resumes Will Be Implanted in Workers' Bodies
Embedded microchips will carry workers' entire employment history; screening job candidates will be as simple as walking through a metal detector.
A microchip storing vast amounts of information and embedded directly into the body could eventually be used by employers to screen job candidates. The chip would help eliminate fraud and could even allow companies to identify individuals who might pose a threat to workplace safety.

2. Jobs Will Demand Information Systems Know-How
In the future, most workers' primary activities will involve information technology. Workers will have to gather, create, manipulate, store, and distribute information related to products, services, and customer needs. Computer networks will be interconnected with information systems that will affect all industries; workers who can step into the new job categories created by these networks and their implementation will be in strong demand.

3. High Tech Will Relieve Labor Shortages
Labor shortages will be alleviated not by relaxing immigration laws but by increasing productivity through advanced technologies. High-tech firms will find ways to eliminate the need for human labor just as they did with robotics in plants.
Robotics has reduced the need for assembly workers. Conveniences such as voice mail, personal digital assistants, calendar software for PCs and handhelds, as well as voice-totext software, have eliminated many clerical jobs.
A similar technological evolution could make certain high-tech jobs obsolete. For example, software might be written by other software applications instead of human programmers.
Computers have reduced the need for many white-collar managers since they allow one person to do the work of two or three. How long will it be before technology actually replaces the people who design, build, and program the computers?
Some law firms now use forms of artificial intelligence. While the software currently is unable to match the human mind's flexibility, it does analyze facts, determine which rules apply, make recommendations, and draft the appropriate documents. This could eventually eliminate the need for paralegals, not to mention many entry-level lawyers. More importantly, the existence of this software serves to illustrate just how far we have come in creating computers that literally think for themselves.
remeet as commencement? seniors will be in increased demand for their experience; many will start businesses of their own.

Demographic Trends Open Opportunities

Demographic trends offer exciting new economic opportunities. In the decades to come, technosavvy teenagers and energetic retirees will vastly expand what was once called the "working age" population, and they'll invent new goods and services to market to each other, as well as to the middle-agers struggling to meet work and family obligations.
One area that will be booming with opportunities in the years ahead will be financial and retirement planning, as the nearly 77 million baby boomers begin reaching age 65 in 2011.
Entrepreneurs will spring up to offer services to parents in the emerging new baby boom. For example, new opportunities will arise in child-care placement, private preschools, and organic baby food. Entrepreneurial retirees will use their business acumen as well as their experience as parents and grandparents to develop products and services geared to young families.
And teenagers may assist the elderly who stay at home. Entrepreneurial nanny services will evolve into "granny" services, operated by and employing young people to perform duties for the elderly, such as running errands and assisting with household chores.
Tech-savvy teens and entreprenuerial elders: The face of the work force is changing, opening new markets and new opportunities.

4. Degreed Women Shatter the Glass Ceiling
As companies have an increasingly difficult time finding qualified individuals to fill the growing number of highly skilled positions, college-educated women will be the biggest benefactors, ultimately leading to the disappearance of the glass ceiling.
The number of women earning four-year college degrees has surged 44% over the last two decades; on the other hand, the number of men earning four-year degrees has actually fallen by 6% since 1993. As fewer men obtain bachelor's degrees, women will make further inroads in the managerial and executive ranks as the job candidates of choice in this rapidly changing and expanding economy. Since 1993, according to Census Bureau figures, the number of women working full-time in executive, administrative, or managerial positions has increased 29%, compared with 19% for men.

5. The End of Single-Sex Jobs
Jobs will no longer be separated into "men's work" and "women's work." As manufacturing is more computerized, jobs typically performed by men will decline in number. Meanwhile, more men will pursue careers in growing sectors such as health care and business services, now dominated by women, Bureau of Labor Statistics data suggest.
Women will also compete on a more equal basis for the remaining jobs in manufacturing that require computer knowledge rather than sheer physical strength. The number of women in the workplace will continue to grow and may equal the number of men by mid-century.

