By Shane Rodgers
There is an old saying that the more things change the more they stay the same.
It is a mistake to believe that this is always a good thing. When change happens, we need to change with it.
This certainly applies to jobs. As a workforce, we have experienced three major change eras in very quick succession – the computer era, the digital era and now the artificial intelligence era.
Each one has fundamentally changed the nature of work. Most importantly, each redeployed repetitive and structural tasks and cleared humans to do the creative, strategic and socially interactive work.
At least they should have.
I suspect there is one question we just don’t ask enough every time a new job is created or becomes a vacancy: “How can we make this job more interesting?”
Simple right? But how often do organisation’s instead just ask: “What tasks do we need this job to perform?” And leave it at that.
As we move deeper into the AI era, and Gen Z and Gen Alpha start to trickle into the job market, the idea of proactively making jobs more interesting could become more than a good to have. It may be the only way to attract the best people.
In several international studies very large numbers of Gen Zers have made it clear that they don’t want to work in the traditional corporate employee structure.
The digital economy means the smart ones don’t have to. They can work for themselves.
Mix this with the fall in birth rates in many countries and structural skills shortages and we will see organisations not just competing for the best people – but maybe for any people.
The only way to counter this will be for organisations to offer roles that are actually appealing and fulfilling, and not based on old-world single vocations.
There was some recent publicity about the number of Gen Z employees who spent a lot of time watching streaming services and doom scrolling on their phone during work hours.
I wouldn’t begin to defend this. It is lazy and appalling, and hopefully at the margins. But it does highlight a problem.
The reality is it is really hard to constantly monitor every employee to make sure they are doing their job. It is a far better outcome if jobs are genuinely interesting and people want to do them.
As the Baby Boomers and Gen X group start to drop off the work roster, the Gen Zs and Alphas will make up an increasing proportion of the available workforce.
It seems doubtful they will conform to traditional workforce norms and employers may have no choice but to properly rethink the nature of jobs to achieve a motivated workforce.
This includes adding things to job descriptions to promote novelty, variety, serendipity and growth.
Across the workforce thousands of people are working on taskforces and committees exploring how to best use AI.
How many are working on making their jobs more interesting? This might be just as important.
Shane Rodgers is the author of Worknado – Reimagining the way you work to live.
