Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: employment

  • The rise and fall of America’s truck drivers

    The rise and fall of America’s truck drivers

    1986 was Peak Secretary according to an NPR article examining America’s changing workforce.

    Published last February, The Most Common Job in Every State used US Census data to examine which were the most common jobs in each state. The change with each census starkly illustrates the changing workforce and, worryingly, a declining diversity.

    In 1978 US states boasted a mix of occupations ranging from farm hands and farmers through to machine operators and secretaries. By 1986 secretaries dominated.

    Most common US jobs 1986

    Then came the personal computer and the role of the secretary declined to be replaced by truck drivers, although the NPR article notes the definition of a truck driver by the US Census office is very broad.

    most common US job 2006

    Interestingly truck drivers themselves seem to have peaked in the 2006 Census with software developers and primary school teachers overtaking them.

    most common US job 2014

    For those truck drivers – and forklift operators, couriers and delivery staff who also seem to come under the definition – the future probably doesn’t bode well as automation is increasingly going to take their roles.

    The NPR article is an interesting series of snapshots of how an economy is a dynamic beast, assuming industries and the roles in them are static is misguided if not downright dangerous.

    Indeed we may well find in twenty years time we’re commenting on the rise and decline of software developers.

    What’s an interesting footnote, and worth considering, is what happened to all of the secretaries displaced by personal computers during the 1990s? That’s probably worth considering in another post.

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  • Defining the workplace of the future

    Defining the workplace of the future

    Last week in Sydney recruitment company Indeed sponsored a Future of Work summit to tease out some ideas about the what jobs will look like in the future.

    While I wasn’t able to attend, being in Melbourne to deliver the Managing the Data Age presentation, I did manage to attend a lunch where Paul D’Arcy, the head of Indeed’s Hiring Lab, spoke about some of the trends we’re seeing in the workplace.

    “One of the things we see is the change in the role of work over time,” says D’Arcy. “There was a period before the industrial revolution where work was where natural resources were. With the industrial revolution there was a shift to where the companies were organised.”

    The interesting thing with that view is that the companies of the early industrial revolution gathered where the natural resources were easily accessed and finish products could be shipped as we saw when visiting England’s Ironbridge, one of the birthplaces of modern industry.

    D’Arcy sees technology changing the idea that work goes to the companies, “where people with highly in demand skills congregate then that’s where jobs are created.”

    The employment centres of the future will be the cities that attract those highly skilled workers, D’Arcy believes.

    Spreading the developer love

    One of the changes Indeed has seen in the workplace is how coding has now become a widespread skill with three quarters of all software developers around the world being employed by software companies. In the US it’s only 7% of coders are working for pure tech organisations.

    Marketing is one field that has seen a dramatic shift says D’Arcy, “marketing has seen an enormous shift from what was predominately a creative industry to one driven by data.”

    One of the constant questions confounding those of us writing and speaking about the future of business is ‘what will be the jobs of the future?’ While D’Arcy didn’t really have that answer one of the points is clear that programming and coding will be among the skills in demand over the near future.

    In the longer term it’s still not clear exactly what jobs will be in demand in twenty or thirty years time, then again twenty years ago who would have guessed many of the technology jobs in demand today would have even existed.

    While we’re still struggling with what roles will define the workplace it’s clear the location of the workplace is changing as well. The worker of the future will be a much more mobile creature than today and that has ramifications for the future.

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  • Defining the jobs of the future

    Defining the jobs of the future

    Once again the question of what happens to the jobs of today in the face of technology is raised in a Quartz story by Zake Kanter looking at how driverless cars will lost the US economy millions of jobs over the next decade.

    Zake isn’t alone in this, just one study predicts half the US police workforce could be put out of work as autonomous vehicles take to the road.

    Worrying about today’s jobs is understandable as it’s clear the news won’t be good for many occupations. However the discussion should be about what roles are going to be needed in the future.

    Looking back

    Should we go back a hundred years there were a huge number of people, primarily young boys, employed in cleaning roads of horse dung. The equine industries provided work for tens of thousands of workers ranging from skilled blacksmiths and buggy makers through to those unskilled street sweepers.

    Most of those people lost their jobs and their careers became redundant as the age of the motor vehicle took over.

    Yet those displaced eventually founds jobs – as mechanics, panel beaters, traffic cops and gas station workers – although for many the dislocation was tough.

    Automotive transformation

    The motor car also stimulated a transformation in society as it made travel easier and wide scale logistics viable. Those changes allowed supermarkets, drive-in theatres and fast food chains to develop, all of which were unthinkable at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

    Industries like fast food and the drive-in theatre were also driven by the demographic and social changes of the mid-Twentieth century as concepts like the teenager and the consumerist society were developed.

