We invite you to come along with us on a journey to the future workplace. As defined throughout this book, we see the 2020 workplace as one that provides an intensely personalized, social experience, to attract, develop, and engage employees across all generations and geographies. This in turn creates a competitive advantage for the organization.

The next decade will usher in new companies and business models that are unimaginable today and will dramatically change how we live, work, learn, communicate, and play. Anticipating these changes will be critical to your ability to thrive in the 2020 workplace, where transparency, collaboration, personalization, and hyperconnectivity will rule the day.

We interviewed scores of executives, conducted online research with 2,200 working professionals in four generations, participated in futurist forums, and over the course of the past year created our own interactive collaboration site to take the pulse of what types of changes might be on the horizon in the next decade. Some of the changes we predict for the next decade may surprise you: how many of us would have thought it possible to elect our leader, play video games to learn leadership skills, or earn a Jack Welch MBA? Others may seem obvious, but they require a greater sense of urgency to bring them to reality—such as ensuring that Lifelong Learning Accounts reach the broadest global market of employees in order to develop a culture of lifelong learning.

We know that the 2020 workplace will be full of surprises. The best you can do is start today to adapt to, respond to, and prepare for the wild cards that will surely be coming your way. So, to assist you, here are twenty trends we predict will occur in time for the 2020 workplace.

1. YOU WILL BE HIRED AND PROMOTED BASED UPON YOUR REPUTATION CAPITAL

Reputation capital will be the top currency in the 2020 workplace. This is the sum total of your personal brand, your expertise, and the breadth, depth, and quality of your social networks. Companies will increasingly source, recruit, and promote new employees based upon their reputation capital. This means looking for employees who have not only wide, deep, and high-quality social networks but also demonstrate a track record of turning these networks into increased business value for the organization and a stronger personal brand for themselves.

Already some companies, such as Best Buy, are listing reputation capital as a requirement, in this case for the job for the senior manager in emerging media marketing. Some of the job requirements—developed via crowdsourcing—include being aware of and active on such sites as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Plaxo, Ning, Delicious, Slideshare, YouTube, and Digg. By 2020, hiring companies could very well make specific requirements that prospective employees have experience using these contacts to further their business agenda. And over time building one’s recognizable reputation capital will be less tied to specific social networks and will become portable, meaning you can more easily become a free agent, broadcasting your skills and competences to a wide network of followers, friends, and business connections.

According to Dr. Robert Cross, a professor of management at the University of Virginia, the high performers in an organization focus on building high-quality social networks rather than large ones.¹ They may not know everyone, but the people they know, they know very well, and they invest in those relationships before they’ll actually need them to get their work accomplished. Companies will increasingly take note of how well connected current and prospective employees are in their professional communities and will seek to retain and promote individuals who demonstrate an ability to grow their network and their reputation and standing in the community. Inside the company, an employee’s number of links to the internal company social Web site, the feedback from hundreds of people rather than the current dozen or so used on 360-degree instruments, and the number of times people link to him or her could indicate a leadership score and set him or her up for promotion. Look for reputation capital to be a more critical factor in both hiring and promotion decisions.

2. YOUR MOBILE DEVICE WILL BECOME YOUR OFFICE, YOUR CLASSROOM, AND YOUR CONCIERGE

More than 1.2 billion mobile phones are produced each year, and they are benefiting from unprecedented innovation. Mobile phones and tablets will be the primary connection tool to the Internet for most people in the world in 2020.²

In the words of Michael Jones, the chief technology advocate for Google, “The mobile phone is for the next decade what the computer has been for the last two or three. The whole experience of the Internet is becoming not a desktop computer experience, but a personal experience.”³ This is already happening in Japan, as young people equipped with mobiles see no reason to own a personal computer. The mobile phone in 2020 will become our office, our classroom, and our real-time concierge, helping us manage both our personal and professional lives. With mobility and migration on the rise, employees will no longer be limited to working in one country or region. They will be able to work anywhere, including their client locations, hotel rooms, vacation destinations, and, of course, homes. As wireless network speeds rise, with twenty-five cities in the United States expected to double their 3G network speed in 2010, and device functionality improves to the point of merging netbooks, readers, and phones, the possibilities are endless.

