Category: Future of Work

Posts relating to changing employment and the future of work

Disrupting professional services

Stripe’s US business registration service shows how professional services companies are under threat

As Irish immigrants, the founders of San Francisco payments company Stripe, John and Patrick Collison, know too well the difficulties of setting up a US based corporation.

So the company establishing Stripe Atlas, a service to help foreign entrepreneurs set up their US presence makes sense and the payments services bundled into the package may also generate business for the brothers.

The Stripe Atlas service also illustrates the challenges facing professional services businesses as the service automates many of the bread and butter tasks that were good earners for lawyers and accountants.

Until recently it was thought those ‘higher level’ occupations would escape disruption, now it appears software will eat the professions as well.

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Tough times for startup staffers

Times are getting tough for Silicon Valley’s low level workers

One of the frequently reported things about tech startups is how well they treat their staff. The truth is not always so rosy.

At Yelp staff get free meals, drinks and snacks but many of them barely earn enough to pay the rent. A now fired staffer wrote an open letter to the company’s CEO describing how tough she found working their call centre on a wage that left her destitute.

Similarly Buzzfeed reports working conditions at Zenefits, last year’s hottest startup, are more akin to a boiler room than the nice, relaxed offices of places like Google.

 

While we often portray tech companies as being enlightened workplaces, the truth is they can be as harsh as any other employer. The big question for those working for tech startups though is how long their benefits and jobs will survive as the current funding crunch bites.

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Actuaries and the future of Public Relations

Will actuaries become the most valued profession in the PR industry? Some think so.

One of the truisms of modern industry is we’re going to need more workers with data skills. Could it be actuaries will be the profession of the information age.

Much of the focus around how companies will deal with an information rich age come down to the need for ‘data scientists’, those with a combination of statistical, analytical and coding skills will be required to coax insights out of complex and rapidly changing data sets.

At a Future of PR meetup in Sydney earlier this week, one of the panellists raised the possibility that tomorrow’s most valued agency employees will be actuaries as data analytics comes to dominate the industry.

That boring old actuaries – one particularly cruel joke is atuaries are accountants who failed the personality test – could be the hottest profession in the sexy PR industry is quite a delicious scenario.

Should that turn out to be the case though, it won’t just be the PR industry chasing actuaries, almost every industry is going to demanding the same set of skills.

In a strange way it could be the staid professions of today that are the exciting jobs of tomorrow, we’ll reserve judgement on the actuaries though.

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Cloudy times for the tech workforce

Autodesk’s firing of ten percent of its workforce indicates some harsh times are coming for tech workers.

For listed tech companies 2016 has been a bloodbath to date however design company Autodesk seems to have bucked the trend.

The key to keeping investors happy seems to lie in announcing major layoffs, in Autodesk’s case ten percent of its workforce which equates to 950 workers.

Autodesk’s management are painting those layoffs as being due to the company’s transition to cloud services with online subscriptions making up over half the business’ revenue.

Regardless of how valid that reasoning is, the message to the tech workers is clear; more tough times are coming.

With investors ruthlessly expecting better profits, focused leadership and leaner workforces many managers are going to have to face some tough decisions in what’s looking like a difficult year.

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Seppuku for the health care sector?

The assisted suicide Seppukuma robot raises some interesting ethical questions and challenges how secure employment is in the health sector

It turns out Seppukuma is a parody and I fell for it. My apologies.

Continuing the theme of Japanese robotics meet SeppuKuma, the friendly robot bear that might be the last thing you ever see.

When we look at the future of work, health care comes up as one of the fields that is least vulnerable to automation. Seppukuma shows we shouldn’t take that for granted.

Seppukuma is also an interesting example of how technology can subvert laws. Banning assisted suicide means little when a robot can be programmed to it.

As cheap and accessible robotics become commonplace so too do devices like suicide assisting androids which raise a whole range of legal and ethical issues.

Even though Seppukuma is a joke, the technology is feasible. We need to consider the issues and risk these devices will raise.

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Making seniors mobile

Robotics and automation promise to improve mobility and extend our working lives

One of the understated benefits of automation and robotics is it allows the elderly and disabled more mobility.

Facing an aging population, the Japanese are unsurpringly ahead of the rest of the world in understanding this and, as the Wall Street Journal reports, researchers are investigating how driverless cars can help the elderly get around.

While autonomous vehicles of all sizes promise greater mobility to many people currently restricted in their access, robotics also promises to extend our working lives just as mechanisation has over the past two hundred years.

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Where the jobs will go

An Australian state government survey outlines the impact of automation on employment

That automation is having a profound impact on existing jobs is beginning to be appreciated by governments. A study by the New South Wales government’s Parliamentary research service examines what the effects will be on the Australian state’s economy.

Like equivalent overseas studies, the report finds over half the state’s jobs – a total of 1.5 million positions – could be at risk from computerisation.

An interesting aspect of this is the bulk of the impacts being felt in the mining, construction and logistics industries. While there’s no doubt those sectors will be hard hit, particularly for lower skilled workers, the assumption is higher level positions in management and supervisory roles won’t be as greatly affected.

Examples of this include ‘professionals’ only being at a 4.6% risk of being displaced and ‘General Managers’ at 5.0%. This compares to labourers at 96.1% and 95.7% of ‘filing and registry clerks’ losing their jobs.

While there’s no doubt the lesser skilled roles are at immediate risk, and have been for decades, the rise of artificial intelligence and business automation are increasingly going to put management roles at risk.

Quibbles aside, the report is a good read on the impacts of automation and computerisation on what has been one of the western world’s more successful economies.

The hollowing out process of Australia’s middle classes it describes show that phenomenon is not just confined to the United States and this probably creates the greatest challenge to politicians as populists seek to blame foreigners and minorities for much of the population’s declining fortunes.

Almost every government in the world is facing these issues and the efforts of public servants and economists to accurately describe what’s happening has to be applauded and encouraged.

For voters and workers, reading these reports to understand the forces changing their industries and communities is essential to making informed choices at the ballot box and the workplace.

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