[3-min Read]

With the Gig economy upon us and the fast-changing technological scene, workers now have the choice to seek out what they desire for their careers and career management is no longer the employers’ responsibility but a genuine option catered to each individual. What does this mean for workers and employers alike?  

Howie Lim: What exactly is the Future of Work?

"The challenge is that no one really knows where
the future of work is going. They just know it's changing."

Samantha Buttle: I think this is where the challenge is that no one really knows where the future of work is going. They just know it's changing. So, digitalisation, differing needs from clients, differing needs from economies mean that jobs will change. [The] lifespan of skills are predicted to reduce to about five years, things are evolving quite rapidly, lifespans of workers are changing and so on. So, the future of work changes in a way that no one's really able to predict. The people who tell you that they can, are lying. [They are] predicting what they think they know, but things change so rapidly that you just wouldn't know these things.

Howie: Are the fears warranted that digitalisation is going to leave employees without a job?

"It may not leave them without a job,
it may leave them with a different job."

Samantha Buttle: I think it depends where you sit on the scale of fair. It may not leave them without a job, it may leave them with a different job. I think the scaremongers who talk [about] robots taking over the world - the reality is that people still need to deal with how to make the robots work. You will still always need personal interactions. What we're trying to focus on is to help people get ready for that change. 

Howie: What can workers do to get prepared for this change? How can we know what to learn when the pace of change has been so quick? How can we know what to be prepared for something we don't know about that [is] coming?

"If we sit as individuals waiting for someone else to tell us what to do,
that's where we're going to get sideswiped."

Samantha Buttle: I think it's very much about how you get yourself into an agile state of readiness and learning. It's not necessarily always going, ‘Okay, so in the next 10 years I want a career path that takes me from here to there.’ We think to get ready for the future, you need to think of yourself a bit more like a Korean Ninja warrior - how would you build the skills to adapt and change? It's very much [like] going in and saying, ‘Who am I today? What do I know? Where is my life stage? How do I think about the things that I enjoy, the things that I want to learn more about, and how do I get access to that information early enough?’

The question is 'Where does the ownership of careers lie?' If we sit as individuals waiting for someone else to tell us what to do, that's where we're going to get sideswiped. So 'How do we share [or] change that conversation? How do we get empowered individuals and give them access to resources in a way that's distilled so that they can process that information to get them ready?'

Howie: I do feel as though the onus is on an organisation too to get their people ready to some degree - a 50-50 partnership [in your learning journey] - the organisation has to look at what you're doing, what you could be doing in the future [and] you are keeping an eye on it too.

Samantha Buttle: Yes, but there's always a reality that an organisation will be looking at how they develop employees for the good of the organisation to some degree. It does need to be a 50-50 partnership so that the employees are also thinking about how best they can develop for the organisation, but also for their full life. Development isn't just about a, a skill that you learn to do a job, it's about how you become the best person you can be as an individual no matter what stage of life you're in.

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Samantha Buttle, Managing Director, Ka-BLOOM Group joins Howie Lim on #TheWorkday.
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#Automation #Technology #CareerDisruption #ArtificialIntelligence 

This interview was broadcasted on MONEY FM 89.3 on 22 March 2019.