The Future of Work Could Be Approaching

For the HR world, 2020 was the "Future of Work" year. The "Future of Work" is understood as the way in which work is changing and will continue to change due to automation and all technological developments. With the chaos caused by the COVID-19 crisis, 2020 may well bring the “Future of Work” to today. 

Unfortunately, the most palpable and short-term impact of COVID-19 on workplaces around the world is unemployment, with large sections of the population unable to work due to social distancing measures and policies implemented by different governments around the globe.

In a recent interview, Larry Summers, former President of Harvard and US Treasury Secretary and National Economic Adviser, said that up to a third of the US workforce would be unable to do their job because they are unable to work from home. “That is a huge loss of labor input and output," he said.

But the impact of COVID-19 in some sectors was not entirely negative. The New York Times published a story about "The way we Internet" and how quarantine life has had an impact on traffic on websites like Netflix, which saw a 16 percent traffic increase in March. Workplaces and schools adjusted and one of the clearest beneficiaries was the Zoom video call app, which went from about 2 million sessions a day in the US in January to more than 6 million sessions a day in mid-March.

Automation and technology are already transforming the workplace. The Bureau of Labor Statistics Survey in 2017-2018 showed that about 30 percent of the US population (about 41.6 million people) worked from home. One of the side effects of COVID-19 could be the acceleration of this trend, with some experts boldly affirming that remote work is here to stay. The question, then, is how to adapt.

Cognizant's November 2017 report concluded that healthcare, education and banking systems, among others, can be improved by technology. With COVID-19 shifting a lot of social paradigms, one plausible possibility is that these shifts will come sooner rather than later. A list of "jobs of the future" is given in the same report, including IT facilitators, AI Business Development Manager and AI-Assisted Healthcare Technician. These jobs focus on automation, offering versatility in the use of software and technology, regardless of whether they are designed in-house or remotely, and making effective use of digital technologies.

In a study by McKinsey Global Institute, “Jobs lost, jobs gained: Automation, new job creation, and change in labor supply, 2016–30” the company examined the potential labor market disruptions from automation and some potential sources of new labor demand that will create jobs. The offset between jobs generated by automation and the jobs potentially lost will enable different countries to generate more jobs than the ones that are lost. In the case of Mexico, job gains could be between 5 to 15 million by 2030, depending on how early automation is adopted. 

Mexico is already feeling the pressure of the pandemic, with the most updated unemployment data reflecting the loss of 364,878 jobs between March 13 and April 6. In a time of crisis, inspiration, creativity and signs of hope can lead to innovation. Instead of waiting for the future to come, HR managers will now have to lead the way to recovery by transitioning to a skills-based recruiting scheme. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs will have to tackle emerging needs arising from modern realities with creative ideas.