The future workplace of young Europeans

Abstract

As the twenty-first century continues to bear witness to technological advancements, so our workplace will be changed increasingly by technology and the digital world. In this article, we try to explain the view of young Europeans on this inevitable process, the workplace that is changing. After all, the majority of the people who have to work in this new and modern workplace are the young Europeans themselves. We can conclude that young Europeans are aware of and feel part of this digitisation process. However, they still consider human contact to be a vital aspect of the relationships between employees and employers. Moreover, there is a belief that traineeships and internships help young Europeans to better develop their skills and adapt to the new workplace. Due to technological advancements, the workplace is changing in several ways. The differences between work and home can sometimes become blurred, but for many young Europeans it remains very important to be able to distinguish between home and the workplace.

Introduction

As we know, everything in our life is becoming digitised, including the workplace. By ‘workplace’ we do not mean solely the office, the physical space we are working in, but also the working tools, skills, communications and relations between employees and the employer. In this paper the term ‘workplace’ has to be interpreted in a broad sense.

While there are plenty of advantages related to this ‘digital evolution’, it also presents plenty of challenges for employees as well as for employers. This is the reason we want to know what young Europeans think about these changes.

This paper begins by giving a short theoretical view of the subject. After that we will discuss the research findings set out by ThinkYoung, a Brussels- and Geneva-based think tank that focuses on policies affecting young people. ThinkYoung conducted this survey for TATA Consultancy Services in August 2013. In the research, young people from a range of European countries were asked to answer a series of questions about the future workplace. We also refer to theories found in the literature in this area. Then we discuss views held by Joeri Hofmans, based on an interview we conducted in September 2013. Hofmans is a specialist in work and organisational psychology at the Free University Brussels (Vrije Universiteit Brussel). In the interview, he gave us his opinion about the future workplace and the challenges and advantages it entails. As a conclusion, we add our view on the perception of the future workplace on behalf of young Europeans.

Changes to the workplace

According to Gow and McDonald (2006), the traditional image of work set out by organisational theory is built on three notions: administrative control over employees, developing long-term employment relationships and physical distance between the organisation and the worker. But these three notions have been challenged by the development of information systems, global competition among organisations, and the interdependence between organisations and people. As a result of the rise of information systems (most obviously the Internet), we have seen a reduction in vertical hierarchies. The type of information that was once only available to company executives is now accessible to a range of employees and multi-skilled workers.

Wood and Gow (1996) call the organisations undergoing these changes ‘virtual corporations’. Group work and collective tasks will be encouraged in what will be an ever-increasing number of flat organisations.

There is also a change in the expectations, relations and contracts between employees and employers. Prior to these changes, an employee could generally expect a stable job in exchange for the loyalty and skills he or she brought to an organisation. Today we find that short-term employment is largely replacing that traditional job security, and this trend will continue into the future. The reason is the developing technology that can replace human beings. Due to increased contracting and networking between organisations (DeFillippi and Arthur 1994), there might be more opportunities for employees of small to medium enterprises. Due to their medium or small size, the process of adapting skills is faster than in large ones. Relations between employees and employer are closer, as are the contacts with other organisations (see for example, Australia. Industry Task Force on Leadership and Management Skills 1995; 1996).

A major consequence of their small size is that, at a global level, enterprises can only be competitive through fostering the growth and productivity of employees and technologies. Here, cross-cultural competence is becoming a requirement. This refers to the ability to interact with people of different cultures and socio-economic backgrounds. Cross-cultural competence is needed due to the flexibility and cross-border policies of organisations that are growing on a global level. Spender (1997), an advocate for online education, believes that professionals will register increasingly in online courses and further their qualifications that way.

Technological innovations will profoundly affect the nature of work in every occupation. In the future it will be necessary to be even more flexible in the workplace. Ensuring the survival of new incomes will depend on adapting one's existing skills and learning new ones–-combined with the ability to adapt to dynamic working environments (Gow and McDonald 2006).

Advantages

Young Europeans are largely positive about the technology-driven changes predicted to occur in the workplace of the future: 65 % of the participants in the ThinkYoung survey confirmed this.

Improved data storage is regarded as one of the main advantages of the digital workplace. Modern computers, laptops, tablets and mobile phones can store an ever-increasing quantity of files. There have also been useful developments in cloud technologies–-Internet-based computing tools where one can share software, information and resources. An example of this is Dropbox.

The future workplace also helps to bring more transparency to organisations. Documents which were once read only by company directors are now often accessible to employees, and if not the original documents then company reports, which help to make employees more aware of the company and its operations. In the past, most employees were denied access to these documents. We can say that, due to technological developments, organisations have become more transparent and open to their employees. Greater transparency also helps to improve decision-making, employee confidence and internal networking. Nonetheless, the best leadership method in a digital environment, according to the participants of the survey, remains the face-to-face approach.

