A future where no jobs are boring

Will it soon be impos­si­ble to have a whol­ly bor­ing job, giv­en the gal­lop of automa­tion and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence? Already, tech­no­log­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties enable work­ers, across the gamut of busi­ness sec­tors, to relin­quish repet­i­tive, menial tasks and use that clawed-back time to focus on more excit­ing and engag­ing endeav­ours.

Per­haps it was a sur­prise when, in June, a French court ruled that Frédéric Desnard’s for­mer employ­er, a per­fume busi­ness, should pay him €40,000 after his men­tal health dete­ri­o­rat­ed due to “bore­out”, the antithe­sis of burnout. Under clos­er inspec­tion, though, Desnard’s unfor­tu­nate mis­man­age­ment was the result of strict leg­is­la­tion that com­pli­cates the redun­dan­cy process in France. French employ­ment law needs updat­ing, evi­dent­ly.

Con­sid­er that by 2030 up to one fifth of the glob­al work­force, or 800 mil­lion peo­ple, will see their jobs replaced by robot­ic automa­tion, accord­ing to an oft-quot­ed McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny report from Novem­ber 2017.

This head­line fig­ure fails to account for all the new, and more excit­ing, roles that tech­nol­o­gy will cre­ate in the com­ing decade. The key take­away for busi­ness lead­ers, though, should be that it is cru­cial to invest in employ­ees or risk pay­ing a high­er price for not evolv­ing bor­ing jobs. Employ­ers that nar­row the dig­i­tal skills gap and help human and machine work side by side will gain a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage.

Autonomy is critical to interesting jobs 

Psy­chol­o­gist Por­tia Hick­ey, co-cre­ator of the Smart Col­lab­o­ra­tion Accel­er­a­tor, posits the mod­el pre­sent­ed in the mid-1970s by organ­i­sa­tion­al psy­chol­o­gists Greg Old­ham and Richard Hack­man still remains the blue­print for job design today. “They iden­ti­fied the sig­nif­i­cance of the job, being able to see the out­come of their work, vari­ety, auton­o­my and feed­back were all key,” she says.

“Jobs are gen­er­al­ly becom­ing more inter­est­ing, part­ly because organ­i­sa­tions are more aware of job design, but also because tech­nol­o­gy can take over high­ly repet­i­tive, low­er-skilled work. How­ev­er, what makes a job more enjoy­able is auton­o­my.”

The gath­er­ing of knowl­edge allied with auton­o­my is the per­fect com­bi­na­tion to moti­vate work­ers, accord­ing to Karthik Krish­nan, chief exec­u­tive of Bri­tan­ni­ca Group. “Learn­ing hap­pens when one is stretched out­side one’s com­fort zone,” he says. “Dopamine is the brain’s reward sys­tem and is secret­ed when accom­plish­ing a chal­leng­ing task. If the task is too chal­leng­ing or not chal­leng­ing enough, neg­a­tive emo­tions set in, such as stress, apa­thy and bore­dom.”

Krish­nan, who lists Tik­Tok con­tent cre­ator, drone oper­a­tor and dri­ver­less car engi­neer among the most excit­ing jobs spawned by tech recent­ly, also notes that people’s bore­dom thresh­old has nev­er been low­er. “The ‘always-on’ mode, the 24/7 infor­ma­tion flow and stim­u­la­tion lead to con­stant dis­trac­tion and crav­ing for new­ness,” he says.

Employ­ers should “design jobs and iden­ti­fy the right tal­ent to be suc­cess­ful”, says Krish­nan, adding that it is vital to under­stand a worker’s iki­gai – a Japan­ese expres­sion that trans­lates loose­ly as “rea­son for being” – to keep them engaged and hap­py.

How tech is improving employee happiness

He says the ulti­mate goal is to cre­ate a cul­ture where employ­ees feel inspired, chal­lenged and empow­ered. “The good news is that today, tech­nol­o­gy increas­ing­ly per­forms jobs that are well-defined, reg­i­ment­ed and repet­i­tive, thus reduc­ing bor­ing and risky jobs. From taxi dri­vers to shop work­ers to sol­diers, the range of tra­di­tion­al jobs that will decline or dis­ap­pear is huge,” says Krish­nan.

Research pub­lished in Sep­tem­ber by multi­na­tion­al soft­ware com­pa­ny Pegasys­tems sug­gests intel­li­gent automa­tion has a crit­i­cal role to play in craft­ing a new, tech-enabled, post-pan­dem­ic future of work. The glob­al study sur­veyed more than 3,000 glob­al senior man­agers and front­line IT staff, and 76 per cent agreed that increased use of tech is improv­ing employ­ee sat­is­fac­tion, says Pegasys­tems’ chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer Don Schuer­man.

