What does the future of work mean in terms of job and life satisfaction?
This is part of WERKIN’s series, “Leaps x Bounds”, profiling change and change-makers. WERKIN Ambassador Shalini Chudasama explores factors that will shape the future of work for individuals and organizations.
Noreen Malone recently published an article in the New York Times Magazine The Age of Anti-Ambition, describing that as all the ‘perks’ and experiences related to work have been removed, all that remains is the nature of the job itself. Employees have, therefore, been forced to reckon with that discovery and “A lot of people don’t like what they see.” The article talks about not just the Future of Work, a buzzword of the current times, but also the “Current state” of work, burnout, levels of employment and dissatisfaction. Malone likens this to a period of ‘anti-ambition,’ where our job is no longer our identity. Given these trends, we need to rethink how our jobs impact our identity, how we continue to develop relevant skills, and how we can minimize burnout over the long run.
Our job will no longer define us
As more of us are switching careers, and given that life expectancy has continued to steadily increase, our approach to work must also shift. One way to think about this is through the lens of a multi-stage life, in which individuals will hold a variety of different roles across a range of organizations, industries, and circumstances (e.g. employee v. self-employed). Given the increasing fluidity with which work is being viewed, I would be very surprised if in the next decade we continue to tie our identity to our job titles or companies. As we rethink what is important to us, work is reduced to a smaller part. We’ve replaced the initial days of baking banana bread and sourdough with new hobbies and interests. Gone will be the days where we introduce people at dinner parties (if those ever return?) with someone’s name and then their job title or company, as opposed to other parts of their identity. For those of us privileged enough to have options to change companies, careers, and jobs, those changes might matter less than other parts of who we are.
Up-skilling will be key
As technology continues to advance, adapting to the times through continued investment in learning new skills, technologies, and approaches will be critical. The age of ‘completing’ education and entering the workforce is ending, if not already over. The idea of going ‘back to school’ has stigma associated with it, as if you’ve failed at your chosen career in some way and have to ‘start over’ since school is associated with early/pre career. However, as the nature of technology keeps changing and changes how we work, ‘going back to school’ might take on different forms. From an individual standpoint, investing in one’s own education will be critical and doesn’t have to come in the form of degrees, but could be in certifications or workshops. From an organizational standpoint, leaders need to invest in continuing to educate, reskill, and upskill their employees to create long-lasting organizations.
We need to approach work differently
If we view retirement as the light at the end of the long tunnel of working years, many of us may be waiting until we’re 70+ for that light, and then unable to fully enjoy that period. As we live longer, we’ll likely work for more years of our life, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Given that burnout has practically become the norm in the pandemic, highlighting the need for new ways to approach work, be it through work models - like 4-day work weeks, taking breaks for those of us who can – such as sabbaticals, and pushing for better workplaces – through organizing and collective bargaining. Approaching work in non-traditional ways will be viewed as an asset, and organizations need to view it as such. Companies should no longer view a break in someone’s work history, be it caregiving, for an educational opportunity, or a sabbatical, as a weakness, but as an asset that this person is that much more capable of working in the long term.
In the same way that we all had to adapt how we collaborate, work, learn, and socialize, in the pandemic, that creativity needs to be fostered and encouraged when it comes to how we think about our career paths. By shifting how we approach work today, we will better position ourselves to adapt to the changes that we can’t foresee in the future.