A further advantage of the future workplace is that of providing greater flexibility to working life. The digital workplace enables people to work from a shared space or an external location, such as from home, presenting greater flexibility not only in physical location but also in time. At home, one can work outside office hours. However, this flexibility could create ambiguities between one's work life and one's private (or personal) life.

Traditionally, people spent the day in the workplace and the evening at home, to concentrating on their personal lives. Nowadays it is more common to take work home in the evenings or at the weekend, with the result that we work at home. The differences between the concepts of'work’ and ‘home’ are becoming blurred.

Hofmans ¹ warns against people confusing work with private life, which could result in lower productivity and the potential discomfort caused by never truly being able to separate oneself from the workplace. Seventy per cent of the survey participants prefer working in a fixed workplace where they can have regular physical contact with colleagues, as opposed to the more abstract and solitary existence brought about by working at home.

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Interviewed by the authors in Brussels on 19 September 2013.

If we make a comparison between the present and the future, it is clear that the future workplace will offer many advantages. Young Europeans view favourably the changes brought about by technological developments. The enabling of great data storage is looked upon as one of the main benefits of these technological developments, and this benefit grounds most of the positive evaluations of the new developments. Increased transparency in organisations has positive effects on the knowledge and involvement of the employees. There is also greater flexibility in the workplace. However, the preferred approach is still the face-to-face one.

Challenges

According to the participants of the survey, an increase in technology will increase the power and influence of external stakeholders: company investors and customers. If this is the case, investors can choose to use the increased power and influence to make changes to the organisation–-for example to its structure, budget and salaries. But this can represent a threat to employees, especially concerning issues on which they have not been consulted.

Nevertheless, 80 % of the survey participants regard the increased influence of external stakeholders as an opportunity rather than a threat, due to the possibilities for them to participate more in the organisation. The most sceptical respondents to the survey were in the 18-21-year-old group.

According to the participants of the survey, a natural result of technological advancements in the workplace has been the ability for organisations to expand abroad. Overall, young Europeans find it desirable to move between countries (and are content to move between industries); but the responses indicate that the willingness to work overseas declines from the age of 23. This is related to satisfaction with living in their native country, combined with a desire to settle down in a familiar location.

Young Europeans consider ‘Social/Cross-cultural intelligence’, the ability to work in a team and in a multicultural environment, (64 %) and the ‘Ability to work in a digital environment’ (24 %) to be the most important skills required to work successfully in a digital workplace. Although the majority of the respondents believe that they have sufficient technological skills, they are largely dissatisfied with what they see as a lack of education about technology in schools and universities. Young Europeans from countries which joined the EU after 2004 feel less confident about their IT education than their counterparts from the original EU15.

We can say with some confidence that, because of further technological developments expected in the future, stakeholders in organisations will become increasingly powerful in the workplace. This goes together with the increasing transparency mentioned above. The idea of having more powerful stakeholders can be seen as both positive and negative. However, the majority of the survey participants regard it in a positive light. It seems that organisations will expand abroad in the future, but the willingness to work and live in foreign countries among young people declines from the age of 23, and this may also be because many young people, after finishing school and university, feel underprepared for life in the future workplace.

E-learning as a solution?

If we have to adapt and change our way of working due to digitisation, e-learning could be an effective solution. It is a dominant delivery method in working-learning conditions in organisations in all sectors and of all sizes. However, e-learning is not without its limitations. Not only does it presuppose a high level of digitisation in the organisation, but it is also an expensive technology to run.

One survey on e-learning concluded that, because of increased digitisation in the future workplace, the importance of e-learning and other technologies in this field is growing (Kim et al. 2005). There are other solutions for the challenges caused by the developments in the future workplace. The main one remains the idea of constantly learning. People must refine their skills and adopt new ways of dealing with the growing possibilities offered by working in an increasingly digital age.

Conclusion

Although we have focused on young Europeans and their view on the future workplace, it is important to spare a thought for the next generations of Europeans, who will have to work longer in this modern working environment. Because workers differ in age, experience and needs, it is necessary that young Europeans acquire sufficient digital skills as part of their education at school and university. However, for the older working population, e-learning can be a solution, because it would allow them to enjoy more fully the advantages associated with working for a digital enterprise. In recent years, organisations have undoubtedly placed greater emphasis on going digital, but the need for social relations and physical contact remains–-and few believe that this will ever change. This view shows that the human being is still a social creature, and that, notwithstanding all the technological developments around us, we still feel the need for face-to-face relationships with others.