tl1 -- the changing nature of work and workers (2017-0929)€¦ · tl1 -- the changing nature of...

The Changing Nature of Work and Workers © 2017 St. Charles Consulting Group All rights reserved. 1

The Changing Nature of Work and Workers

Introduction This whitepaper discusses the key trends impacting today’s work and workers. Why focus on these trends? Because we believe learning and talent development within organizations should be viewed within a broader context – within the broader context of today’s work environment. Without this broader context, organizational L&D leaders might struggle to maintain their bearings in today’s rapidly changing world.

The Trends Impacting Today’s Work and Workers Trend 1: The volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) of our global social, governmental, environmental, and economic systems will accelerate. These forces will continue to change how businesses are structured, led, and managed, and how they engage with their workers, and will dramatically change the knowledge, skills, and capabilities workers need to succeed. VUCA environments are enveloping even stable nations because of rapid technological changes, people's unease with social changes, major political disagreements within and between countries, terrorism and war in a highly interconnected world, and the pressure on natural resources and climate change. In our VUCA world, carefully researched and designed plans frequently do not survive contact with reality.1

The VUCA forces change both an organization’s business strategy and its learning strategy, both in terms of the knowledge and capabilities workers need to possess and in terms of how the organization defines and manages a learning environment that can change quickly and often in response to external and internal events. Modern workers need to be competent planners and executors. But they also need: (1) the ability to sense, on the fly, the reality of a situation; (2) the ability to respond effectively to the sensed reality, even without all the resources one might want to carefully assess the situation; and (3) the ability to learn rapidly from experience and incorporate those lessons into future plans, execution, and most importantly, the building of sense-and-respond capabilities.2 This will present a major challenge to L&D leaders.


Trend 2: People and organizations are creating data and new information at a staggering rate, which is causing the volume of information to increase rapidly and to rapidly reduce the useful life span of each nugget of information. Helping to drive this information explosion is the fact that more social-media platforms continue to be launched and their usage continues to expand. These forces will reduce the useful life of most learning content. More data has been created in the past two years than in the entire previous history of the human race. By the year 2020, about 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created every second for every human being on the planet. By then, our accumulated digital universe of data will grow from 4.4 zettabytes today to around 44 zettabytes or 44 trillion gigabytes. In 2015, over 1.4 billion smart phones were shipped, all packed with sensors capable of collecting all kinds of data, not to mention the data the users create. By 2020, we will have over 6.1 billion smartphone users and over 50 billion smart connected devices in the world.3

People and organizations create new data every second. We perform 40,000 search queries every second on Google alone, which equals 3.5 million searches per day and 1.26 trillion searches per year. On average, Facebook users send 31.25 million messages and view 2.77 million videos every minute. Video and photo data are growing at a massive pace. Every minute, up to 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. In 2015, a staggering 1 trillion photos were taken and billions of them were shared online. By 2017, nearly 80 percent of photos will be taken on smart phones.4 Self-authored video is now more than 55 percent of all Internet traffic.5

Figure 1 depicts a small fraction of the thousands of social-media platforms that exist today. Building on these social media trends, an increasing number of online business information- and work-sharing networks now exist or are being launched. These include the social media job-sharing platforms LinkedIn, Quora, Opportunity, Alignable, Maven, Twylah, PartnerUp, VisualCV, Meetup, Zerply, AngelList, BranchOut, Makerbase, LunchMeet, Xing, Plaxo, Beyond.com, Data.com Connect, Sumry, Jobcase, EFactor, Bark.com, Doostang, and LocalsNetworking. In addition, Google is preparing to launch its own job-networking site, Google Hire.

Figure 1.6 Today’s Social-Media Platforms


Although these trends can overwhelm workers in certain demographic groups (Baby Boomers), workers in other demographic groups (Millennials and Gen Z) grew up in the midst of these trends and see them as entirely normal. As a result, Millennials are completely comfortable performing work while receiving a flood of new information and data, generating new data themselves (much of it in the form of micro-videos and social-media posts), all while actively participating in multiple online networks. These workers bring their view of “normal” to the organizations they serve, and expect those organizations to provide learning and development experiences that align with their views, both in terms of the learning content and in terms of how that content is presented to them.

