Being Future Ready: Changing Talent and Workplace

This is my fourth and final post in this series, which looks at how the unprecedented pace of change creates a mandate for businesses to reinvent their operations, restructure their product offerings and rethink how create value. To survive, they are forced to adapt and find new emerging opportunities.

One critical change is that a new generation of employees is bringing different attitudes to the workplace. Greater flexibility, a blurring of professional and personal goals and tools for a more collaborative working environment are some of the common demands that leaders will encounter. Required skills will shift along with accompanying management structures as increasing automation of knowledge work gathers pace. According to one estimate, up to 45 percent of activities that individuals are currently paid to perform in the United States can be automated. In the face of these changes, successful leaders will focus on individual employee characteristics to attain full engagement, and will allow recognition and personal development to carry as much importance as salary and job title.

With this as a backdrop, I will spotlight four key findings based on our report, “Leading a Future Ready Business: Vision 2025, Changing Talent and Workplace.” We recently released the report in association with Hanover Research. The findings include:

• Business leaders must address the shifting business process landscape in order to remain competitive in a new paradigm wherein new tools affect human behavior as never before. Leaders must work to integrate new technologies with new employee attitudes. With “analog” generations moving into retirement and Millennials taking their place, human as well as technological factors will drive significant changes.
• Implications of an aging population will be felt across industries, with experienced employees leaving the workforce and being replaced by Millennials who have grown up in the digital world and have radically different expectations. The future of the workplace will feature new approaches to recruiting and retaining talent. Technological trends will be reinforced by the growing gap between requirements and available skills inherent in a more dynamic economic environment.
• Renewed focus on core competencies will push business leaders to find expert service providers who can execute talent management strategies at increasing levels of complexity.
• The concept of the workplace will change as employees seek greater flexibility and personal lives become more intertwined with work.

Topics covered in our report include: demography and the foundations of the business environment; managing a dynamic workplace; competition for talent; automation of knowledge work; and the business landscape in 2025. To learn more, visit the Insights section of our website to download the report.

Additionally, feel free to visit the Business Process Outsourcing Services page of our website to find out more about the comprehensive range of managed services and technology that we can deliver in order to help organizations contain costs, mitigate risk, achieve operational excellence and meet other business goals.