Some futures of work

I spent a fascinating few hours yesterday afternoon as a guest of MS Amlin and Julia Hobsbawm at an event looking at some dimensions of the future of work. Looking out over the skyline of London there were some thought-provoking conversations.

Here, in no particular order, are some of the thoughts the discussions sparked for me…

Five Eras

Julia kicked off the afternoon with a short talk, and in the process introduced her take on five distinct post-war eras of the office:

The Optimism Year (1945-1976)
I’m often surprised by how much of what we currently see as “the office” was, in fact, created well before I started working. Office space in the 1990s wasn’t that different to what we see today: the computer monitors were much bulkier and the screens much smaller; printers and photocopiers were much more prominent; bulky telephones cluttered desks; it was probably more brown and orange; people wore suits and ties.

But the furniture and layout? That was all based on ideas like Burolandschaft (1950s) and The Action Office (1960s).

The Mezzanine Years (1977-2006)
Named after Nicholson Baker’s novel The Mezzanine, which Julia described as the definitive description of the office’s existential angst, this was the liminal time between pre-digital and digital life. In those years, we started to see the drift to the internet, but it was slow and incomplete.

This was the time when the tools for production (PCs, servers, networks) needed to mostly be consumed in the office because connectivity was poor and devices clunky.

The Co-working Years (2007-2019)
A series of technological advances then collided: smartphones; 4G networks; thinner, lighter laptops; home broadband; wifi; cloud computing.

All of this combined to leave us in a world where we could work anywhere, yet still often by habit went to an office.

The Nowhere Office (2020-2022)

AKA the COVID years, during which we found not only that home working at scale could work for many if not most.

The Amazing Age (2023-)

This leaves us at today, a point at which we can explore fundamentally reworking how office work works…

… or we can try to take everyone back.

(Spoiler alert: time travel is not possible)

AI = Fewer people doing better jobs (but more of those jobs?)

Henry Coutinho-Mason gave a hopeful talk that AI will allow us to lean into our humanity, using examples from small companies (Kernal) and large to explore how AI is enabling some organisations to provide better jobs to people where the technology does the drudge work.

I like this analysis, but I also fear a couple of negative outcomes:

Firstly, businesses with a bottom line and market position to protect will veer to just having fewer people. I have a hunch that many of the current PR announcements about organisations adopting AI and shedding staff are merely using the AI line to spin a more positive message to stock markets. In reality, they’re just shedding staff.

Secondly, if people are currently doing drudge work, they might actually be OK with that. Someone who spends all day mindlessly filling in spreadsheets might have a rich and fulfilling life outside of work and be happy with that balance. They also might not have the skills and capabilities to “lean in” to more interpersonal work.

I felt this particularly when Henry talked about AI allowing doctors to focus on empathy. From experience of the healthcare system over the last couple of decades, the sorts of people who are able to spend time, say, opening up fellow human beings with scalpels might not actually be the most empathetic of people. And you know what, if they can extend my lifespan with the cutting stuff, I’m probably fine with that…

Mass Trauma
Something that has occurred to me in recent months is that after everything we have collectively been through in the past 5 (or even longer) years, we seem to be strangely not acknowledging the lasting impact of the various national and international calamities. It was somewhat reassuring as a result to hear Gabriella Braun talk about trauma and fear in the workplace as needing to be acknowledged, even if there is maybe too much expectation on employers these days to take responsibility for the emotional wellbeing of their employees.

This got me thinking about the idea of how wellbeing and employee engagement should start with meaningful work, not to be bolted on to the side of jobs that suck.

Changing people
A few of the themes in the day also got me focused on a paradox.

On the one hand, AI is going to change everything.

On the other hand, organisational change is notoriously difficult and introducing new technology doubly. Just ask every failed ERP or CRM implementation team.

The hype surrounding generative technologies in the past 24 months is greater than anything I’ve seen before. But like Crypto, Big Data, Cloud, Mobile, and E-Commerce before it, the change expected in the short term will likely be hugely underwhelming. Ten years out, and the world will have shifted. Look at what 17 years since the iPhone has done.

It also struck me that many of the descriptions of how people currently use AI tools (or not) are very reminiscent of how some people know how to use formulae in Excel, and many don’t.

The ubiquitous home robot
Robots and AI will make us free!

I’m surprised we don’t look at the ubiquitous robot technology in most of our (privileged, rich) houses.

The washing machine means that we do less arduous manual labour. That just results in us washing more and being summoned through bleeps to attend to the robot’s every need.

Robots have form.

The inclusive future of work

A fascinating conversation at the end of the day with Kate Muir, the journalist who worked with Davina McCall on two programmes about the menopause which have been seen as instrumental in raising the topic up the agenda in the last few years.

The key reflection for me was that too many workplace Menopause policies frame the subject as a form of severe disability rather than something that just needs some support. There’s probably something more broad in that we often see the framing of health as being the absence of illness rather than the experience of good health (and this goes for mental and physical health too).

-/-

The breadth of topics discussed over the afternoon reflect, once again, why whenever I get the chance to attend something that Julia has been involved with, I’ll invariably say “Yes!”.