Already being touted as the next delivery tool for corporate learning, mobile devices are being used by companies to deliver sales training, compliance training, and up-to-date product knowledge, as well as e-coaching and e-mentoring. In 2020, if not before, look for the mobile device to be an increasingly important delivery mode for a wide variety of corporate training, new-hire orientation, mentoring, coaching, and on-the-job performance support. Coupled with improved security advances, the mobile device will be used as validation for entry into locations, citizenship, travel and expense reporting, and timekeeping for project accounting.

3. THE GLOBAL TALENT SHORTAGE WILL BE ACUTE

The global competition for highly qualified workers will take shape in 2020. Despite there being five generations in the workplace, there will be a shortage of certain skills, not just workers. The U.S. Department of Labor predicts that U.S.-based employers will need 30 million new college-educated workers in the next decade, while only 23 million young adults are expected to graduate from college in that period.⁴

Fast-breaking technological breakthroughs in new products and services will create a demand for new jobs using more complex skills. Manpower’s 2009 Talent Shortage Survey of 39,000 employers in thirty-three countries finds that despite high levels of unemployment in many countries, there is a mismatch between the types of individuals available for work and the specific skills employers are looking for to achieve business goals.⁵ The Manpower survey identifies the top six professions that will be in demand globally, including skilled trades in specialized areas, sales representatives, technicians in engineering and maintenance, engineers, managers and senior executives, and finance and accounting professionals. These professionals all require a higher order level of skill and training, and talent shortages in these areas will spark an intense competition for talent among companies around the world. Employees who will be in demand are those who possess these skills as well as being technologically literate, globally astute across geographies and cultures, and continuous learners.

4. RECRUITING WILL START ON SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

Recruiting for the vast majority of professional jobs will start in one of the highly trafficked social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Bebo, Twitter, and Second Life. Though the early adopters profiled in chapter 4, such as Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Amazon, EMC, and even the U.S. Department of State, are already doing this, an overwhelming number of companies—we predict at least 80 percent—will begin to tap online social networks as the first stop to recruiting global talent. Prospective employees may potentially have their first interview via their avatar, followed by several video chats and reference checks on social networks. This is social recruiting, where companies leverage a range of social media and professional networks, online and offline, to acquire talent. As social recruiting spreads from a few isolated, forward-thinking companies to mainstream companies, it will be essential for both employers and employees to develop new skill sets to be successful in this endeavor.

Both employers and employees must become fluent in how to navigate online recruiting. Employers must train their recruiting staff to conduct interviews on social networking sites, to recognize key qualities in candidates during virtual interviews, and to use social networking sites to check references and select candidates for face-to-face interviews. Employees, on the other hand, must be aware of how to use social media to position themselves for success, grow a global social network, and, most important, communicate their strengths to a prospective employer. How much will the recruiting process change in 2020? Organizations that will thrive in the 2020 workplace will develop a comprehensive social recruitment strategy using their most valued social networks to source employees as well as ensuring that job candidates are capable of leveraging social media to enhance their specific business goals.

5. WEB COMMUTERS WILL FORCE CORPORATE OFFICES TO REINVENT THEMSELVES

Knowledge workers will increasingly elect to work at “third places,” a term invented by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his book The Great Good Place,⁶ which describes the community-building role of informal public spaces such as cafés, coffee shops, hotels, and bookstores. Human resources officers use this term to describe specifically the places people work other than the first place, meaning the corporate office, or the second place, meaning the home office. The third place can be any location—coffee shop, customer site, collaboration work site, hotel, plane—where work is done. Encouraging employees to work in third places is growing. Today Gartner Dataquest estimates that one-fifth of the nation’s workforce is part of the so-called Kinko’s Generation, spending a significant number of hours each month working outside a traditional office. This estimate is growing by 10 percent annually as corporations attempt to save money on real estate, adopt ecofriendly policies to reduce commuting, or just acknowledge the importance of collaboration and knowledge exchange in a work space specifically designed for the purpose.⁷