6. Boom in Birthrate Equals Boom in Opportunities
A new baby boom will occur, increasing the need for employer-subsidized child care and forcing many employers to offer this benefit to compete for skilled workers.
As Generation X'ers settle down and start their families, the annual birthrate from 2000 to 2012 could reach 4.3 million, equaling the number of births in 1957, the highest birthrate year of the twentieth century baby boom.

Factory work and manufacturing will require workers with more skills and even college degrees, predicts the author.
Employees must possess the skills to program and operate high-tech tools such as robots. Wages for more educated employees will increase accordingly.

7. Downsizing Will Breed Teen Entrepreneurship
Many of today's adolescents and Generation X'ers who have seen their parents downsized will harbor a distrust for the employer-employee contract and will rebel against the rigid rules of the conventional workplace. A revolutionary entrepreneurial movement is developing as an increasing number set up shop for themselves.
The huge population of more than 70 million baby boomers, the first of whom will officially cross the threshold to senior citizenship and turn 55 in the year 2001, will be among the new entrepreneurs' best customers and clients.

8. Elder Care: Company Benefit and Business Opportunity
By the year 2020, there will be 27.7 individuals aged 65 and older for every 100 working-age adults; this ratio will represent a 28.5% increase in just over two decades.
In order to be competitive in attracting and keeping talented employees, some companies may offer on-site nonmedical elder care facilities. Employees may bring their parents to these company-run facilities, just as children are brought to company-operated day care centers. The cost of the centers to companies will be offset by increased employee productivity and reduced absenteeism.

9. Wanted: Older Managers with Previous Long-Term Tenure
In order to heal the wounds left by job cuts and reorganizations, companies will seek older managerial job candidates with previous long-term tenure with one employer. They may be called upon to develop policies to help boost employee morale and commitment to the firm and thus enhance profits.
Companies are also more likely to choose older job candidates with higher skill levels to avoid the necessity of costly internal training programs. Some companies will rehire former long-term employees to retain the corporate memory residing with those individuals.

10. Next: Retiree Entrepreneurs
A huge wave of retiree entrepreneurs will set up their own businesses. They will provide a wide range of services, often related to the jobs they were doing for former employers. They may hire other retirees to work for them, establishing "gray businesses" made up mainly of older individuals. They will be highly competitive, thanks to their years of experience and extensive business contacts.
In "gray businesses," the issue of age discrimination will be reversed. Some younger employees, now in the minority, could charge older co-workers and supervisors with unfairness and denial of equal opportunities.

11. U.S. Work Force Geography Will Shift
Faced with a shrinking pool of younger workers, U.S. companies will increasingly tap the large, often overlooked source of labor located in the Sun Belt.
The growing population of retirees, many of whom migrate to warmer climates such as Florida and Arizona, will prove to be an abundant source of labor, especially for companies seeking computer-literate employees.
Companies will farm out computer-related work to these seniors, who are increasingly comfortable and proficient with PCs and the Internet. They may even transform the typical senior activities center into telecommuting centers where hundreds of seniors from the community can go and accomplish work on a computer terminal networked to the company via the Internet.

12. Telecommuting Will Drive U.S. Productivity
Driven by employee demand for more-flexible scheduling, telecommuting will be the predominant workplace trend in the new millennium.
In a Challenger survey, 43% of human-resource executives said that an increasingly mobile, telecommuting work force would be the biggest workplace trend in the twenty-first century.
Increased telecommuting will not only benefit employees desiring more balance between work and family, but will also pay dividends for employers in terms of improved productivity. At AT&T, where 29% of managers telecommute at least once a week (up from 8% in 1994), telecommuters put in, on average, five more hours of work at home than at the office each week. Some companies report that productivity rates for teleworkers were 20% to 25% higher than for employees who worked solely in the office.

"Employees or part-time workers would occupy generically furnished office spaces for periods ranging from one day to a year or more."

