The labor market is changing. And not just a little bit either. Multiple variables are permanently and rapidly influencing the way we work and how we organize our organizations. For example, developments in technology. These provide completely different job profiles than we and education are used to. And what about the changing economy, which is becoming increasingly flexible and volatile, with fewer long-term collaborations. How do you deal with that as a manager? Is your company ready for the labor market of the future? In this blog we try to map the upcoming changes, so that we can prepare our organization for the times ahead.
Business and the impact of technological progress
Technology is all around us. Recently, in an extensive survey, nearly one-third of the employees surveyed indicated that they expect their jobs to disappear and be taken over by technological developments. That is quite something! Although there is a kernel of truth in this, people will always remain necessary. However, the extent to which manual trades will be needed will decrease drastically. Think of factory work and, for example, the work of drivers. What will only become more important are specialist roles, such as IT and process management. These are the crafts of the future. Not crafts based on manual labor, but crafts based on IT knowledge.
The employee of the future
The great future need for specialist IT skills poses a major problem. The knowledge is so specialized and changes so quickly that teaching is virtually impossible. At least not in the traditional way as we know it. Developing an official training or course is of little use if the knowledge taught is already outdated when the training is launched. But that is exactly the situation we are dealing with. We need specialist programmers and media specialists who can respond to almost daily technological advances. In short, 'on the job' training and self-training are increasing enormously in importance. The employee of the future will spend his entire working life learning. Learning, optimizing and adjusting his or her specialty will take up a large part of the working time. And if you want to retain your staff, you must provide this so that your company does not suffer from today's technology.
Accelerate customer and employee relations
In addition to all these changes, there is another important component that is already changing, but we are only at the beginning of the total change. Our customer and employee relationship. Customer relationships are more volatile than before. There is also less work being done with (long-term) contracts. For example, look at the advertising and marketing industry. Contracts of 12 months or longer are quite exceptional there. And that also applies to your employee contracts. While in the past people sometimes worked for the same employer for almost their entire working life, the average period that an employee now remains active with the company is only a few years. As an organization, you cannot afford to be dependent on the qualities and personality of your employees. You should therefore be prepared for greater turnover. One of the ways to solve this problem is to employ a flexible pool of specialists, such as self-employed people. And the Netherlands will certainly have enough of that in the future. At the moment, hiring a good freelancer is often still very expensive. This will certainly change in the future due to the high competition on the self-employed market. A serious option for many organizations to keep fixed costs low and thus be able to respond to the increasingly rapidly changing economy and technology.