Even the federal government is encouraging its workforce to telework. Government agencies usually aren’t early adopters, but many are exploring this idea. Why? Because, according to the Telework Exchange, a public-private partnership that studies this phenomenon, federal workers spend more time commuting to work each day than they do on vacation each year.⁸

With the growth of corporate social tech, it will be irrelevant where employees work as long as they deliver results to the team. Companies will spend resources to reinvent the work space to increase worker productivity, improve innovation, and connect workers to one another.

6. COMPANIES WILL HIRE ENTIRE TEAMS

As teamwork becomes increasingly important in the global workplace, companies are seeing the value of hiring and training an entire team to tackle business problems. At the same time, some teams will form into guilds and move as intact teams from company to company, in order to maintain their established working relationships. Companies will in fact start to hire entire teams of college students, not just brilliant individuals.

This is already happening in India. NIIT, a global IT learning solutions company, is partnering with the Indian School of Business (ISB) to run a collegiate business plan competition. ISB students compete by forming teams to identify an entrepreneurial business opportunity important to the NIIT brand. If the idea is selected, NIIT hires the intact team, funds it, and allows it to run the business. The members select their own leader, and the team is accountable for results to NIIT leadership.

NIIT is enthusiastic about the results of hiring an intact team of ISB students to run a new business unit. Two team members turned down offers from McKinsey and Lufthansa to join NIIT so they could work on a business project they helped co-create. NIIT projects higher retention rates as team members bond with one another, making it difficult for a competitor to come in and recruit the best person away from the team.

Look for increased sourcing of intact teams, whether they are directly from school or band together as a guild and work together across projects and companies, such as is done in the motion picture industry now. As more companies see the virtue of hiring a team whose members already know one another’s strengths and have a track record of success working with one another, this practice will increase.

7. JOB REQUIREMENTS FOR CEOS WILL INCLUDE BLOGGING

Keeping in touch with customers, the marketplace, and employees is an important role for CEOs. As the workforce and customers increasingly become familiar with and rely on social media, the fastest way to communicate broadly will be through tools such as blogging and Twitter. The level of authenticity and concern that can be communicated through a CEO-level blog can’t be matched by press releases or blogs written by the public relations department. Currently almost three hundred senior executives and sixty CEOs are registered as bloggers, as recorded by the NewPR Wiki, and the number is growing daily.⁹ Some CEOs, such as Bill Marriott, write in longhand or dictate for others to put on the site, but Marriott credits his blog for $4 million in incremental bookings since the inception of the Web site.¹⁰ The styles of CEO blogs range from deeply personal, such as that of Matt Blumberg of Return Path, who writes about his experience as a first-time CEO, to highly opinionated, such as that of Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, to product messaging only, such as that of Bob Lutz, the vice chairman of General Motors.¹¹ Others combine blogging with a Twitter presence, such as Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, who had, as of January 2010, 1,679,065 followers on Twitter.¹²

Hearing the voice of the CEO through his or her own writing, when it feels authentic, helps foster trust in an organization. Since it will be a requirement of the job for the CEO to be a blogger, expect every CXO position to also have blogging as a requirement. Does your executive team know what a blog is and how it can help them compete? Do your top three competitors’ CEOs have blogs?

