Right, thealphaswarmer seems to be getting some interesting traffic these days and most of them are from business oriented enterprises. So, we will start by saying that did you know that embracing “work anywhere” can reduce your HR/staffing costs by a whopping 40%!!??
As the baby boomers reach transitionary retirement and start accessing their preservation benefits (superannuation), there is a literal army of Generation Y and younger who are emerging into the workforce.
This generation is like no other, equipped with astute emotional intelligence and discerning antennae for searching ‘what’s new and happening’ in I guess every dimension. I mean this new workforce is now capable of ‘broadcasting’ information about anything ranging from who is dating who within their social circles to intensive feedback or tribulations about services and products in what we now appreciate as the Network Economy.
Information flows like open rivers, asymmetries exist only for a small time (I mean traders who look for arbitrage openings only have minutes if not seconds to respond – hence the proliferation of artificial intelligence software systems used by traders).
These days, before a prospective interview, job seekers can run complex (and often real time) searches about conversations about that employer, company, its products/services or even about its people. The Network Economy facilitates these conversations in what we can now attribute as the world wide web 2.0 transitory into the www 3.0.
Now back to the point; what would the new worker value? From traditional values to emergent ones; aspiring to the management hierarchy is now outstripped by the dissolution of fear to change jobs frequently. New roles will emerge. Companies will need people to fill positions such as Collective Intelligence Officer, Ecotects to things like Neurological Training Officer.
Amongst the change or manifestation of new roles and career pathways is the core requirement that the future worker be highly social, highly collective and be able to tap into and contribute to the intelligence of crowds.
With the rise of another field – which will be another volume in fact – Enterprise 2.0 in the future of work means that knowledge management will take a whole new perspective. Aligned with the emergence of new roles such as Collective Intelligence Officer (as mentioned above) will be the utilisation of collective platforms, predictive markets, crowdsourcing and wikis to a whole new level.
Co-working in its own right will be re-defined as the means to band together in an ad hoc fashion to create infrastructure and community through diverse means including virtual worlds and environments which enhance augmented cognitive abilities and coordination skills will become innovation imperative.
Complex computational systems will treat everything as a multivariate algorithm; from crowd dynamics to staffing and real time administration of departments such as administration and customer contact centres.
With all this in light – its strongly foreseeable that tertiary courses within social sciences, environmental sustainability and change management will equip the worker of the Network Economy with an arsenal of tools to create, sustain and manage the future workplace and its dynamics that is upon every one of us.