The Changing Nature of Work: 30 signals to consider for a sustainable future

SIGNAL 22. Valuing all types of work

The world of work is undergoing an accelerated transition from a traditional, routine and strictly defined performance of tasks that evolved from the industrial age, to non-standard, redesigned, adaptive and flexible utilization of different skill sets. Rapid automatization will unlock workers’ capacities to seize new opportunities in the continually evolving work.

Deloitte’s new vision of human work suggests that there will be a focus on creating value that is non-process-based and non-routine, fluid rather than predetermined, increasingly workgroup-oriented, and context-specific rather than standardized.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) predicts that independent workers will move between traditional employment and the gig economy, including platform work. McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) identified four categories of independent workers:

1. Free agents – The platform economy is their primary income where they work by choice.
2. Casual earners – They supplement their primary income with work in the platform economy by choice.
3. Provisional – The platform economy is their primary income source, but they would prefer a traditional job.
4. Financially strapped – They supplement primary income to make ends meet, but they would prefer not to have to.

In adapting the WEF’s approach to identifying the benefits of and challenges in platform work, the following would materialise:

Benefits

• Flexibility – Workers will be able to decide where, when and how often they will work.
• Geographic diversity – There will be more opportunities for remote working and bringing work closer to the vulnerable groups.
• Greater demand and inclusivity – Opportunities such as platform work may create greater demand for workers to market their skills and reduce barriers for workers from vulnerable and/or marginalized populations to enter the workforce.
• Improve matching – The preference of workers will be used to improve the labour matching process.

Challenges

• Benefits and social protection – Individual workers, often on zero-hour contracts, may not have safety nets such as those of salaried employees, and associated rights and benefits, such as vacation pay, sick pay, insurance and pension.
• Reasonable pay – For lower-skilled workers, the key challenge will be to ensure sufficient income to support a reasonable quality of life.
• Dignity and interest – Although redefined, some work will consist of repetitive tasks, resulting in mundane and uninteresting jobs.
• Security – The preference of workers will be used to improve the labour matching process.
• Upskilling – Workers may lack opportunities to reskill and upskill, and may have limited access to training opportunities.
• Representation – Traditional instruments used for representing workers and ensuring that their rights are respected would become obsolete.
  

Possible solutions to the above challenges may lie in a combination of changes in policies, leadership, accelerated adaptation of the workforce ecosystem, and possibly the introduction of universal basic income (UBI). However, all possible solutions should have a strong gender lens given that women may be disproportionately affected by digital transformation.

Check out the next signal, #23: Gender parity.

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The Changing Nature of Work: 30 signals to consider for a sustainable future

Work helps sustain livelihoods and largely determines the quality of life. Its changing nature is at the frontier of development. This report is the result of a broad horizon scanning by six UNDP Accelerator Labs across Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.  They reveal 30 signals that shape the “where, who, how, and why” of the changing nature of work. From the impact of COVID-19 on the workforce to new work models and entrepreneurial ecosystems, the authors explore opportunities and threats, as well as solutions from local contexts that can be scaled up into positive answers to the challenges people around the world are facing.  Download the full report here.