FUTURE OF WORK

Leading experts on the radical changes in jobs, workplace, skills, privacy and employee well-being

Jobs, workplace, wages, well-being, governments and regulators are all in the midst of a whirlpool of change as a host of internal and external factors drive how we will work in the future. In the following pages, 19 experts and business leaders predict that gig workers will dominate workforce; robot-workers are the new norm; polarisation between high skill and low or unskilled is set to intensify; eight-hour workdays are dead; AI will kill more jobs than it will create; corporate purpose will go beyond profits; privacy at work will require firewalls separating personal from the professional; byte-sized learning will drive professional progression; mental and emotional health of employees will be crucial to organizational well-being; and workplaces of the future will be spaces for use, rather than spaces to occupy with little or no corporate furniture or interiors. Over to the future…

A PHYGITAL STRATEGY

Digital and physical mix is leading to a change in the nature of jobs and also bringing in new skill sets in banking

By Uday Kotak

MD and CEO, Kotak Mahindra Bank

We are seeing a great interplay between digital and physical in the banking industry. And what is working is ‘phygital’, which is physical plus digital. For instance, we are increasing our workforce by 10 per cent this year. This is the net addition to our workforce. So, on a base of 60,000 people, we are making 6,000 net additions. As I have said on many occasions, we don’t need 10,000 branches, but we are still opening branches. That is because we are finding a very interesting mix of digital and physical play.

The density of branches will come down in the future but not the requirement. In a fast-changing digital world, banks will become more efficient and effective through the combination of digital and physical presence.