Trend 3: More organizations are utilizing “connect and collaborate” managerial models and abandoning traditional “command and control” models. In the old world of silos and solo players, leaders had access to everything they needed under one roof, and a command-and-control style served them well. But businesspeople today are working more collaboratively than ever before, not just inside organizations but also with suppliers, customers, governments, and universities. Global virtual teams are the norm, not the exception. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, videoconferencing, and a host of other technologies have put connectivity on steroids and enabled new forms of collaboration that would have been impossible a short while ago.7 Only 14 percent of executives believe that the traditional organizational model – with hierarchical job levels based on expertise in a specific area – makes their organization highly effective. Instead, leading organizations are pushing toward a more flexible, team-centric model (see Figure 2). Ninety percent of organizations are redesigning their organizations to be more dynamic, team-centric, and connected. These changes require not just new operating models, but a different type of leadership to mobilize and execute these models. The rules have definitely changed, which is impacting not only the organization as a whole, but is radically changing what will be required of L&D leaders and every worker.8

Figure 2.9 The Changing Nature of Managerial Structures


Trend 4: Today’s workers are increasingly mobile – both relocating and travelling for work – and performing their jobs in increasingly digital and virtual work environments. Moreover, a growing percentage of today’s workforce is “blended,” a combination of workers and independent contractors. The number of mobile workers in the US is expected to reach 105 million by 2020. The majority of C-suite executives (92 percent) and just over half of small business owners (58 percent) have at least some workers using a flexible or offsite working model. Organizations are adopting redeployment and workforce mobility to achieve higher productivity and efficiency through a structured approach. 90 percent of organizations expect their relocation volumes to either rise or hold steady in the coming years, which will cause a 50 percent growth in mobile worker volumes through 2020.10

In addition, the outsourcing wave that moved apparel-making jobs to China and call-center operations to India is now just as likely to happen inside organizations in almost every industry. The shift is radically altering what it means to be an organization and a worker. More flexibility for organizations to shrink the size of their worker base, pay and benefits means less job security for workers. No one knows how many Americans work as contractors, because they don’t fit neatly into the job categories tracked by government agencies. Rough estimates by economists range from 3 percent to 14 percent of the nation’s workforce, or as many as 20 million people. One of the narrowest definitions of outsourcing, workers hired through a contracting company to provide on-site labor for a single client, rose to 2 percent of all U.S. workers in 2015 from 0.6 percent in 2005. At large firms, 20 percent to 50 percent of the total workforce often is outsourced.11 Few businesses, workplace consultants or economists expect the outsourcing trend to reverse.12 This trend will place increasing pressure on L&D leaders to provide relevant and engaging learning content on a just-in-time basis to a rapidly changing workforce. Ideally, L&D leaders will create learning environments that not only serve these workers, but also attract and retain them in the first place.

Trend 5: Today’s workforce is comprised of a rapidly declining percentage of Baby Boomers and a rapidly increasing percentage of Millennials. As a general statement, Millennials possess certain traits that are unique to their generation and important to any discussion of organizational work or learning within organizations. Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living generation. Millennials (also known as Gen Y) (ages 20-36) already number 75.4 million, surpassing the 74.9 million Baby Boomers (ages 53-71). The population of Gen X (ages 37-52) is projected to pass the Boomers by 2028.13

By 2011, Millennials already formed 25 percent of the workforce in the US and accounted for over half of the population in India. By 2020, Millennials will form 50 percent of the global workforce.14 By 2040, Baby Boomers will no longer be part of the workforce, having been completely overtaken by Gen X, Millennials (Gen Y), and Gen Z. See Figure 3.


Figure 3.15 The Rise of Millennial and Gen Z Workers

The Millennial generation is already having the greatest impact on learning within organizations. Entire whitepapers can – and have – been written on the traits of Millennials in the workplace. This section discusses several of the more important traits.

• “Connect and Collaborate”: Millennials tend to be uncomfortable with rigid corporate structures and turned off by information silos. They expect rapid progression, a varied and interesting career, and constant feedback. In other words, Millennials want a management style and corporate culture that is markedly different from anything that has gone before – one that meets their needs.16 This may be one of the many reasons many organizations are abandoning “command and control” structures.

