3 Key Factors That Could Determine The Future Of Work

As governments and organizations experiment with workplace models and policies, the persistent question is, “what will the future of work look like?” The answer to this depends on a few factors. Check out a few factors that indicate what the future of work may look like, says Matt Carmichael, Head, Ipsos Trends & Foresight Lab, Ipsos.

Imagine it’s 2030. The future of work has been totally upended. Former office workers now perform their duties from wherever they like, whenever they like, with endless vacations and four-day workweeks. 

Or maybe the future looks a lot like the present.

Will the changes from the pandemic carry forward, or will we slip back to our previous routines? We’re already seeing policy experiments that could restructure our lives and how we pay for them. Many nations and employers are experimenting with four-day workweeks and universal basic income, and many new job listings promise an all-remote workstyle. But there’s a key tension between the desire to emerge from the pandemic and the yearning to “return to normal.” 

What will the future of work look like, and how will changes to our careers change the ways we live? What could the future of the 9-to-5 look like? Will it even be a 9-to-5? 

For the latest issue of What the Future, a strategic foresight magazine produced by Ipsos, we surveyed 1,110 American adultsOpens a new window on how they navigate a changing world. Here are three key takeaways based on fresh data and interviews with top executives and experts. Yes, many changes are already underway, but there are also some reasons to believe the future of work could look much like the present.

Flexibility: Will Workers Get Flexibility or Consistency?

Over the past two years, many workers have experienced a shift in where, when, and even how they work. About 25% of employed Americans ages 50 and up no longer commute, according to our survey mentioned above. 

Flexibility has also facilitated a new era of gig work and side hustles, with many Americans reporting more diverse income streams. About 30% say they have a single source of income (unsalaried), and 25% have a single source of income, but 29% earn income from multiple sources. 

These shifts have significant implications for everything from retirement planning and how companies manage talent to how we travel: a lack of commuters could have cascading effects on everything from neighborhood planning to the auto industry. 

But remember that this future is unevenly distributed: only 32% of employed American adults are currently working in a hybrid remote/worksite model, and only 46% would prefer to do so.

Meanwhile, remote work has ushered in new challenges for service industries: navigating customer and staffing shifts related to remote work, labor shortages, and the rise in delivery. Many are overworked, and some are struggling to maintain a consistent experience: 43% of employed Americans have experienced staffing shortages at restaurants, hotels, travel services or stores in the past three months. 

It remains to be seen whether this 32% of employed Americans working in a hybrid model will hold on to their flexibility. During the pandemic, the power pendulum swung to workers as labor shortages pushed up wages and incomes, and employers tried to lure and retain staff with new benefits. But inflation is already starting to swing the power back to employers. (Inflation has already had a marked effect on consumer behavior: a recent Ipsos surveyOpens a new window found that 40% of shoppers plan to buy fewer products, while 38% say they’ll dine out less.)

When asked to choose between the two options, 51% of Americans think commuting is an acceptable part of the workday, while 49% prefer a job where they don’t have to commute. When push comes to shove, will they return to the office? 

One way to look at this question is to consider why they need to return. What are the limits of remote work, and will we be able to overcome them? 

Digital Transformation: Will We Build the Infrastructure?

When the pandemic shut offices around the globe, we didn’t have a choice but to go remote — it worked because it had to.

Some two and a half years on, remote work is no longer mandatory, but it remains an aspiration for much of the workforce. Our survey found that as many as 61% of American workers would be interested in working remotely if the technology existed to allow them to work remotely some or all of the time.

So, does that technology exist? 

We may have Zoom happy hours and Teams meetings, but many feel remote collaboration tools fall short of an in-person meeting. The experts and executives I spoke with stressed that many of the digital tools we leaned on during the pandemic are stop-gap solutions and that remote work is unlikely to stick around long-term unless office cultures evolve to support it. 

It’s been said that the pandemic pushed a cloud transformation — but when I spoke with AWS’ Jon IzenstarkOpens a new window for What the Future, he had his doubts. “We used the cloud to keep things running, but we didn’t transform anything,” he said. “We just pushed it all into the cloud and hoped it would work.” 

This presents a clear opportunity for companies to build digital platforms for collaboration. But as it stands, workers aren’t quite convinced. In a previous surveyOpens a new window , Ipsos asked 1,023 U.S. adults how interested they would be in doing various tasks in the metaverse, and just 21% expressed interest in attending work or professional meetings. 

When asked to choose from three options, 42% of workers would work in-person / in an office, and 39% would work remotely using a computer and video calls. But only 19% would work remotely using augmented reality tools or a virtual reality meeting system.

Above all, what’s missing from our online toolkits is reliability. And for many, this factor is even more important than flexibility. When asked to choose between the two, 41% of American workers choose consistency over flexibility in the workplace.

When you think about it, “consistency” should be achievable in a flexible structure. If we are intentional in our solutions, they could easily work for all workers, regardless of their situations and preferences. But that would require real transformations to the way we work. And the deciding factor for that might be something else: empathy. 

Empathy: Will We Trust Each Other?

Ipsos survey shows that most workers (74%) feel trusted by their employers, and managers overwhelmingly (82%) say they trust their employees. But when it comes to empathy, there’s a sizeable gap: 81% of managers say they have empathy for their staff, but just 55% of non-managers say they feel their employer is empathetic. 

Some of this can be chalked up to the nature of workplace hierarchies. But to transform into a more hybrid and flexible future, we will need all the trust and empathy we can get.  

Whatever workers and managers may say about trust, we’re already seeing the increasing use of productivity trackers. It’s not hard to imagine a future where managers use webcams and all kinds of new AI and machine learning tools to watch every keystroke their employees make. 

Are workers prepared to accept this? Today we’re divided on the issue of workplace surveillance and whether it’s a clear trade-off for more flexible working situations. If asked to choose between the two options, 52% of American workers would allow their employer to monitor their online activity during the day if it meant greater flexibility in where they work. 

This tension could easily go either way in the future. Surveillance technology is maturing rapidly and could plausibly get much more (or less) intrusive depending on how a combination of development, ethics, and regulation plays out. That could turn into a world where workplace surveillance is welcomed or a world where it is reviled, and the worker may or may not have a choice about which world they get to live in.

It’s possible that employee pushback on monitoring, coupled with complex legal issues around privacy, will lead companies to demand that workers return to the office. It’s also possible that employees will be willing to accept surveillance and other trade-offs for greater freedom and flexibility to work from home. But however, these battles may play out, and no matter what comes next, trust and empathy will be key for workers, their managers, and organizations.

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