    Demographics and economy

    Those changes to demographics are important as well, the developed economies’ aging populations and shifting income patterns are going to determine the shape of society and the workforce even more so than technology.

    For businesses and governments assuming the mid Twentieth Century consumerist economy is the future the next wave of change could be a difficult time. Even more so given that model of growth and employment was allowed to continue far beyond its natural life by the 1980s credit boom.

    Credit, and banking, will be one of the challenging fields for the next decade as governments struggle with the consequences of guaranteeing institutions during the Global Financial Crisis along with the disruptions of higher frequency algorithmic trading, Big Data analytics and startups with new payments platforms.

    Disruption everywhere

    The disruptive effect on the banking industry by new technology will be repeated across sectors with startups and new business models challenging everyone from retailers to window cleaners, it’s not just the automotive industry that’s challenges.

    While it’s difficult to predict exactly what the world is going to look like in 2025, it is clear that many industries and occupations will be struggling with a very changed world. The task for managers and business owners is to be aware of unexpected threats and opportunities.

    Some of the opportunities are going to lie in studying statistics – essential in a world of big data – and learning the basics of software coding. Design is another area that is going to need many new workers.

    For today’s workers, it’s more important than ever to be grabbing the skills required to be employed in the industries of the mid Twenty-First Century.

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  • Is your job really safe?

    Is your job really safe?

    Yesterday we looked at the PwC report on the value of science and engineering education to the economy.

    The survey wasn’t good news for the workforce with the survey predicting over two in five workers’ jobs were at risk as digital technologies changed industry.

    Notable in the list were the industries PwC believed to be safe over the next twenty years; largely being the medical, health and ‘people’ businesses like public relations.

    jobs-least-at-risk-from-tech-change

    While the industries themselves might be safe, specific jobs in those sectors may not be so with roles ranging from hospital porters being replaced by robots to surgeons carrying out remote operations.

    Looking at the list of relatively unaffected industries, it’s hard not to see how digital technologies aren’t going to disrupt those occupations.

    Redefining public relations

    PR for instance is undergoing a radical change as the media industry is being totally disrupted requiring today’s public relations professionals to have a very different set of skills to those of twenty years ago.

    Those skills include a much more adept use of technology itself and having to deal with a faster, more fragmented industry.

    Public relations professionals brought up in the days of boozy lunches and far off deadlines struggle in a time of bloggers, social media and data journalism.

    Evolving medicine

    Similarly medical practitioners, the top position on the list, have seen their jobs dramatically transformed over the past twenty years by computers and those changes are far from over as medical equipment gets smarter, personal fitness devices become pervasive and the amount of data being collected on patients grows.

    Across the medical industry the roles of almost every occupation is being redefined as technology changes the tools they have, along with the nature of ailments their patients present with.

    Big Data and analytics

    Some professions will grow but automation in those fields will grow exponentially faster, a good example being the fifth role on the list – database administrators and ICT security professionals.

    Ensuring the reliability and security of servers and networks is going to become even more essential as the economy increasingly depends upon these systems however security and IT professionals are going to rely on algorithms and Big Data to manage the massive task they have – these are the opportunities for companies like Splunk and Microsoft Dynamics.

    In all of these comparatively safe industries the jobs of tomorrow are going to need different skill sets to what they require today.

    For workers in these ‘safe industries’ this means further education, training and reskilling to stay employed. Just being employed in a sector that’s expected to stay static or grow isn’t enough to keep your job.

    Employers in these ‘safe industries’ also face a challenge in making sure their staff have the right skill sets to use the new technologies.

    The airline analogy

    If you were running an airline in 1965 it would be cold comfort to look at the explosive growth ahead for the industry in the jet airline era when all your staff are trained to keep propellor aircraft in the air.

    So when we talk about digital disruption, it’s not just about industries being shut down and jobs being lost but about radically changing occupations.

    It would be a brave person to assume that just because their industry is safe, their own job or business is secure.

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  • How the cloud killed the CIO

    How the cloud killed the CIO

    In Technology Spectator today I have a piece on cloud services and how the promise of high reliability threatens the IT manager and Chief Information Officer.

    This shift is the same change that’s affected the IT support industry, as technology becomes more standardised and a commodity the need for specialist support and management becomes unnecessary.

    In many respects this is similar to a hundred years ago where most factories had their own power plants providing electricity, steam or bel power to drive the machinery.

    As mains power became common and reliable, businesses no longer needed specialist staff to ensure the power flowed.

    While much of today’s commentary focuses on the CIO role evolving, it may well be the position is redundant.

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