The Future of Work, a new report from the SHRM Foundation, is a quick study on, well, the future of work.
Everyone talks about the future of work like it’s the next scary thing coming for us after the zombies have left. And that may be true (well, not the zombie part), so this short report can help you frame what you should be concerned about.
Working with the Economist Intelligence Unit, the SHRM Foundation identified 5 trends that their research shows are impacting the world of work:
- Demographic shifts
- Loss of middle-skilled jobs
- Skills gap: disconnect between educational standards and organizational demand
- Eroding physical barriers and increased globalization
- New models of work: crowdsourcing
Taken individually, none of these trends are surprising, right? But taken together, they create a set of concerns that keep most C-suite leaders, as well as their HR colleagues, up at night.
I believe that the most impactful of the five trends is number 3: the skills gap. The growing disconnect between employer skills needs and output from the global education system is already impacting small, medium, and large employers everywhere in the world. The other four trends just make things even more challenging.
Take a look at the report. It’s a quick read and will put the whole “future of work” discussion into a helpful context.