13. Corporate Hotels: Check In and Go to Work
The increasing portability of information-based work means the permanent office may soon become obsolete. In its place, we could see the rise of corporate hotels.
Employees or part-time workers would occupy generically furnished office spaces for periods ranging from one day to a year or more. They would simply plug in their computers and begin working. Corporate hotels could rent space to individuals from several different companies at one time.
The advantages of this arrangement are numerous: Corporate headquarters could be much smaller, saving on overhead. Businesses could easily set up short-term offices in other cities to test the market for their products or services. Companies that frequently do business with one another could rent adjoining space. And employees who change jobs would not have to change hotels.
Just like traditional hotels, the corporate hotel would offer shuttle bus service to airports, room service, cleaning service, and access to healthclub facilities through a concierge.

Economics

14. Higher Education Is Key to Factory Jobs
In the twenty-first century, the majority of employees hired by manufacturers will be college graduates, or will have job-specific, post-high school training. Many manufacturing jobs that depended upon a strong back will be replaced by jobs conducted from a computerized workstation.
Employees must possess the skills to program and operate high-tech tools such as robots. Wages for more educated employees will increase accordingly, causing some inflationary pressure.
The traditional blue-collar worker with only a high-school diploma will sometimes be squeezed out. The majority of less-educated former factory workers will take lower-paying jobs in the service sector.
The push for equal rights for disabled workers will result in more discrimination suits; many companies will initiate consciousness-raising programs to increase acceptance of-and opportunities for-the disabled.

15. Business-School Partnerships Will Battle Illiteracy
Business-school partnerships will become the norm in order to counter illiteracy and the lack of basic job skills. Companies may hire retired employees to conduct remedial reading and math programs. Companies will also emphasize customer service in their training. Investment in such programs will pay for itself many times over by increasing competitiveness.

16. "Occupational Synthesis" Breeds Big Salaries
Occupations traditionally stereotyped as moderate- to low-paying will experience a boom in the twenty-first century.
What we are starting to see now and will continue to see well into the twenty-first century is "Occupational Synthesis," whereby standard job skills are adapted to meet specific corporate needs. The result will be workers with more varied yet specialized skill sets that command higher and higher pay.
For example, the typical public school teacher will be looking at significant pay increases, as private businesses invest in public schools in an effort to mold student bodies into tomorrow's skilled work force.
The new educational consultants will benefit from dollars freed by private companies donating hightech and other educational materials to municipal school systems. Teachers will also be the beneficiaries of concentrated skill training provided by private funds.
Another example of Occupational Synthesis is the auto technician. There will be more and more onboard computerization in the average new automobile. Workers in this field will be half mechanical craftsmen, half information technology professionals. Already, some highly skilled automobile diagnosticians earn as much as $135,0OO to $150,000 annually.

17. Retail Stores: The Dinosaur of the Next Century?
Thousands of former retail employees will flood the job market as competition from catalogs and high overhead costs forces many retail stores to close. They will compete for jobs in marketing and sales, making those sectors of the job market among the most intensely competitive. Meanwhile, retail stores and malls that do survive will increasing]y resemble amusement parks. They will provide entertainment, movies, music, and special events in order to attract customers away from catalogs.

18. Internet Losers Lead Surge in Startups
Sweeping changes from mergers and acquisitions, continued restructuring, and the growth of Internet commerce are likely to lead to increased downsizing for professionals in the insurance and securities industries.
However, the mass job displacement from these sectors may result in a surge of startups, which could ultimately be among the most successful in United States history due to the unique relationship-building abilities of these professionals.
The ability to build lasting relationships is a significant advantage in the entrepreneurial process. It not only helps in establishing a solid customer base, but it also will prove to be beneficial in forming associations with vendors and employees as well as investors or loan institutions.

Government

19. City-Suburb Cooperation for Solving a Human Supply, Demand Crisis
The number of jobs in poor, innercity neighborhoods will continue to decline, while a shortage of entrylevel workers will plague companies located in edge cities-rapidly growing commercial areas removed from the downtown core, where many of the businesses are small entrepreneurial ventures.
These dual problems will be solved through partnerships between edge-city companies and inner-city social-service agencies. Motivated job seekers will receive assistance in the logistics of traveling in and out of the city to suburban
jobs, and they will be trained for entry-level jobs by a corps of volunteers, many of whom will be retirees.
Government grants will cover most of the cost of such programs. Initially, the turnover rate for these jobs will be high. However, as programs are refined, they will increasingly offer success and opportunity to the participants.