8. THE CORPORATE CURRICULUM WILL USE VIDEO GAMES, SIMULATIONS, AND ALTERNATE REALITY GAMES AS KEY DELIVERY MODES

Corporate training as we know it today will be transformed into a nimble, social, fun, and highly collaborative experience by 2020. Companies will rely on participatory peer-to-peer learning for at least 80 percent of all corporate learning. Some of the tools that will grow in importance include video games, simulations, and alternate-reality games to develop leadership and complex critical thinking skills. Video games, such as World of Warcraft, that are part of a category of games called massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), have the potential to become realistic simulators for contemporary leadership development training. These games allow players to practice a diverse set of skills, such as how to manage a culturally diverse and virtual team, promote collaborative problem solving, and analyze constantly changing data. More than 11.5 million users currently subscribe to World of Warcraft, and, as these players enter the workforce, they will increasingly expect corporate training to mimic their online experiences.

In addition to video games, companies will begin to use business simulations in which learners are asked to make a series of decisions in a given scenario and in the process improve their skills in areas such as leadership, quality, and sales. Beyond business simulations, companies will use alternate-reality games (ARGs), a type of real-world game experience where corporate training mimics their experiences online. World Without Oil is one example of an online alternate-reality game that allows players to envision a world in which the United States is cut off from oil imports. Players use a variety of media—blogs, videos, e-mails, text messages, audio clips, and mobile phones—to describe how the crisis could unfold, what to do about it, and the role energy plays in our culture and our society.¹³ These alternate-reality games have a huge potential for corporate training to more fully engage participants in a highly collaborative and social experience while they learn a range of complex skills in problem solving, risk management, critical thinking, and conflict resolution.

9. A 2020 MIND-SET WILL BE REQUIRED TO THRIVE IN A NETWORKED WORLD

Employees in the 2020 workplace will communicate, connect, and collaborate with one another around the globe using the latest forms of social media. As they work in virtual teams with colleagues and collaborate with their peers to solve problems and propose new ideas for businesses, they will need to develop a new mind-set to thrive. This 2020 mind-set will incorporate abilities in:

• Social participation. A belief that your network is the first place you go to ask questions, seek out advice, and disseminate your expertise.
• Thinking globally. A capacity to think globally, have a deep understanding of how world events can impact your organization, and make decisions in ways that factor in cultural differences.
• Ubiquitous learning. A commitment to learning new skills and, in the process, leveraging the latest technologies that are now a pervasive part of our lives, such as mobile devices; an openness to looking for new ideas in your area of expertise; and an ability to apply new knowledge to a fast-changing set of business conditions.
• Thinking big, acting fast, and constantly improving. A desire to see opportunities as once-in-a-lifetime moments that must be acted upon with speed and clarity while believing in the power of continually improving beta solutions.
• Cross-cultural power. A conviction that embracing a diverse community of employees, customers, and consumers representing many different backgrounds, skills, countries of origin, and ideas will result in superior business outcomes.

10. HUMAN RESOURCES’ FOCUS WILL MOVE FROM OUTSOURCING TO CROWDSOURCING

Outsourcing of administrative human resource functions will drive improved business results in 2020. But HR leaders who want to be in the forefront of change will also create an innovation agenda leveraging the principles of crowdsourcing. This is a term coined by Jeff Howe, a contributing editor at Wired magazine and author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business, to refer to how companies such as Lego, Procter & Gamble, and Boeing use the wisdom of crowds to develop solutions for R&D problems, designs for products, and new ideas for businesses. At the heart of crowdsourcing lies a simple truth: “The most efficient networks are those that link to the broadest range of information, knowledge, and experience.”¹⁴

Crowdsourcing will be used to reinvent human resources and corporate learning. Companies are already using crowdsourcing to create new job descriptions by inviting employees and prospective job candidates to add to them. Through this process, a company learns from the “wisdom of crowds.” Corporate learning departments will similarly adopt crowdsourcing techniques to embed learning into e-coaching and e-mentoring of employees. Both human resources and corporate learning departments will shift growing portions of their budget to incorporate Web 2.0 tools and social technologies into the modes of delivery in order to drive greater collaboration in the workplace and learn from the wisdom of the crowds.

11. CORPORATE SOCIAL NETWORKS WILL FLOURISH AND GROW INSIDE COMPANIES

Corporate participation in social networks may be as critical in the 2020 workplace as managing cash flow. The essence of knowledge work is conversation, and companies will increasingly see the power of social networks to extend the reach and scale of conversations.