Tech­nol­o­gy increas­ing­ly per­forms jobs that are well-defined, reg­i­ment­ed and repet­i­tive, thus reduc­ing bor­ing and risky jobs

Fur­ther, more than half of the sur­veyed UK busi­ness­es (51 per cent) say intel­li­gent automa­tion cur­rent­ly saves them over ten work­ing hours per per­son a week, free­ing up rough­ly a quar­ter of their time. And with that avail­able time, the top-three activ­i­ties are work­ing along­side machines, engag­ing more with cus­tomers and inno­vat­ing. “What this study makes clear is that tech­nol­o­gy is one of the top trends shap­ing the future of work,” says author and futur­ist Jacob Mor­gan.

Research pre­sent­ed by robot­ic process automa­tion (RPA) leader UiPath sup­ports this insight. “Some 35 per cent of UK work­ers believed that automa­tion would deliv­er more inter­est­ing and cre­ative jobs for future gen­er­a­tions,” says Chris Dud­dridge, UiPath area vice pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing direc­tor in the UK and Ire­land. He offers UiPath’s work with Brent Council’s hous­ing ben­e­fits depart­ments as an exam­ple to high­light how RPA “cuts out the dull parts”.

Making ‘mind-numbing’ tasks history

Before embrac­ing RPA, all rent adjust­ments had to be uploaded man­u­al­ly on to the sys­tem. “It was described as ‘mind numb­ing’,” says Dud­dridge. “A sin­gle rent change that could take a staff mem­ber over four min­utes man­u­al­ly now takes few­er than 40 sec­onds. The coun­cil esti­mates that this automa­tion alone has saved it over £32,000 in the over­time costs need­ed to ensure dead­lines were hit.”

Hav­ing the right tech is para­mount for work­ers’ hap­pi­ness. In a new Fresh­works study, some 82 per cent of busi­ness lead­ers around the world acknowl­edge that how their work­place tech per­forms is imper­a­tive to engage employ­ees. “This is espe­cial­ly true now in the time of home work­ing,” says Arun Mani, pres­i­dent of Fresh­works Europe. “Not hav­ing the nec­es­sary IT ser­vices on hand in the same build­ing means busi­ness­es need to ensure their tech­nol­o­gy works and pro­vides a flaw­less expe­ri­ence for users.”

Alarm­ing­ly, the Fresh­works research also found 77 per cent of employ­ees will look for a new employ­er if their cur­rent job does not pro­vide the tools, tech­nol­o­gy or infor­ma­tion they need to per­form.

It’s not all about tech, though. A bal­ance must be struck and lead­ers have to under­stand what moti­vates indi­vid­u­als. “You have to fos­ter a cul­ture where employ­ees feel com­fort­able talk­ing about what they need and want,” says Nabi­la Salem, pres­i­dent at Rev­o­lent Group, who rec­om­mends hold­ing reg­u­lar one-to-one meet­ings.

Organ­i­sa­tions unpre­pared for mass remote work­ing when lock­down was enforced in March are play­ing catch up in terms of engag­ing staff, par­tic­u­lar­ly new hires, says Char­lie John­son, founder and chief exec­u­tive of Brighter­Box, a Lon­don-based recruit­ment firm. “A lack of con­tact time or on-the-fly coach­ing has left a few join­ers feel­ing lost, unable to ask sim­ple ques­tions,” he says.

Creating the best environment for employee success

Janine Cham­ber­lin, direc­tor at LinkedIn, agrees and points to her company’s research that shows 75 per cent of UK C‑level exec­u­tives say work­ers now expect greater avail­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy from lead­ers. “This clos­er con­nec­tion is a great way to engage employ­ees, moti­vate them to achieve their poten­tial and keep them focused on busi­ness goals,” she says.

You have to fos­ter a cul­ture where employ­ees feel com­fort­able talk­ing about what they need and want

“Great employ­ers recog­nise the impor­tance of change and present oppor­tu­ni­ties for inter­nal mobil­i­ty and skills devel­op­ment so employ­ees can ben­e­fit from a new expe­ri­ence and progress in their career.”

This chimes with Eri­ca Bres­cia, chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of lead­ing soft­ware devel­op­ment plat­form GitHub. “For­ward-think­ing com­pa­nies have found new ways to dri­ve employ­ee engage­ment beyond activ­i­ties and modes of work­ing that are tied to phys­i­cal offices,” she says. “They adapt how they oper­ate to sup­port a dis­trib­uted team, from chang­ing how they com­mu­ni­cate to how they track, man­age and report on projects.

“They move from high­ly syn­chro­nous ways of work­ing to more asyn­chro­nous and col­lab­o­ra­tive work. And they encour­age team cama­raderie through vir­tu­al activ­i­ties, such as quizzes, scav­enger hunts, cook­ing class­es and hap­py hours.”

Look­ing ahead, Bres­cia con­cludes: “The new future of work is not depen­dent on office loca­tions or phys­i­cal work­spaces, but rather on adapt­ing to new ways of get­ting work done to pro­vide employ­ees with the best envi­ron­ment for their suc­cess.”

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