At the dawn of Industry 4.0, manufacturing looks set to emerge, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the global economy’s lost decade. Indeed, by most accounts the sector is the primary engine of economic growth. According to the World Economic Forum, “the sector proclaimed dying in western economies could still be the vehicle to improve living standards” globally.

Job creation is one of the key elements of this improvement, within manufacturing and beyond. The sector has a multiplier effect unlike any other, meaning that growing demand for manufacturing spurs unmatched creation of jobs, investments and innovations in other industries.

But will the new manufacturing era be able to fulfil its promise as a booming labour economy? Only if it can overcome a looming productivity crisis fuelled by a chronic talent shortage.

Automation

There is no escaping the seismic shift in production labour in the last decade. Blue-collar workers have been replaced by robots in factories the world over and “technology and automation have raised significant anxiety about negative employment implications”. But this displacement only tells part of the story.

Automation hasn’t only affected the number of jobs in manufacturing. It’s also transformed the nature of work. This shift in skills is a key factor in the industry’s talent shortage – and part of the solution will be for employers to retrain and redeploy the displaced workforce for higher-skilled, higher-paying jobs. In essence, having invested in automated production facilities, the next step is to invest in the workforce to run them.

A further implication of a reskilled production workforce will be its spinoff into other labour markets. A recent Deloitte report cites the figure of 250 non-manufacturing jobs created by every 100 jobs in a manufacturing facility. So if automation redefines rather than replaces production jobs, the future is far less bleak than the headlines suggest.

Contingent workforce

Contingency is nothing new in the manufacturing workforce. Temps and contract workers have long been valuable assets to employers dealing with fluctuating production demands. But while historically this has centred on the production line, the future will see contingent manufacturing work greatly extend its scope.

It will be another lever for manufacturing employers to use to combat a talent gap that stood at 10 million jobs globally in 2012 and has widened with every passing year. This is already putting a huge strain on workforces: average annual working hours in US manufacturing are 17% higher than in all private industries.

Embracing new working models can only play a limited role in redressing this imbalance, but it will be a critical one nonetheless. As vendor management system provider DCR Workforce puts it: “without the use of contingent workers, manufacturing […] may fail to grow to its potential”.

Connectivity

The Internet of Things is a key tech driver of Industry 4.0, creating smart manufacturing systems capable of generating all-new levels of intelligence and productivity. But those systems require the right human component to realise the potential of all this interoperability. And once again, that talent pool is nothing like as large as it needs to be.

The ultra-efficient, ultra-sophisticated, ultra-productive manufacturing operations of the future will be places of greater complexity and shorter product cycles. These are the connectivity challenges that future workforces will have to meet.

Globalisation

Manufacturing was the poster child of globalisation, but it may have reached its peak. A generation ago, innovation meant offshoring production to cheap overseas labour markets. But the wage differential between east and west is closing at pace, and the returns from offshoring are diminishing with it.

At the same time, the increased efficiencies promised by Industry 4.0 provide further incentive for manufacturers to consider reshoring production facilities. Many already are. More will follow in the future.

Reshoring makes sense from an employment perspective. If a new workforce does need to be built from the ground up, far better to do so at home, where the greatest influence can be exerted on work and skills policymaking.

Continuity of skills

Clearly the widening skills gap is the biggest threat of all to the future of manufacturing. It’s a chronic problem with multiple causes: the changing nature of manufacturing roles; an ageing workforce taking embedded skills into retirement; the sector’s undesirability as an employer among millennials; and a dwindling pipeline of STEM students entering the workforce.

The last two concerns are the ones the industry must prioritise to achieve the workforce the future demands. Greater public-private collaboration is needed to align STEM education to industry standards, supported wholeheartedly by policy leaders. Meanwhile, the mother of all PR campaigns must be devised to convince young minds of the quality, range, longevity and world-changing value of manufacturing careers. Our future prosperity depends on it.

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in our Future of Work series, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

The insights in this post were informed by two key sources:

1. The Skills Gap in U.S. Manufacturing: 2015 and Beyond by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute
2. Manufacturing Our Future: Cases on the Future of Manufacturing by the World Economic Forum

The post Revival and Reinvention: The Future of Work in Manufacturing appeared first on EWS.

The future of engineering is overshadowed by one issue: a talent shortage of epic proportions. Around the world, many millions more engineers are needed to respond to the great challenges of our age, from energy to clean water, cyber security to food security.