Companies that continue to implement total lockdowns and prevent access to social networking sites will be negatively impacted in their ability to recruit top talent. Millennials and Gen 2020 will expect and demand access to external social networks as well as the ability to use internal corporate social networks on the job. Forward-looking companies will exploit the power inherent in social networking sites to attract new employees, develop new skill sets, support and enhance team knowledge sharing, drive collaboration, and improve innovation. Corporate social networking will be used not only by current employees and customers but also by former employees. Many companies will create and manage their own corporate alumni networks as vehicles to find the best talent and recruit former employees as well as develop new business. In this networked world, building and maintaining relationships will be essential to success.

12. YOU WILL ELECT YOUR LEADER

Companies that encourage employees to elect their leader will be seen as employers of choice, especially for team-oriented Millennials and Gen 2020s. Members of both generations have grown up with a collaborative mind-set through their heavy usage of social networks and highly interactive video games such as EVE Online. Some companies are taking this a step further by experimenting with giving employees more influence in electing leaders.

Consider W. L. Gore & Associates, where senior leaders do not appoint junior leaders. Rather, associates become leaders when their peers judge them to be such. A leader gains influence by demonstrating a capacity to get things done and by excelling as a team builder. The CEO of W. L. Gore, Terri Kelly, was actually voted by her peers to become their leader when Chuck Carroll, the previous CEO, polled a cross section of employees, asking “Who would you want to follow?” This “elect your leader” mentality permeates W. L. Gore. Each team ranks every member of the team on the question “Who has made the biggest impact on the enterprise?”¹⁵ The rankings are sorted through by a group of “contribution committees,” which use the rankings as a basis for compensation. The company credits this with its low turnover rate of just over 5 percent.

While electing your leader may be viewed as just one company’s experimentation in citizen leadership, it may become a strong recruiting tool for companies. Ranking and polling social media tools allow an organization to see who has a followership, a necessary quality for being a leader. Millennials who have grown up learning about the merits of collaboration and teamwork place great value on them and will seek out employers that put these principles into action.

13. LIFELONG LEARNING WILL BE A BUSINESS REQUIREMENT

The 1990s and the early years of the 2000s saw the rise of in-house, corporate-sponsored universities using a formal curriculum to develop and reskill a global workforce. In 2020 and beyond, we will see another innovation—branded lifelong learning centers—to ensure ease in continually updating one’s skills for both one’s current job and one’s next job. Already the U.S. Army is leading the way with the Lifelong Learning Center of the Command and General Staff College. This Lifelong Learning Center, as profiled in chapter 5, incorporates a wide range of social media, such as heavy usage of blogs and wikis. One innovation stands out: Reach Back. This is a section of every online course where all alumni of the course can go back to access the most recent data on that subject. It’s the Army’s way of building lifelong learning into every online course.

In addition to creating lifelong learning centers, companies will increase their partnering with universities, which will now offer a range of new degree and certificate programs, some of which will be branded by celebrities. Consider that in 2010, we will see the launch of the Jack Welch MBA, a new online MBA combining Welch’s philosophy of leadership and human resources into a twelve-course curriculum. What will be next? A Michael Bloomberg Certificate in Public Administration? A John Madden Certificate in Leadership Development? Look for an increase in new online degree and certificate programs from universities, which will capture a larger share of the corporate training budget due to the growing importance of lifelong learning.

To fund lifelong learning, companies will implement 401(k)-type plans to help working adults save for continuing education. These are currently known as Lifelong Learning Accounts (LiLAs). Both employers and employees are required to contribute funds, with the provision that the employee owns the account after leaving the company. Unlike 401(k)s, LiLAs currently do not have special tax advantages. However, legislation has already been introduced to expand LiLAs and offer federal tax credits and tax breaks for these accounts in a handful of states such as California, Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, and Washington, and federal legislation is pending.¹⁶ Most important, LiLAs have a huge appeal for Millennials and Gen 2020s, who are intent on continuing their education in the workplace and want to prepare not just for the jobs they currently hold but also for jobs that do not exist today. LiLAs offer these young working professionals a portable learning benefit in an era when skills become obsolete, often in as short a time span as two years.