• Organizational or Job Loyalty: In late 2008, 75 percent of Millennials said they thought they would work for between two and five organizations during their working lives. Today, the proportion stands at 54 percent, with a quarter expecting to work for six or more. There is, of course, a big difference between Millennials thinking they will have multiple jobs and wanting to be job hoppers. Organizations who fail to invest in this group are likely to see less loyalty than those that do.17

In 2016, 60 percent of Millennials thought seven months of work meant they were being “loyal.”18 In 2016, 44 percent of Millennials expected to leave their current organization within two years. In 2017, that percentage had fallen to 38 percent. In 2016, only 27 percent of Millennials expected to stay with their current organization beyond five years. In 2017, that percentage rose to 31 percent. As a result, the gap between Millennials who saw themselves leaving their organizations within two years and those who anticipated staying beyond five years was 17 percentage points in 2016, but had fallen to only seven points in 2017 (see Figure 4).19 The narrowing of this gap could be caused by several factors, including the VUCA world causing Millennials to feel generally more anxious about the future, and the specific effects of older Millennials maturing and, as they do, getting married, buying homes, having children, and making other “adult” choices, all of which could be causing them to seek some stability by staying with their existing organizations.


Figure 4.20 Percentages of Millennials Who Expect To ...

• Use of Technology: Millennials have specific expectationsabout how technology is used in the workplace. Millennials expect the technologies that empower their personal lives to also drive communication and innovation in the workplace. 59 percent said that an organization’s provision of state-of-the art technology was important to them when considering a job, but they habitually use workplace technology alongside their own. Over half of those questioned routinely make use of their own technology at work, and 78 percent said that access to the technology they like to use makes them more effective at work. More than two in five of those questioned said they felt that their use of technology wasnot always understood, and some felt held back by outdated and rigid work styles. Millennials in Africa were the most likely to feel this way (75 percent versus 65 percent worldwide).21

Millennials expect a workplace technology ecosystem that includes social networking, instant messaging, video-on-demand, blogs and wikis. These social tools enable this generation to instantly connect, engage, and collaborate with cohorts and managers in ways that are natural to them, leading to better productivity across the enterprise.22

• Learning and Career Development: Millennials have particular needs and expectations when it comes to learning and career development. As they enter the workforce, Millennials expect to keep on learning and they expect to spend a high proportion of their time gaining new experiences and absorbing new information. 35 percent of Millennials said they were attracted to organizations that offer excellent training and development programs and Millennials see training and development as the top benefit they want from an organization.23 A recent Gallup study reconfirmed the importance of learning and development to Millennials, who rated it as their top “extremely important” benefit when deciding where to apply for a job (see Figure 5).24

Once on the job, many Millennials respond well to mentoring by older workers – in an ideal world, they would like to see their boss as a coach who supports them in their personal development – but Millennials also generally prefer to learn by doing rather than by being told what to do. This trait in Millennials is not much different from all workers. Career development and learning are almost two times more important to workers across all demographic groups than are compensation, benefits, and work environment.25


Figure 5.26 What Different Generations Look for When Applying for a Job

• Feedback, Coaching, and Mentoring: One of the strongest Millennial traits is that they expect and welcome detailed, regular feedback and praise for a job well done – 51 percent say feedback shouldbe given very frequently or continually on the job and only 1 percent say feedback is not important to them. The organizations that are most successful at managing Millennials are those that understand the importance of setting clear targets and providing regular and structured feedback.27

Millennials relish the opportunity to engage, interact and learn from senior management. Mentoring programs can be particularly effective in developing Millennials. They also help relieve tensions between generations.28 61 percent of Millennials are currently benefiting from having somebody to turn to for advice or help develop their leadership skills. This varies by geographic market and appears to be more prevalent in emerging (67 percent) rather than mature (52 percent) economies. Improving these levels should not only advance the careers of Millennials, but should also go some way toward strengthening loyalty. Those intending to stay with their organizationfor more than five years are twice as likely to have a mentor (68 percent) than not (32 percent).29

