Predictions for the future are often wildly inaccurate.

For example, Back To The Future promised us hoverboards, while the majority of us who saw Blade Runner couldn’t wait to obtain their hands on a flying car. Unfortunately, neither are plentiful to the average person yet, the crying shame.

Casting a close watch into the longer term and speculating what sort of world may look at that time, is not an easy task – you will discover simply too many variables involved. New technologies which no-one saw coming might be pulled in the aether, while existing fields that contain substantial growth potential, may are not able to develop as you expected. A good example of this really is 3D films; continuously they’ve been touted as being the future from the film industry because production companies have thought consumers would jump for the chance to be a little more immersed within the worlds that films create.

While this really is true with an extent, very good of 3D films is declining quite significantly – mainly because it has done more than once before. Instead, consumers seem far keener to enhance the resolution they will watch their 2D content on, and that is seen from the meteoric rise of 4K and UHD televisions over modern times.

Personally, I always enjoy taking a look at current trends and ideas, and considering how to progress after some time, so I can form a mental picture of the way the future might look if things go on their current path.

Applying this approach on the workplace is not difficult enough to perform, because recently there were a great many new ideas and perspectives on that this world of work should develop over coming decades, proposed by politicians, academics, think tanks and business leaders, and others.

By considering these new ideas, and utilizing the changes who have already happened inside workplace over recent times one step further, this is the way the workplace on the 2050s might look…

Remote Working – The New Normal?

Remote working is rapidly rising all in the world, as well as the stats are striking. For example, a 2019 study by Forbes learned that there is a 159% improvement in remote working within the USA since 2007, as you move the same study estimates that before 2020 has finished, 50% from the UK workforce will continue to work remotely, a minimum of part on the time.

Allied to this particular development, may be the decline across much from the western world in the traditional ‘job for life’, whereby employees stayed with same employer on their working life, and concept of career progression was seeking an offer within the same company.

The advantages for this decline are complex and multifaceted, but it’s something which includes arisen partly due towards the desires of both employers – who taken care of immediately economic recessions by calling for greater flexibility in relation to labour rights – and employees – who responded a decades-long amount of wage stagnation by starting to be willing to switch employers (as well as careers) looking for greater opportunities and working conditions.

As well as being the decay in the ‘job for life’ adding to greater flexibility for both employers and employees, they have caused an important increase inside the number of those who become self-employed, work multiple jobs, have a very side-business together with their day job, or tackle freelance are employed in their extra time.

All these factors are combining to create a vast amount of highly productive, well trained and well-educated workers, that do not need to become physically present in the office of any primary employer between hours of 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday.

However, a lot of people who enjoy a home based job do not enjoy working alone, and this also has caused a massive increase in co-working over recent times.

The development of co-working spaces looks well-set to continue in the 2050s and beyond if, as you expected, more and more on the workforce take effect remotely. Indeed, as co-working spaces become busy activity hubs populated by skilled and enterprising people coming from a variety of different backgrounds, it’s only natural that these people connect, network and synergise with one another – which means co-working spaces could turned into a fertile method of obtaining fresh innovations and vibrant new startups around the world, not only Silicon Valley.

The 4 Day Workweek

Even for those individuals who have jobs where remote working isn’t an option, modifications in their working patterns can be afoot, because the idea of switching to your 4 day workweek may be suggested with a range of academics, think tanks and employers.

For example, the Exeter-based travel company STC Expeditions recently completed a 12 week trial on the 4 day workweek, while in the 2019 UK General Election, the Labour Party had the state run policy to generate the 4 day workweek the UK’s standard schedule, before 2030.

The logic behind working 4 days every week instead of 5, is the fact that several research has shown peoples’ productivity has a tendency to decline after about 32 hours work weekly, and therefore the other 8 hours from the 40 hour workweek could possibly be given back to your employee with little, if any, decrease of productivity. In fact, a 2019 study by Microsoft Japan learned that employee productivity actually increased by the staggering 40% once they trialled a 4 day workweek for your duration on the summer.

Whether a 4 day workweek is sustainable from the long-term, not merely over a limited duration of time, and also to what extent Thursday afternoons end up being the new Friday afternoons in terms of productivity, are issues which will have to be investigated above the coming years, and also the 2050s, we’re going to likely have our answer.

The Robots Are Coming For Us All

And there is not any escape! Like it or otherwise, automation and technological advances signify sooner or later, our jobs are going to be done by robots who is able to complete the task quicker, cheaper and to some better standard than we have ever could.

This just isn’t a change that may take place overnight, but from the 2050s, across an enormous selection of industries and workplaces, highly trained custom-made robots will likely be doing the jobs humans used to accomplish.

This will not be a new idea, nor would it be a new phenomenon. Consider the economic revolution, when vast quantities of textile workers found themselves surplus to requirements due towards the invention of machines that may do their jobs without requesting break periods, days off or overtime pay.

