[MUSIC] In this segment, we're going to look at the changing nature of work itself and obviously, that's linked quite closely to the previous segment on the, the company of the future. Lots of things happening in the nature of work itself. And we're going to categorize them into three areas. First of all, the nature of the work that we actually do. And when I say we, I mean, you know, the, the, the population as a home, not, you know, you or I specifically. secondly, where, where we do that work and the hours that we keep. And then third, and finally, and very briefly actually, how work varies over our working lives. Now, go back to, a slide actually right at the beginning of the course, looking at the major drivers of change. We talked about technology, we talked about social changes, we talked about emerging economies, we talked about the sustainability agenda. Not a comprehensive list, but certainly we will recognize these four major drivers for change. What we're going to do is just, just fairly briefly take a look at these three dimensions of the nature of the workplace and say to ourselves, how are these drivers affecting the nature of the work that we do. So we'll take the nature of work itself first of all. A couple of fairly obvious points. First of all, automation, an awful lot of very low-end, very tedious jobs have thankfully over the years been automated. And an awful lot of the stuff that used to happen for example in, in, in, te, telecommunications exchanges is now just simply done by computers. Now, the, there's going to be parts of the jobs which are not, you know, call centers will continue to exist forever. But big chunks of work have been automated. So technology is making it possible for significant amounts of work to go away and it's not just low-end jobs, some, some aspects are actually very sophisticated work is also being automated. Many, many professionals you know, from doctors to consultants are finding themselves actually working with computer-aided systems which help them make better decisions. Secondly, many jobs are being outsourced, outsourced to countries in which they can be done as well at a fraction of the cost. Now, obviously there's some, some well-known examples, the rise of, you know, these enormous IT services providers, particularly in India. The rise of big call centers in, in places like Ind, India and Bangladesh. All of this is well-known. It's not just the low-end jobs though that are being outsources. There are many, again, if you take a, a job like being a doctor or by being a, you know, an investment banker or being a trader. Many aspects of that work can actually be done, somewhat sur, sur, surprisingly, remotely, by a highly trained doctor, for example, in India. So there are many jobs being outsourced and many jobs being automated. The number of jobs out there, some people worry that there's just simply not going to be enough of them around. Now, in every time this worry has happened somehow jobs have emerged that didn't exist before. So I'm not particularly worried, but at the same time I do think it's a safe, so an, an interesting hypothesis to say that as a, a technology really kind of takes, takes hold the second generation of technology change. Is it possible that we're not going to have enough jobs to go around? It is possible. So what that means then is that we have to say to ourselves, a little bit more creatively, what sort of jobs can we create, and what sort of jobs perhaps are the ones which are the most secure for those living particularly in developed countries. So let's just think very, very briefly about this. If you work in a developed country, economy, an, an expensive place to live like the UK, like the US, like Japan, what sort of jobs are secure? Well, there's, there's two categories. One of the ones which involve, service. Anything that involves day-to-day interaction with a client or a customer, by definition that has to happen physically in that place. And of course clients like service so we have to find ways of doing that better. So the whole service experience side of work is not in any sense going away. So whether you're a, you know, hairdresser or whether you're a highly paid investment banker with a relationship with a client those jobs continue. The other sort of job which continues, of course, is the sort of job which requires a high level of internal collaboration. So you take a big multipurpose company like an advertising agency, like an investment bank. You know, the jobs which require people within it to work closely together to, to, to coordinate their activities. Obviously, it's impossible for that stuff to be located overseas. And of course, to a larger degree, the, the more creative parts of the economy are also going to, more or less for the moment anyway, stick around in the places where there's a real premium put on, on education and in creativity and innovation.