It will take a rapid and wholesale shift in the traditionally slow-turning engineering mindset to deliver the workforce the world needs. This shift will come from all quarters, as employers rethink who they target and how, and engineers broaden their outlook and expand their toolkit.

Automation

Engineering is almost at the bottom of the table of professions under threat from the rise of the robots. The reliance on quintessentially human factors (complex problem-solving, originating new ideas etc.) makes it near-impossible for roles in engineering to be automated any time soon.

Far more likely is the prospect of engineers continuing to act as benign architects of automated labour. Historically, automation of drudge work has ushered in larger numbers of safe and rewarding jobs, leading to widespread increases in income and quality of life. With the correct structural and policy support from governments, educators and business, this trend can continue into the future, with engineers leading the way.

Contingent workforce

The rise of contract work in engineering is an unusually interesting case, being driven by workers either end of their career.

Millennials are starting their path with a job-hopping mindset, due to a) the insecurity of the job market they’ve entered and b) their own desire to keep pace with technological change. Meanwhile, many baby boomers approaching retirement are prolonging their career (and remaining valuable assets to their employers) through part-time contract work.

With both trends set to continue, smart employers will put contractors at the heart of their workforce planning strategies. Worker demands are the critical factor. If engineers want and expect to work more flexibly and less loyally, only those employers who meet their needs will be able to compete in one of the world’s fiercest talent markets.

Connectivity

Until now, engineering education has tended to turn out lone wolves – self-sufficient professionals well versed in theoretical concepts and focused on the task at hand. Tomorrow’s engineers will need to go much further.

Solving the world’s great challenges will require big-system thinking and cross-border collaboration. It will take, in the purest meaning of the word, a worldview. This can only be achieved by embedding connectivity into daily working practices.

Embracing digital communication tools will also help engineering to solve its own great challenge of renewing and diversifying its workforce. These methods will enable more flexible and remote working: both vital components in attracting younger candidates, specifically younger women, to the profession.

Globalisation

The globalisation of engineering broadly follows the trend of industrialisation and urbanisation. Emerging economies invest in developing the engineering workforce needed to build infrastructure. Hence China is a fully mature engineering economy, with the likes of India and Vietnam touted as new talent hotspots.

Africa is the significant exception to this rule. Economic growth, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, will continue to be stunted until the region can overcome its “crippling deficit of engineering skills”.

A virtual global engineering community will play its part in advancing skills in the region, but this alone will not be enough. Tomorrow’s talent must be prepared to become peripatetic “passport engineers”, travelling regularly to other countries to share expertise and dig directly into projects.

Another way to remedy the dearth of engineers in Africa will be to open more doors to women. In emerging economies such as Myanmar, Honduras and Tunisia, encouragingly high proportions of women are studying engineering. Africa must follow suit to increase prosperity around the continent.

Continuity of skills

Engineering’s worldwide talent shortage has reached critical mass. It has been talked about enough, now action is taking place to replenish the parched global talent pool.

Employers are at last recognising the onus on them to get involved in early-years STEM education. Likewise the industry is moving beyond lip service when it comes to workforce diversity. There is too much at stake for these trends not to accelerate in years to come.

As the engineering workforce diversifies, so will the engineering skillset. In future, engineers will be humanists as well as technologists, with far more commercial awareness than their predecessors. The next generation will be multi-faceted (and highly-lauded) Renaissance Engineers.

Follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for Talent Unlimited updates to be notified when the next Future of Work post goes live.

The insights in this post were informed by three key sources:

1. Building a future for engineering in The Times Higher Education
2. Tomorrow’s Engineering Workforce by Korn Ferry
3. The Trends & Opportunities Driving the Contract Engineering Workforce by 180 Recruiting

The post Developing a New Mindset: The Future of Work for Engineering appeared first on EWS.

Global healthcare stands at a fork in the road. Straight ahead is the well-trodden path, a continuation of the way things work now. That way leads to disaster, with a shrinking, shackled workforce unable to meet the exploding demands of an expanding and ageing global population.

The other path has its perils, from embracing automation to remodelling regulation to committing enormous resources to fund a thriving workforce. But for health professionals, healthcare organisations and the rest of us, the price of not going down this road is far higher.

Automation

No other sector better exemplifies the positive possibilities of task automation. The internet of all things is sweeping through the industry, enabling health self-monitoring in consumers, machine-led triage in hospitals and even remote monitoring in chronic disease care. Rather than threaten livelihoods, this wave of automation is liberating workers, boosting productivity and stimulating new jobs.

