TMJC GP InfoPack The Future of Work Package (JC1 2023)

GP @ TMJC 1 The Future of Work Tampines Meridian Junior College JC1 General Paper 2023 Table of Contents Reading Set 1 (Changing Workplace Trends) P. 3 – 10 Reading Set 2 (Changing Economic Realities) P. 11 – 25 Reading Set 3 (Demographic Shifts) P. 26 – 34 Relevant Essay Questions P. 34 Changing Work Trends & Impacts on Society Talent Wars Artificial Intelligence An Ageing Society The Gig Economy

GP @ TMJC 2 ● An Overview ● Unit Title: The Future of Work Inquiry question: What is the future of work? Unit Strand 1: Changing Workplace Trends Unit Strand 2: Changing economic realities Unit Strand 3: Demographic shifts Conceptual lens: Change & Balance Conceptual lens: Change & Balance Conceptual lens: Change & Balance Concepts: Disruption, Innovation, Quality of Life Concepts: Disruption, Innovation, Quality of Life Concepts: Quality of Life, Sustainability, Competition, Social Cohesion Topics: Remote working Work-life balance Equality Topics: Gig economy Upskilling for workers in traditional economies Topics: Migration Ageing population Talent wars Generalisation: Generalisation: Generalisation:

GP @ TMJC 3 Inquiry Question: What is the Future of Work? At the end of this section, students should be able to: Understand changing workplace trends and evaluate its impacts on the businesses and workers. ● Changing Workplace Trends ● Article 1: Future Of Work: The 5 Biggest Workplace Trends In 2022 Forbes, Nov 22, 2021,12:04am EST Much has been written about the huge changes in our working lives during the past two years – driven of course by necessity and concerns for safety. In 2022, the pandemic is very much still a fact of life for many of us. However, it is fair to say that we’ve learned to adapt to new behavioural patterns and expectations as we do our jobs. If we are among the millions of “knowledge workers” who find ourselves with more freedom to choose when and where we work, then hopefully, we are making the most of the opportunity to strike a better balance between home and working life. These are the 5 Biggest Workplace Trends In 2022 Hybrid working When it comes to where we work, there will continue to be three main models – centralized workplaces, decentralized remote organizations, and the hybrid “best of both worlds” approach. What is likely to change in 2022 is that it’s more likely that we, as workers, will have the choice rather than being forced to align with whatever model your organization has chosen out of necessity. Organizations are clearly undergoing a change in their relationship with the idea of a centralized workplace. At the height of the pandemic in 2020, 69% of large companies expected an overall decrease in the amount of office space they would be using, according to research by KPMG. Hybrid structures will range from companies maintaining permanent centralized offices with hot - desking to accommodate the fact that staff will more frequently work remotely, to doing away with offices entirely and relying on co-working spaces and serviced meeting rooms to support the needs of a primarily remote workforce. A report recently commissioned by video messaging platform Loom found that 90% of employees surveyed – including workers and managers – are happier with the increased freedom they now have to work from home, suggesting that this is likely to be a trend that is here to stay as we move into 2022. AI-augmented workforce The World Economic Forum predicts that AI and automation will lead to the creation of 97 million new jobs by 2025. However, people working in many existing jobs will also find their roles changing, as they are increasingly expected to augment their own abilities with AI technology. Initially, this AI will primarily be used to automate repetitive elements of their day-to-day roles and allow workers to focus on areas that require a more human touch – creativity, imagination, high-level strategy, or emotional intelligence, for example. Some examples include lawyers who will use technology that cuts down the amou nt of time spent reviewing case histories in order to find precedents, and doctors who will have computer vision capabilities to help them analyse medical records and scans to help them diagnose illness in patients. In retail, augmented analytics helps sto re managers with inventory planning and logistics and helps sales assistants predict what individual shoppers will be Reading Set 1

GP @ TMJC 4 looking for when they walk through the door. Marketers have an ever -growing range of tools at their disposal to help them target campaigns and segment audiences. And in engineering and manufacturing roles, workers will increasingly have access to technology that helps them understand how machinery works and predict where breakdowns are likely to happen. Staffing for resilience Pre-pandemic, the priority was generally to have been to hire staff that would create efficient organizations. Mid and post-pandemic, the emphasis has shifted firmly in the direction of resilience. Whereas built-in redundancy or overlaps in skills might pr eviously have been seen as inefficient, today, it is seen as a sensible precaution. This certainly encompasses another sub -trend, which is that employers are coming to understand the critical importance of building employee healthcare and wellbeing (includ ing mental health) strategies into their game plan. Many are now trying to take more responsibility for helping their workforce maintain physical, mental, and financial wellbeing. A challenge here that companies will come up against in 2022 is finding ways to do this that hit objectives without being overly intrusive or invasive of employees’ privacy and personal lives. Less focus on roles, more focus on skills Gartner says, "To build the workforce you'll need post-pandemic, focus less on roles – which group unrelated skills – than on the skills needed to drive the organization's competitive advantage and the workflows that fuel this advantage." Skills are critical because they address core business challenges, with the competencies needed in a workforce to overcome those challenges. Roles, on the other hand, describe the way individual members of a workforce relate to an overa ll organizational structure or hierarchy. By focussing on skills, businesses address the fact that solving problems and answering their core business questions is the key to driving innovation and success within information-age enterprises. From the worker’s point of view, focusing on developing their skills, rather than further developing their abilities to carry out their role, leaves them better positioned to capitalize on new career opportunities. This shift in focus from roles to skills is likely to be a key trend for both organizations and workers during 2022. Employee monitoring and analytics Controversial though it may be, research shows that employers are increasingly investing in technology designed to monitor and track the behaviour of their employees in order to drive efficiency. Platforms such as Aware that allow businesses to monitor behaviour across email and tools such as Slack in order to measure productivity, are being seen as particularly useful by managers overseeing remote workforces. Of course, it seems that it would be easy for companies to use these tools in a way that would be seen as overbearing or intrusive by their workers, and in my opinion, that would clearly be a recipe for disaster. If it is the latter, it’s unlikely to end well for the companies involved. However, for better or worse, it seems likely that this kind of technology will play an increasingly large role in the workplace during 2022.

GP @ TMJC 5 Article 2: Remote working: A blessi