I remember, several years ago, when I was just fresh out of college and only starting to work as a staff auditor at a top audit firm in the Philippines, the bulk of working papers we have to prepare for an audit engagement was huge. Now the work environment has completely changed and audit time is less lengthy compared to when technology was not as fast as it is now.
We did not really care how the future would look during those times. But, right now, people try to guess and, like me, are curious what it would be like to work in the future. In a paper prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers, entitled “The future of work—A journey to 2022,” it described the future of work in three colors—blue, green and orange.
The blue world considers the corporation as king where capitalism rules. The green world of companies cares about social responsibility and rules over the workplace or corporate agenda with concerns about demographic changes, climate change and sustainability becoming the key drivers of business. The orange world is where companies break down into smaller entities, forming a collaborative network of smaller organizations, and the name of the game is specialization.
The work in the future, according to the study, could be a mix of the three worlds or dominated by one type of world. In the blue world, where corporate is king, big companies will make their presence felt globally and data analytics about people will be used by human-resources practitioners to recruit the best talents and fill in the needed skills in the company. Performance is rewarded with job security.
However, people monitoring and the submission of personal data to make sure that talents are retained and properly developed in the company may have concerns on personal space. The need to secure data, particularly on how it is acquired, used and shared, see the need for a code of conduct in order to build trust.
In the green world, the emphasis is more on the environment, the values and attitudes of the people to be hired. They are rewarded based on contributions to the improvement of the environment and how they impact their community.
Balance in work and personal life is one of the goals that the organization hopes to achieve with their people. Problem may arise when there is a downturn in the world economy and how they can keep their people in the organization.
The orange world is a collaboration of talents and skills, and hiring is on a contract basis rather than a full-time employment.
People are more entrepreneurial and the rise of the middle market to provide people resource is imminent. People can work from their homes and a core team in the company are the ones who regularly report in the office to monitor and coordinate work among its contractors. The need for face-to-face contact is minimized with the growing popularity of working remotely through technology. The concern here is how to maintain quality of work among its freelance workers and the efficient delivery of results.
These days we have companies operating on a mix of the three worlds. They are corporate kings with concern for the environment and values in the corporate culture while, at the same time, having some of their work outsourced to independent consultants or contractors. Technology will be a major driver to the kind of work world we will have in the future. Even small companies integrate the different worlds into their organization although they do not have the same resources as the corporate giants who are more sophisticated in the recruitment and retention of people.
But a company may operate on a mix of these three worlds although not on a full scale basis, for each will be a good model for an ideal organization to work with. The question is how to maintain the right balance and how the speed of technology can determine the dominant working world that we will have in the future.
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Wilma Miranda is the chairman of the Media Affairs Committee of Finex, managing partner of Inventor, Miranda & Associates, CPAs and Treasurer of KPS Outsourcing Inc.
The opinions expressed herein are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of these institutions.