When patient monitoring and analysis work can be automated with greater accuracy and efficiency, clinicians and other skilled health workers are free to make more complex decisions and treat more patients. At the other end of the pay scale, ageing global populations have given rise to a booming economy in low-skilled direct care roles, which look robot-proof in the coming years.

Contingent workforce

According to Accenture, the healthcare workforce of the future of a liquid one, with contingent workers to the fore. Digital connectivity means clinicians no longer need to be in the room to treat patients, while the growing gap between healthcare supply and demand means they can’t always be either.

These factors will create more open marketplaces for healthcare talent across the board. Under current regulatory structures, the liquid workforce in healthcare is largely back office and administrative. However, if regulation evolves to suit the coming virtual care model, we will see more and more areas of specialist care delivery embracing remote, freelance and contract working.

Connectivity

We are moving into an era of enhanced global connectivity with the potential to sustainably expand and improve healthcare practice worldwide.

Before long, virtual healthcare will be the new norm, enabled by seamless and secure digital connectivity. Healthcare organisations will be truly networked, with internal social channels improving knowledge sharing, collaboration and patient outcomes. At the same time, patient-clinician connectivity will free workers from geographical constraints, so their skills can be applied anywhere within their regulatory jurisdiction.

Globalisation

Healthcare is a mature globalised economy. Talent flows across borders and has done for many years. But as the virtual care model becomes a reality, we will see a profound shift in what globalised healthcare means.

We will move beyond the global transfer of skills to a system of global collaborative healthcare. Clinicians will be able to draw on a vast range of international resources – skills, tools, tech and investment – to deliver comprehensive local solutions, anywhere in the world.

This will address some of the key supply and demand issues within the global workforce. For the first time, it will be possible for sustained quality care to reach even the most remote regions. Meanwhile workers will be able to provide care where it’s needed most, not just where they happen to work.

Continuity of skills

Healthcare is one of the world’s booming talent economies, set to supply many millions of new high- and low-skilled jobs in the coming decades.

The big question is whether those roles can be filled. Current projections are pessimistic. Recent studies predict a global talent shortage somewhere between 12.9 million by 2035 and 15 million by 2030.

Virtual care will carry some of the load, but there is still a pressing need to “rethink and improve how we teach, train, deploy and pay health workers so their impact can widen”, according to the WHO’s Dr Marie-Paule Kieny.

A key part of this mission will be to balance the global distribution of health workers. A 2013 WHO report revealed that 83 countries still fall below the 23 skilled health professionals per 10,000 people needed to provide the most basic health coverage.

As so often, education is the answer and education costs the barrier. Technology can only do so much. Governments, educators and business must work together with greater urgency to create the human solution and build the health workforce our future demands.

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The post Adapt Or Die: The Future of Work for Healthcare appeared first on EWS.

A decade after the event, the financial crash of 2008 is still the biggest influence on the working world of banking and finance. There is much evidence to suggest this will remain the case for the foreseeable future.

So how should financial institutions respond? In our view, they need to be prepared to break the mould structurally, operationally and reputationally to redefine what it means to work in financial services.

Automation

With most financial institutions preoccupied by the fallout of the 2008 crash, tech innovation in the sector spent a long time on ice. But in recent years, customer demand has sharpened banks’ focus on digitising their product offering.

Online and mobile banking amounts to an automated front office for retail banks, as does the rise of robo-advisors in insurance, wealth and asset management. This raises the prospect of more automation in the back and middle office, as internal processes and workflows supporting the digital front-end are also digitised.

The upside of the move to automation is the likelihood of freeing up workers to focus on high-value activities such as entrepreneurship, management and creative problem-solving. For displaced workers, HR will need to be proactive in retraining and redeployment.

Contingent workforce

Consultants, contractors and other contingent workers look set to play a bigger role in the future of financial services. And it will be a move driven equally by the priorities of employers and workers.

From an organisational viewpoint, they will offer fluidity to react to opportunities in volatile markets, at the same time as providing more control over fixed costs. Meanwhile, the prospect of greater autonomy and flexibility in a traditionally rigid work culture will help the financial sector to meet the expectations of job-hopping millennials.

Smart organisations will put contingent workers at the heart of their workforce planning, understanding when best to use them, creating clear distinctions with permanent employees and enshrining their needs in customisable employee contracts.

Connectivity

Banking and finance have much to gain from developing connected workforces. Having suffered its own reputational crash since 2008, the sector looks set to suffer in the ‘employer of choice’ stakes for some time to come. Meanwhile younger, cooler tech and media firms are waiting to hoover up highly-skilled new talent with the promise of remote working and virtual collaboration.

