Will the day come when we all work as
our own boss? Stephane Kasriel, CEO of Upwork and co-chair of the Global Future
Council on Education, Gender and Work, says entrepreneurs and freelancers
represent the future of the workplace, as traditional office jobs become less
and less relevant. He explains what we need to do to prepare, how companies
should react, and why there is still a glass ceiling to be shattered.
Your Global Future Council has a very
broad spectrum to cover. How do you see education, gender and work colliding?
The reason we adopted this approach
is that the three topics are greatly interconnected. There is more value in
recognising the links between these issues than analysing them in isolated
studies.
Some countries have been good at
taking a holistic approach, but most still see these as separate functions. Our
goal is to get stakeholders to approach these topics as a whole, with a more
human-centered approach as opposed to the traditional functional point of view.
How will your Council be contributing
to that conversation?
We’ve had quite a few conversations
already. We want to focus on the dialogues that are happening, and help shape
those dialogues. That will then have an impact on the research and the
development of initiatives for these issues for governments, private business
and other stakeholders.
For example, we are currently working
on a document which will address education in the Fourth Industrial Revolution,
and one on how to address the gender gap. Another document in the making is on
the future of work. How do we facilitate the transition from the traditional
form of work to the future state where work is more flexible?
What are trends are you seeing in
these areas right now?
They don't all move at the same pace.
In education, lifelong learning is
more important than it ever used to be. The idea that you study in your youth
and then have a career in one company is gone. Skills are changing all the
time. There is a constant need to be reskilled. If you look at jobs in the
marketplace today, you need some kind of renewal every five years or so.
In the workplace, we are moving
towards more flexible arrangements where the individual is working with
multiple companies at the same time. A lot of it is knowledge work, which can
be done from anywhere. That creates more value than the traditional work model.
When it comes to gender, there
continues to be too large a gap worldwide. Governments and businesses must
continue to encourage having more women in the workforce. Some countries
require more work than others. Sadly, there are still places where we still need
to convince people that there exists an opportunity.
Have you
read?
Where do you think we’ll be by 2030?
How do we prepare for that?
Each of these issues will improve on
its own, which also means that they will improve each other.
The future of work is not going to be
about full time employment. By 2030, millennials will have senior positions.
They will bring with them this mentality that work doesn't need to be 9-to-5
nor does it have to be done in an office space. You’re going to see even more
departure from the way we think of work now.
People want freedom and flexibility.
They want to be in charge of their own destiny. Managers need to prepare for
this. We used to have a manager and worked in a team that came in and did a
work day in the office. More and more we're going to see people working with
flexible hours from a distance.
Those graduating need to know how to
manage their career in this more flexible model. They will need to be
technically knowledgeable, but also be able to sell themselves, build a
reputation, manage customer expectations, and negotiate agreements. The people
you work for in the future will no longer be your bosses and your managers,
they will be your clients. Education systems need to prepare their graduates to
become entrepreneurs.
Inversely, companies must also
prepare. Managers struggle to manage millennials because they are more likely
to leave the company quickly. But businesses need to change how they look at
this because it's not the millennials who will change. The generation after the
millennials will be even more independent. The new world will be self-assembled
and flexible.
With education, we will need to
provide tools and incentives for employees to train themselves regularly.
Still, no matter how much training is on offer, companies probably won't have
all the tools they need. Things are simply changing too fast. Freelancers will
begin filling those gaps more and more.
Hopefully, by 2030 we will see a more
effective feedback loop from industry on what they need in the workforce. Not
just in hard skills abut also in soft skills, making future generations better
prepared.
Finally, the reason we have so few
women in executive positions is because companies still need to do a better job
at recognising glass ceilings. We need to see actual projects and deliverables.
Companies need to hold themselves accountable for those goals.
What would be your best-case scenario
for 2030?
In a best case scenario, we will have
a much flatter world, one where men and women can achieve their potential
irrespective of race, ethnicity, religion, country of origin or country of
residence, where pay is fair and there is an appropriate safety net for all.
This will not happen on its own,
there are many forces operating against maintaining even the current state,
such as the acceleration of artificial intelligence and robotics, rising income
disparities across and within countries, and disturbing recent trends in
populism, xenophobia and gender discrimination in several countries. But with
the right multistakeholder collaboration, it is possible to get there and
highly urgent that we do.
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