Microsoft predicts the workplace trends of the future

Workplaces are predicted to change drastically in the next three to five years, with data-driven teams and productivity becoming the new norm.

Employees of the future will work project to project, be hired based on star ratings awarded to them for their previous work, and be placed in roles to fulfil a skill need rather than a job title.

These are the predictions from tech giant Microsoft, which runs an Envisioning Centre at its Washington campus to project how workplaces may transform in the next three to five years.

Global general manager of 21st century jobs, skills and employability Karen Kocher said workers would need the ability to take on any particular project on any given day.

“Instead of being hired for a set responsibility, we will be hired for our skills, which will be portable across a host of projects so it doesn’t matter if the priorities of the organisation change,” she said.

“It will be a more agile and flexible working environment so the ability of the individual must also be agile.”

Microsoft’s Karen Kocher predicts skills will be more valued than job titles.

Ms Kocher said the trend was global but different countries were evolving at different rates.

To prepare, she recommended workers focused on the transferable skills of critical thinking, problem solving and communication.

For example, workers who can write succinctly and with correct grammar can be employed to write anything from social media posts to company reports, while critical thinking and problem solving can be useful for anyone dealing with broken equipment, or for team leaders responding to a conflict issue between team members.

However, Ms Kocher also recommended having a basic working knowledge of data and computer code.

Nick Deligiannis, managing director of recruiter Hays, said there was much more demand for highly-skilled professionals in IT, engineering, financial services, healthcare and professional services than low-skilled workers, and this was likely to continue across Australia in the coming years.

Hays’ Nick Deligiannis says future workers must continually retrain.

“Organisations are realising the key to future-proofing their business model lies is their ability to adapt to change and ultimately capitalise on the opportunities that it presents,” he said.

“With learning being the most valuable skill for an employee of the future, retraining at various intervals within one’s career will become the norm.

“Cognitive diversity within organisations will be seen as a source of competitive advantage.”

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Another future trend hypothesised by Microsoft was the use of data collected during an employees’ past projects to produce star ratings for their skill sets.

This would allow workers to search for colleagues in company databases based on their areas of expertise.

People would do well to embrace technology at work. Picture: iStock

Microsoft director of office envisioning Anton Andrews said although the company was not actively working on this, such a system could help workers rise in the network and gain recognition for their skills.

“It’s important to empower people and to advertise people to each other,” he said.

“It’s about helping (people find each other) so we can clump together around the challenge as it arises and be the best team for that challenge, and help solve that wicked problem, and then disband and move on and cluster around the next challenge.”

This set up would improve efficiency as workers could directly find the networks they needed, bypassing middle management.

“It’s no longer enough to give your employees marching orders and tell them to go execute and whenever something changes they have to go up and down the hierarchy,” Mr Andrews said.

“That just doesn’t work anymore, it’s too slow.”

Microsoft’s Peter Bergen says data is already being used to increase workplace productivity. Picture: Dan DeLong

Karen Kocher says different countries are evolving at different rates.

Microsoft is currently using workplace data to improve productivity via its MyAnalytics software.

Product manager Peter Bergen described it as a FitBit for work.

It collects data from workers’ Outlook email and calendar to provide insights into how they spend their time, who they collaborate with most often, and which meetings are most worthwhile based on whether they are multi-tasking and distracted.

“People spend tonnes of time in meetings that they might not need to sit in,” Mr Bergen said.

“They don’t necessarily get enough focus time … and we see this pattern of work interfering more and more with personal time.

“We get all these disruptions, so we’re trying to bring people’s awareness to their use, so they can actually change.”

Microsoft also offers Workplace Analytics, which aggregates that data at an organisational level.

With this, managers can look for patterns and determine what their top-performing teams are doing differently to others.

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