• Learning Styles and Modalities: The question of how training and development should be structured for Millennials is important. Millennials’ ease with technology means they respond well to a range of digital learning styles and delivery methods, which might include online learning modules, webinars or interactive game-play. They are innately collaborative and accustomed to learning in teams and by doing. A one-sided lecture is less likely to hold their attention. The best training programs will mix classroom instruction, self-directed study, coaching, and group learning. But despite a preference for independence, Millennials want structure and objectives that clearly define what must be achieved.30

• Learning Content: When asked to rate the skills and attributes they think businesses value, Millennials pointed to “leadership.” However, only 28 percent of Millennials feel that their current organizations are making “full use” of their current skills, and 63 percent say their “leadership skills are not being fully developed.” In some geographic markets, such as Brazil, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, the figure exceeds 70 percent.31 Regardless of geography, more than 44 percent of Millennials are now in leadership positions, but most believe they are receiving little to no development in their roles.32 It is also notable that Millennials often require training in fundamental workplace behavior and culture.33


Conclusion The rapidly changing nature of work and workers in our modern world will have seismic impacts on learning and talent development within organizations. As a result, organizational L&D leaders should keep one eye on these broad trends while they simultaneously focus on the trends impacting learning itself.

Authors Larry Durham is a Partner with The St. Charles Consulting Group. Larry is a visionary in the fields of enterprise learning and talent development. Over the last 25 years, he has worked with many Fortune 500 companies to co-create innovative talent development solutions that yield measurable business outcomes. His experience spans many industries, including technology, pharmaceuticals, financial services, telecommunications, media, hotel and leisure, utilities and energy, and retail and consumer.

Eric Pierce is a Managing Director with The St. Charles Consulting Group. Throughout his career, Eric has built an extensive portfolio of practical and wide-ranging business consulting experiences yielding accelerated and profitable business growth as well as outstanding leadership, executive, and managerial effectiveness, both at the individual and team levels. Eric invests the majority of his time at St. Charles Consulting providing strategic talent development consulting and leadership coaching services to the firm’s clients.


Glossary • Baby Boomers: Although there is no precise definition of the Baby Boomer generation, it is

generally defined as those people who were born between the years 1946 and 1964. The Baby Boomer generation is followed by Generation X, Generation Y (Millennials), and Generation Z.

• Game: “Adding game elements” to learning – or the “gamification” of learning – involves applying the typical elements of game playing – point scoring, competition with others, rules of play – to the learning activity to encourage learners to engage more frequently and actively with the learning content.

• Generation Y (Millennials): Millennials are the generation following Generation X, and are generally defined as those people who were born between the years 1980 and 1996.

• Generation Z: Generation Z is the generation following Generation Y (Millennials), and are generally defined as those people who were born between the years 1997 and the early 2000’s.

• Platform: A platform is a group of technologies that are used as a base upon which other applications, processes or technologies are developed or operated. A platform ordinarily includes the basic hardware (the servers and other computers) and the software (the operating system) on which other software applications run. A learning technology platform would include the hardware and software L&D leaders use to curate learning content and learners use to develop and contribute learning content, as well as collaborate with other learners.

• Social: Social networking is the use of websites and other online technologies by people to communicate with other people and to share information, resources, and other data.