To compete, financial organisations must create less structured, more agile work environments, developing and distributing tools that allow employees to work productively from anywhere. This will almost inevitably involve ceding some control over the devices used for work, either through BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) or by expanding the availability of COPE (Corporately Owned Personally Enabled) devices.

Globalisation

Arguably, the biggest effects of a globalised banking industry have already been felt in the 2008 crash and its aftermath – chief among them the regulatory squeeze. And the likes of Basel III will continue to shape the sector’s working culture for years to come.

If banks are able to respond to the new regulatory world with innovation not conservatism, there are real opportunities to redefine working practices. Regional centres of excellence could have a big role to play, providing back and middle office functions to multiple markets.

Continuity of skills

Across the board, the financial sector faces the prospect of an ageing workforce. The insurance sector is at particular risk, but banks and other finance houses will have to work harder to develop and retain the skills they need to compete.

The proportion of technology-focused workers in banking (as high as 50% in some organisations) is a key issue. With most millennials swayed by the work and lifestyle offer of tech and media competitors, financial services will need to find some new moves to regain the mantle of employer of choice.

This could mean modernising working practices (see Connectivity above). It could mean redoubling employer branding and talent engagement efforts. It could even mean moving operations away from Central Business Districts into the connected urban environments millennials want to work in. For certain, it will require a bold and innovative mindset.

Follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for Talent Unlimited updates to be notified when the next Future of Work post goes live.

The insights in this post were informed by two key sources:

1. The Future of the Financial Workplace by Unwork and DTZ
2. The Power to Perform: Human Capital 2020 and Beyond by PwC

The post The Long Shadow of 2008: The Future of Work for Financial Services appeared first on EWS.

The world of work is becoming more fragmented and less predictable. Even today, we have moved beyond the certainties of a job for life in a stable local economy; likewise the long-held view that every generation will be better off than its predecessor.

Technology is encroaching on some jobs, enhancing others and creating millions of entirely new ones. In many sectors and localities, progress is stymied by the gap between skills required and skills available. And all the while, the millennial workforce is redefining the trajectory and priorities of a career plan.

This is not an easy world to predict. One of the biggest barriers is the diversity of factors driving change. Another is the differing ways these factors impinge on different industries.

That’s why we’ve chosen to create a series of posts taking these vagaries into account. In this post, we’ll outline the central themes that we see shaping the future of work. In the coming weeks, we’ll look at how these themes apply to different industry sectors, hoping to build a clearer picture of what the future may hold.

What factors are driving the future of work?

We’ll concentrate on five mega-trends in the world of work, whose influence looks set to become greater in years to come. They are:

1. Automation

According to Deloitte research, the 21st Century has seen technology potentially contribute to the loss of 800,000 low-skilled jobs, but also help to replace them with nearly 3.5 million higher-skilled ones. Will this net increase in jobs and skills continue as AI and robotics flood the workplace, and which sectors will be the winners and losers?

2. Contingent workforce

Agency temps, freelancers, on-call workers, contractors, part-timers: the number of workers with non-traditional working arrangements is rising fast. Over 40% of the US workforce is now deemed contingent, while 1 in 4 companies anticipates a contingent workforce of 30% or more by 2020. Which sectors will be most affected, and what are the implications for employment practices and HR policies?

3. Connectivity

Is the interconnectedness of the modern workforce an opportunity or a threat in our chosen sectors? What is the effect of digital connectivity on productivity and mental wellbeing? Does it liberate workers or risk overwhelming them?

4. Globalisation

The globalisation of labour markets is well documented. The Institute of Public Policy and Research puts it succinctly: “In the space of less than 20 years, over 1 billion people have been added to what might be termed the global market economy.” Looking ahead, will this market economy continue to proliferate and diversify, and which industries will benefit?

5. Continuity of skills

Shifting workforce demographics create shifts in the supply of skills. Some industries are more susceptible than others. Which skills will be most valuable in our selected sectors? Will they be readily available where they’re needed? And what are the factors driving critical talent shortages?

Taken together, these mega-trends tell us a lot about the motivations, requirements, pressures, workforce tools and working conditions driving change in the world of work. At a sector level, they can inform critical decisions for building talent strategies fit for the road ahead.

We look forward to sharing our industry insights in the coming weeks. Follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for Talent Unlimited updates to be notified when each new Future of Work post goes live.

The post Skills, Technology and Demographic Shifts: Welcome to the Future of Work appeared first on EWS.