I had a display board at home which said – You can’t change the past but you can ruin a perfectly good present by worrying about the future. The point here is that we should see the future of work in light of excitement instead of apprehension. The best way to take care of apprehensions is to take them head on.

1. How far is the future?

Every next minute defines the future. And we live it also. It is not long back that we started using swiggy for ordering food. I will narrate an incident.

Jay was planning to come late from college.

He called his mother and said “Don’t cook anything, I will order from swiggy”.

His mother took a deep breath and said “Ours is the last generation who is cooking food at home.”

Future comes in instalments. If you observe keenly, you will be able to see the shape of it.

2. Will there be any work?

I went to a mall. Generally parking a car takes 10 minutes in a mall parking lot. That day I saw that each parking space had an intelligent light at the top, indicating whether a parking is filled or not. It took less than a minute to park the car.

Customer experience improved. Now parking support staff was not required. I asked the manager what happened to the support staff. He said earlier we had only one exit working. Now we have opened all the exits. They have been deployed at the new exit gates for collection.

There will be work, the nature of work will change. And it will keep changing.

3. What will be the nature of work?

Swiggy, Uber, UrbanClap are defining the future of work. These platform based organizations have started influencing the preferences and lifestyles of people. They picked up convenience services in the unorganized sector, standardized them, added quality parameters and digitized them on a platform.

My AC service guy used to come in chappals. When I ordered AC service from Urban Clap, same guy came in shoes. The quality of work will improve. Quality of service will improve. Soft skills will be a requirement for each and every job.

4. What additional degrees and certifications will be valued?

When you play cricket. Do you get a degree for it?

Degrees are stamps for knowledge based jobs. Degrees or certifications which are imparting skills will be valuable. However more focus will be on how you play at field.

Earlier if anyone knew either batting or bowling, the person would have got place in the cricket team. However future expects every player to be an all-rounder and excellent at fielding. Apart from that, there is a place for stylish player of the match. Style is good for marketing.

 

 

5. If work keeps changing, will I be able to cope up?

All of us study from class one to class 10th. Each year the syllabus changed. They taught same stuff in a more elaborate manner. Of course there were many new things as well. All of us are trained to cope up with the change since our childhood.

We moved from 5 day cricket test matches to One day Cricket and now to T20. Life keeps moving forward. T20 created more opportunities, more players and more money. There is no retirement age. There is more diversity. Performance is the stardom. If you can’t perform then you can sit in commentary box. There is going to be work for everyone….