Endnotes 1 “How to Recruit, Prepare Leaders for a VUCA World,” A. Mukherjee (Society of Human Resources Managers) (November 7, 2016). 2 “How to Recruit, Prepare Leaders for a VUCA World,” A. Mukherjee (Society of Human Resources Managers) (November 7, 2016). 3 “Big Data: 20 Mind-Boggling Facts Everyone Must Read,” B. Marr, Forbes (September 15, 2015). 4 “Big Data: 20 Mind-Boggling Facts Everyone Must Read,” B. Marr, Forbes (September 15, 2015). 5 “Corporate Learning in 2016 – Ten Trends Shaping the Future,” J. Bersin (February 2016), citing KP Internet Trends (December 2015). 6 “Conversations in Social Media,” ethority (German Edition v6.0). 7 “Are You a Collaborative Leader?,” H. Ibarra and M. Hansen, Harvard Business Review (July-August 2011). 8 Global Human Capital Trends (Deloitte University Press) (2017). This report is based on a survey of more than 10,400 business and HR leaders from 140 countries. 22 percent of respondents were from large companies (more than 10,000 employees), 29 percent from medium-sized companies (1,000–10,000 employees), and 49 percent from small companies (fewer than 1,000 employees). Respondents from the Americas accounted for 31 percent of the total; Europe, Middle East, and Africa contributed 51 percent, and Asia-Pacific 18 percent. Respondents represented a broad cross-section of industries, including financial services; consumer business; technology, media, and telecommunications; and manufacturing. 63 percent of the respondents were HR professionals, with other business executives comprising 37 percent. C-level executives accounted for 30 percent (more than 3,100) of the respondents. 9 Global Human Capital Trends (Deloitte University Press) (2017). 10 “Increasingly Mobile Workforce Top Five Workplace Trend: New Report,” R. Holmes, Relocate Global (March 27, 2015), citing the Randstad Sourceright 2015 Talent Report and data from PwC. 11 “The End of Workers,” L. Weber, Wall Street Journal (February 2, 2017). 12 “The End of Workers,” L. Weber, Wall Street Journal (February 2, 2017). 13 “Millennials Overtake Baby Boomers As America’s Largest Generation,” R. Fry (Pew Research Center) (April 25, 2016). 14 “Millennials At Work – Reshaping the Workplace,” PwC (2011). This report is based on an online survey of 4,364 graduates from 75 countries conducted between August 31 and October 7, 2011. 1,706 of respondents were PwC graduate recruits or responded through PwC’s website. 1,470 PwC employees and 2,894 other graduates responded to the survey. All were aged 31 or under and had graduated between 2008 and 2011. 75 percent were currently employed or were about to start a new job. 8 percent were unemployed at the time they filled in the questionnaire. The rest were self employed or returning to full-time education. 76 percent of those with a job said it was a graduate role, while 12 percent had a job that did not require a degree. 15 US Census Bureau. 16 “Millennials At Work – Reshaping the Workplace,” PwC (2011). 17 “Millennials At Work – Reshaping the Workplace,” PwC (2011). 18 “Corporate Learning in 2016 – Ten Trends Shaping the Future,” J. Bersin (February 2016). 19 Deloitte Millennial Survey (2017). This report is based on interviews with 7,900 Millennials residing in 30 countries (4,000 in emerging markets and 3,900 in developed markets). Participants were born after 1982, have a college or university degree, are employed full-time, and work predominantly in large, private-sector organizations. 20 Deloitte Millennial Survey (2017). 21 “Millennials At Work – Reshaping the Workplace,” PwC (2011). 22 “Millennials At Work – Reshaping the Workplace,” PwC (2011). 23 “Millennials At Work – Reshaping the Workplace,” PwC (2011). 24 “What Millennials Want From a New Job,” B. Rigoni and A. Adkins (Harvard Business Review) (May 11, 2016), quoting “How Millennials Want to Work and Live” (Gallup). 25 “Corporate Learning in 2016 – Ten Trends Shaping the Future,” J. Bersin (February 2016). 26 “What Millennials Want From a New Job,” B. Rigoni and A. Adkins (Harvard Business Review) (May 11, 2016), quoting “How Millennials Want to Work and Live” (Gallup). 27 “Millennials At Work – Reshaping the Workplace,” PwC (2011). 28 “Millennials At Work – Reshaping the Workplace,” PwC (2011). 29 Deloitte Millennial Survey (2016). This report is based on interviews with 7,700 Millennials residing in 29 countries (4,300 in emerging markets and 3,392 in developed markets). Participants were born after 1982, have a college or university degree, are employed full-time, and work predominantly in large, private-sector organizations. 30 “Millennials At Work – Reshaping the Workplace,” PwC (2011). 31 Deloitte Millennial Survey (2016). 32 Global Human Capital Trends, Deloitte University Press (2017). 33 “Millennials At Work – Reshaping the Workplace,” PwC (2011).

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