Workplaces of the future – what’s really happening in the workplace?
Predicting the shape and character of the workplace of the future is a messy and difficult business. Despite the ubiquity of some trends, and the convergence of at least some practices, workplaces will continue to be extremely diverse.
Richard Hall (2006)
Workplace Changes: change and continuity in the workplaces of the future is a paper by Richard Hall, Associate Professor of Organisational Studies and Human Resource Management, University of Sydney, Australia. This was one of 5 papers commissioned by TAFE NSW ICVET to inform a national research project on Designing Professional Development for the Knowledge Era
Trends are not all in the direction of greater knowledge diversity, suggests Richard Hall in his paper, Workplace Changes: change and continuity in the workplaces of the future. Hall re-evaluates the knowledge era thesis and examines what is happening in workplaces, including the changes in labour supply and demand among the critical forces driving workplace change.
Key trends in the workplace identified by Hall, are
- work intensification,
- labour flexibility, and
- increasingly rigid and disciplined management of labour.
These changes are effecting a number of results, not all of which are surprising:
- Organisational structures, methods of working, forms of collaboration and the skills and attributes required continue to change.
- There is greater diversity in organisational workforces and increasing pressure for flexible work arrangements.
- Higher levels of educational attainment are leading to a more qualified labour pool, but also to employees with heightened labour market expectations.
- Workers are having increasingly diverse and often discontinuous career paths.
- There is likely to be a shortage of knowledge jobs rather than of knowledge workers.
- People are working longer hours, and a greater proportion of workers are working very long hours, resulting in increased intensification of work.
- Restructuring, delayering, downsizing, and an increased emphasis on teamwork are resulting in responsibility for performance and profits being pushed down the occupational hierarchies.
- There is a strong growth in low end, budget services as well as in high end services catering to the affluent.
In particular Richard’s statement about managerial reforms requires some reflection and re-examination of implications for our own workplaces. He says:
Recent trends in the management of labour do not seem consistent with a decisive trend toward enhanced discretion, autonomy, opportunities for creativity and genuine knowledge work that would be consistent with the knowledge era thesis. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the key managerial reforms (or ‘management fads’ for some) of recent times – Just-in-Time, Business Process Reengineering, lean production, high performance work systems – have typically had little to do with extending empowerment or genuine discretion and autonomy of work to workers whether professional, managerial, operational or support. Work intensification and increasing insecurity have more often been the characteristic results.
(2006, pp 6–7)
Hall suspects that many organisations will seek to ‘exploit knowledge in new ways for competitive advantage’ and there will be a further blurring of the distinction between work and non-work.
What are the new issues and challenges for professional development in organisation being created by these changes? Hall identifies them as:
- Managing the tyranny of operational demands
- Developing the job as well as the professional
- Developing professionals as managers
- Sustaining multiple identities
- Establishing a new psychological contract.
A national research project titled Designing Professional Development for the Knowledge Era addresses these issues and challenges.
See also
HALL, Richard 2006 Workplace Changes: change and continuity in the workplaces of the future One of five think pieces being compiled into Voices: Contemporary thinking for working and learning in the Knowledge Era, commissioned by ICVET (TAFE NSW International Centre for VET Teaching and Learning) to inform the national research project.
Life based learning: for capability development in the Knowledge Era | A-Z Resources for the full research report, companion document, related information, papers and readings
Life based learning – a new framework for capability development in vocational and technical education (VTE) RESEARCH | August 2006
Designing Professional Development for the Knowledge Era Project