20. Stronger Push for Rights for the Disabled
As the workplace ages, more employees at all levels will have physical disabilities, and more lawsuits charging discrimination will result. Company-sponsored seminars aimed at informing and educating employees about disabilities will be mandatory in an attempt at consciousness raising.
The push toward equal rights for disabled workers will be similar to the twentieth-century movements by African-Americans, feminists, and gays.

21. Culture Diversifies: Goodbye, Christmas?
"Diversity in the workplace will transform corporate culture-and society in generaI."
In addition to concerns over liability, growing workplace diversity will likely make the traditional company Christmas party a relic of the twentieth century.
The number of religions and cultures represented in the workplace has grown markedly in the last decade. There are now more than 1,500 primary religious organizations functioning in the United States, and the number of people practicing these religions grows annually. Muslims will soon become the second-largest religious group in the United States.
Of course, many of these groups do not acknowledge or celebrate Christmas. Nor do they recognize certain traditions like Thanksgiving.
Some companies will change their holiday schedules to reflect the growing diversity. Instead of giving employees a list of days on which the firm will be closed, employers will likely give employees a list of possible holidays from which they can select a predetermined number to observe.

22. Home and Work Fuse: Goodbye, Weekends?
"Home and work will fuse as more businesses accommodate workers' desire to control where when and how long they work."
No one will look forward to week
ends because they will no longer exist. As more people gain more control over when and where they work, neither the workday nor the workweek will have a distinguishable beginning or end.
Labor-short companies are increasingly willing to accommodate workers' desire for more-flexible scheduling, evidenced by the growing number of firms offering telecommuting, flextime, and core hours.
The tradeoff may be that the combination of these alternative work arrangements with the breakneck speed of doing business in the New Economy will further blur the line between work and home/family/ leisure.
Already, workers from the factory floor to the executive suite are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Many are now accustomed to having the tools of the New Economy-cell phones, pagers, laptop PCs-within arm's reach at all times.
The fusion between home and work may ultimately lead to the demise of the leisure-filled weekend. Saturdays and Sundays could become workdays, for example, for golfers hoping to avoid crowded courses by taking Tuesdays and Thursdays off.

23. The Rise of the 24/7 Worker
"Portable communications technology will give rise to more people working anywhere, anytime, or even everywhere, all the time. The result may be a growing problem of isolation."
Some workers won't take any time off-or will have such flexible schedules and portable tools that they can make themselves available to employers and clients 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
To stay competitive in this global economy, companies will rely OM workers who will be willing and able to work the flexible hours associated with an increasingly Internet oriented, nonstop marketplace. These individuals are very comfortable with the latest technology, including the Internet. They rely heavily on portable tools, such as cellular phones, laptop (or palmtop) computers, and feather-light modems
for both life and work. They could be techno-savvy teens or seniors who have followed the development of the computer since its inception.
There is already evidence of the emergence of this new worker. In 1997, 27% of the civilian labor force worked flexible schedules, according to the latest survey of alternative work schedules conducted every six years by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is the largest percentage since the Bureau began tracking the data in 1985 and a whopping 83% increase from 1991, when only 15% of the labor force maintained flexible schedules.

24. New Workplace Problem: Isolation
Employees will be increasingly isolated. Digitally mediated communication, such as e-mail and voice mail, increasingly replaces face-toface exchanges. The resulting decline in social skills may hinder team problem solving and threaten produc tivity.
Companies will address this problem through methods such as on-site counseling and special programs designed to bring employees together in social settings where they can meet and get to know one another.
Ironically, then, businesses that succeed in the future may be those that re-create workers' connections to society-which fierce economic competition in the early twenty-first century helped demolish.