And its a good thing! If you are implementing Workday you are helping that along the road!
Many of the people who make it their job to predict the future like Gartner or PwC (https://www.pwc.co.uk/press-room/press-releases/Up-to-30-percent-of-existing-UK-jobs-could-be-impacted-by-automation-by-early-2030s-but-this-should-be-offset-by-job-gains-elsewhere-in-economy.html) are pretty sure that automation in the workplace is going to mean we lose a lot of the jobs and work we do as office workers especially.
Stats like that tend to be scary but are they really? The narrative is written to be frightening and indeed losing your job to automation will be worrying for many people.
However there will be new roles emerging and for me I think the main thing we need to keep in mind and work towards is that there are a large number of people doing work that would be much better done by an automated system and they should be allowed to stop doing it! There is no point!
I don’t want to go into the bank to pay in a cheque. I’m sorry but I just don’t. I think we are better spending the cashier’s salary on supporting those people who do still need go in, to stop!
This should free people’s time up to have a better work-life balance, to be more innovative in the rest of their work, or even do the job they have always wanted to.
There is however a massive gotcha in this happy picture which is: what if people who lose their jobs or roles are not able to find alternative income.
This is where society needs to wake up and be open to change!
We need change socially – we can’t expect governments to do things all on their own. I paraphrase Bill Clinton in a speech I saw him give in New York once where he said something along the lines that he had achieved so many more of his goals since he left the Presidency as NGOs and private sector companies can just get on with their missions without having to take the whole population’s views into account. Government are so hamstrung by adversarial politics that we can’t rely on them to effect change without a groundswell of popular opinion.
A whole host of things will change and some are happening: I notice for some strange reason the rush to homeworking has recently been tidal!
But I would say organisational business change programmes need to LEAD THE WAY.
They are excellent opportunities to shake up the way companies and organisations treat their workers.
Change programmes don’t have to be hack & slash headcount reductions where the good people leave and the mediocre and uninterested fight for each others jobs.
They are an opportunity for shaking up the whole way people work; job sharing, homeworking, closing expensive offices and improving internal job applications and movement of people within the organisation.
Putting in solutions like Workday enable all of this and beyond, for they are a continuously evolving platform that will allow companies to keep up with the rapidly changing employment landscape.
Remember in the future many people will be doing multiple jobs and hobbies in any given week or month and you will have less and less people sat at desks.
You will need to be bending over backwards to attract the talent you need so even if you don’t like the fact they are working elsewhere or at home you won’t really have a choice if you want good people.