In more sophisticated times, visualize self-checkout machines from the supermarket, the place where a dozen or higher self-checkouts might be available for customers to work with, with just one or two store assistants being give supervise.

The means of specially made robots replacing people within their job roles is known as automation, and you’re simply going for being hearing considerably more about it from now on, because right this moment in a number of substantial and very important industries, robots are increasingly being developed which, with the 2050s, can have taken the jobs of millions of people.

For example, inside USA one with the largest types of employment for non-college educated men is vehicle driving; either being a truck driver, taxi driver, Uber driver, courier, or another type along much the same line. Even today, self-driving cars are semi-operational, for a amount of research funding that currently is being invested into making fully functional self-driving vehicles besides a reality, however the norm, eventually, it appears to be logical to suggest that because of the 2050s almost all driving jobs will likely be done by robots, not humans.

No-One Is Safe!

By no means is that this a phenomenon that’s unique on the automotive industry. Across all industries and walks of life, the expectation is the fact that robots is going to be doing the jobs men and women currently do, inside the next ages.

For example, a 2019 study by Oxford Economics found out that 20 million jobs from the manufacturing industry alone may be automated away before 2030, which many on the people working these jobs would then usually seek employment in related industries which can be also highly at risk of automation.

In truth, this scenario of widespread global job losses isn’t as cataclysmic because it may appear, because since capitalism has get to be the primary method by which human societies have organised their economies, innovations and technological advancements are coming up with new occupations, in addition to eliminating existing ones.

A commonly cited illustration showing this, is the way the invention of social networking platforms has built the job of Social Media Manager, the industry position that could not have been near existing even 19 years ago. And returning on the example from the industrial revolution – this really is a development which created a massive number of new occupations in factories and mills, while eradicating many from the existing jobs in farming and agriculture.

However, the sheer scale in the automations that may almost certainly come in the next many years, may present a challenge from the like we have not seen before. For example, a 2015 study with the Bank of England estimated that nearly 50% in the UK’s workforce risk having their job automated away, with those most vulnerable employed in admin, manufacturing, clerical, care, and customer satisfaction jobs.

Crisis Management and Free Money For All

With so lots of people at risk of having not merely their jobs, on the other hand careers, automated away, the following question that arises is, ‘how should we respond to the present?’

One potential solution that has gained support from people on all sides from the political spectrum, would be the idea of the universal basic income (UBI). UBI might be defined as, ‘a model for providing all citizens of an country or some other geographic area having a given amount of cash, no matter their income, resources or employment status,’ even though the essential principle behind UBI may be the idea that ‘all citizens are entitled into a livable income, whether or you cannot they bring about production.’

In short, in a very world where huge quantities of people should have their livelihoods and skillsets automated away, leaving them struggling to compete against robots in a very free-market economy, exactly how should we ensure the people are still able to possess a standard of living which affords them some dignity?

Many brilliant minds both past and provides have supported the reasoning behind a UBI because (among other reasons) it could possibly present a solution to the present problem. Some in the more well-known supporters of UBI include: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Bertrand Russell, Franklin Roosevelt, Margaret Mead, Martin Luther King, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

It can also be important to note that support for UBI comes from groups of men and women who would ordinarily have diametrically opposed political views. For example, one in the best known modern proponents of UBI is Andrew Yang, an American tech entrepreneur who recently ran to become the Democratic nominee for your 2020 presidential election, while on additional side with the political divide, support for UBI has come on the neoliberal economist Milton Friedman, plus the political scientist Charles Murray, whose thoughts about the issue of race relations could generously be identified as ‘controversial’.

It is additionally worth noting how the American state of Alaska, that is heavily conservative, has experienced a form of UBI since 1982. Every year, residents of Alaska receive approximately $2000 mainly for living there, with barely any conditions attached. What’s more, research indicates that Alaska’s UBI program has helped to obliterate extreme poverty inside the state, without increasing unemployment.

Releasing The Shackles

The relative merits of UBI, and ways in which it should be implemented, are issues which require serious studying and many other words of explanation than I am afforded just for this article, but there’s one more point which can be vital to understand inside context of UBI and ways in which it may affect business inside the 2050s.

Consider to get a second the number of frustrated entrepreneurs you recognize. How many individuals in your life want to start a business but only if they weren’t so beholden on the everyday pressures of working hard to pay the invoices and support their loved ones?

If with the 2050s, UBI continues to be successfully implemented in several countries, how a lot of people across the world would have been able make use of the extra freedoms afforded to them with regard to both a serious amounts of finances, to begin with businesses and pursue their true calling?

With some from the pressure to pay for household bills and expenses relieved, the quantity of bold new services and groundbreaking products will be developed by skilled and educated individuals, who all of the sudden had added time to work for their passion projects?