The Future of Work in 2017 and Beyond

The Future of Work in 2017 and Beyond

By Manish Bahl, Senior Director, Centre for the Future of Work, Cognizant

The dawn of true digital business is just breaking and
Asia Pacific is poised to corner a bulk of the economic rewards of business
transformation.

Digital transformation will put US$5.9 trillion
(approximately SGD 8.1 trillion) in revenue up for grabs for companies across
industries in the region by 2018[1]. There is a little doubt in
the minds of business leaders that digital transformation is strategically
important to their corporate, and personal, fortunes in the immediate future.
But for winning in an economy of algorithms, automation and AI, businesses and
people will require new skills, new tools and rethinking of the human-machine
relationship.

It would be pertinent to understand the changing
nature of work, the changing nature of commerce, and the changing
characteristics of success in this brave new world in 2017 and beyond.

One of the
profound impacts of the accelerated pace of digital is that jobs and required
skills will change significantly. Rote tasks — which still represent a
substantial proportion of most people’s day-to-day work — will morph into the
machine, freeing up time and energy to ask better questions, craft better
directions, and generate more impactful innovation. It means that the future of
our work will be more strategic. So how to beat the bots? Be a better person.

The work ahead
will require us to double down on the activities where humans have — and will
continue to have — an advantage over machines (for example, collaborative
problem-solving, creativity, abstract thinking, adapting to change, and so on).
It may sound counter-intuitive, but in a world of more pervasive technology,
activities that humans do well will be even more important in 2020 than today.
Analytical, communication and learning skills, as well as the ability to relate
to other people, are all vital for business success. But in the coming years,
these very human traits — things we do naturally, but computers struggle with —
will become even more essential in our personal and work lives and for our
businesses.

Being able to
apply judgment, creativity and the human touch are all far outside the purview
of current and near-future technologies, and this will remain the case for some
years to come, even as the new machines become more capable. The work ahead
will not be about “man versus machines”, but rather, about being better,
smarter humans to harness the potential of the digital economy.

Digital is
inherently collaborative and is about equalising power structures through the
democratisation of information. Leaders who recognise that collaboration is the
key to business success will be more in demand in the digital workplace. And contrary
to what many leaders believe, collaboration cannot be achieved by simply
installing software. Collaboration is not about platforms or technology; it is
about engaging people in a shared journey that can transform the business from
the bottom up and break down internal silos.

In 2015, Forrester had predicted that 2016 would be a pivotal year for
companies adapting to digitally savvy and empowered customers — companies
moving along the age of the customer path will begin to thrive, while laggards
will begin the slow descent to failure[2].

With digital
transformation sweeping through the global economy, businesses will see this gap
continue to widen between organisations that are still waiting for digital
technologies to prove themselves and organisations that have been quick to
master key digital capabilities.

It is no surprise
that digital leaders massively outperform digital laggards with each laggard
losing almost US$79 million a year for not keeping up with the digital
competition in Asia Pacific. By the time laggards do join the digital
revolution, they would have lost a sizeable portion of the market to those that
embraced digital earlier.

Digital is
moving from toys of convenience to powerful tools applied to work that really
matters. Your work ahead is to apply this new crop of smarter technologies to
remake your business activities — from sales and marketing to production and
supply chain management.

IoT is all set
to make big inroads in Asia Pacific. The Singapore government’s Smart Nation
Vision is already in the build phase, and is aimed at improving government
operations, service delivery, healthcare, the environment and public
transportation[3]. The Malaysian government
anticipates that IoT will contribute US$2.49 billion to the country’s GDP by
2020, and the government launched the National IoT Strategic Roadmap in July
2015 to support the vision[4]. It is certain that the next
decade of business advancement in the region will be driven by IoT.

That said, IoT
is evolving when it comes to standardisation, and if not implemented properly, could
present data privacy and security risks. More connected devices mean
exponential growth in the amount of personal and sensitive data generated. A
single security breach on one device could infect an entire network,
considering that multiple devices are interconnected on a home or business
network.

This will make
consumer trust more important than ever and, perhaps, even harder to achieve. A
survey
revealed that Asia Pacific respondents are significantly behind their global
counterparts in prioritising cybersecurity for their business, indicating that
they are not quite there yet when it comes to threats that may result from
large-scale IoT deployments.

Fast forward ten
years, and businesses in the region may start to strengthen security, but by
then, security standards elsewhere around the world would have moved far ahead
in response to the dynamic digital security landscape. How much is at risk? It
is estimated that cyber-attacks will cost businesses as much as US$400 billion
annually — larger than the GDP of roughly 160 of the 196 countries in the world[5].

We’re already surrounded by AI and its impact on work, which will be
explosive before the decade is out. The unevenly distributed future is
spreading into a much more evenly distributed present. Over the next few years
— no more than 12 quarters — every aspect of our commercial world (and much
else besides) will be affected by the new machines. In short, the future of
work is the mirror image of the future of AI. If you’re not making AI your
business today, AI may well put you out of business tomorrow.

More businesses
will tap into this opportunity by adopting new automation technologies to
reshape their business processes and customer experiences to achieve higher
productivity and superior business results. For example, collaborative robots or co-bots — the latest in the evolution
of industrial robotics — are fast emerging as a new and powerful industrial
tool.

AI will continue
to transform our work as we know it and will become the number one driver of
business change by 2020. It has already become the second most impactful
digital trend, behind big data.

The work AHEAD

The incredible changes in the work ahead are — to a
large extent — the result of the growing ubiquity and power of the new machines
that drive modern businesses forward. In 2017, businesses will need to face new
technology trends head-on. In order to capitalise on the changes around,
businesses require more than simply the application of the latest and greatest
technology. The accelerated pace of digital is creating entirely new ways of
working, created by the new tools.

Most companies have only scratched the surface of what
it means to be truly digital. In fact, digital fear signals a tremendous
innovation opportunity. Embedding digital thinking and technologies into key
processes will place companies on the fast track.