Workforce Trends : 4 Organisational Themes

Last week I meet with Colin Beams from the Workforce Relationship Development Institute (WRDI) which has been doing work for the Australian Government to help identify organizational employment trends in the workforce to help planning for future labor engagement over the next 10-15 years.

Four key trends are beginning to emerge :

1. There will be a more fluid organizational structure, where networks and alliances will be formed between various groups in order to bid for and win work. There will be a rapid increase in the use of virtual organizations to meet the demand.

2. There will be a need for a higher skills and deeper knowledge which will result in

3. A polarization of between skilled and unskilled roles – as the focus will be on what you can bring to the table and being paid to deliver on this.

4. As a result there will be a transfer of risk to the employees, in that more and more workers will be on short term contracts, with a need for these people to be flexible in the hours they work.

The bottom line is those who can continue to be flexible and continue to learning and continually re-skill themselves will be in high demand.

Next week I will be in Orlando Florida, attending the Learning 2009 (www.learning2009.com) where there will be a big focus on re-skilling and flexibility in the work force.

You can follow the conference on twitter by subscribing to Learning2009 and contribute to the feed by using the #L2009. More on all of this next post.