14. WORK-LIFE FLEXIBILITY WILL REPLACE WORK-LIFE BALANCE

AOL’s annual Email Addiction Survey reports that in today’s 24/7 global economy, 67 percent of people check their e-mail while in bed in their pajamas.¹⁷ Given this scenario, how do you define work/life balance? Is this still a relevant goal to aspire to? Andrés Tapia, the author of The Inclusion Paradox, sees a shift to flexibility rather than balance. Work/life flexibility reinforces the view that there is no such thing as work time and home time. Rather, hyperconnected workers will aspire to have the flexibility to manage both work and home lives.¹⁸

Work/life flexibility revolves around the ability to multitask and assign work to various chunks of time so that all of a day’s priorities are accomplished, including those at work, at home, and at the gym. In a work/life-flexible world, an employee could leave the office at 3:00 p.m., go home, prepare dinner, help the children with their homework, then go back online at 9:00 p.m., after the children are in bed and the dinner dishes are done. If you can do this and still produce results for your employer, why not? Where is the office in this scenario? It is being redefined from the single place where work gets done to all the many places where people work, collaborate, and live their lives.

One company that has led the rest in creating work/life flexibility is Best Buy with its Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE). In the results-oriented work environment, employees are free to work wherever they want, whenever they want, as long as they get their work done. Since its inception in 2002 as a pilot program, ROWE has been incorporated as an official part of Best Buy’s recruiting pitch as well as its orientation for new hires. The company claims that productivity has increased 35 percent for those on ROWE, and employee engagement—which measures employee satisfaction and is often a barometer of retention—is way up too, according to a Gallup Organization survey that audits corporate cultures.¹⁹ If people can carry their office around virtually in their pockets or pocketbooks, why should it matter where and when they work if they meet or exceed their goals?

15. COMPANIES WILL DISCLOSE THEIR CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY PROGRAMS TO ATTRACT AND RETAIN EMPLOYEES

The focus on people, planet, and profits, also known as the triple bottom line, will become the main way organizations attract and retain new hires. This will be critical because 79 percent of a sample of 1,800 13-to 25-year-olds want to work for a company that cares about how it impacts on and contributes to society, as the Cone 2006 Millennial Cause Study found.²⁰ More than half also say they would refuse to work for an irresponsible corporation. So companies will begin to move beyond corporate philanthropy by integrating corporate social responsibility into their core business strategy and by reporting quantitative goals to current employees, prospective hires, and investors.

This is already the case in Great Britain, where the law requires companies to provide information about business goals for their corporate social responsibility programs. As one example, the annual report of National Grid, an international electricity and gas company, not only includes a review of all corporate social responsibility projects but also identifies quantitative business goals, such as achieving an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, deriving 15 percent of its energy production from renewable sources by 2020, and defining a global inclusion charter for the organization.²¹

But imposing a legal requirement may not be the real impetus that forces companies to report corporate social responsibility programs. The Millennials and Gen 2020s will demand companies to be socially responsible or risk losing valuable talent to competitors.

16. DIVERSITY WILL BE A BUSINESS ISSUE RATHER THAN A HUMAN RESOURCE ISSUE

The shortage of multicultural talent in the workplace will be addressed as a strategic business priority rather than as a human resources mandate or to fulfill legal obligations. When organizations see their greatest growth in new workers coming from a mix of minority job candidates, women, workers across five generations, and people from other countries, they will take steps to incorporate diversity into their business agenda.

As David A. Thomas and John J. Gabarro report in their book Breaking Through: The Making of Minority Executives in Corporate America, minority workers will make up close to 40 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2020, yet more than 50 percent of all executive-level positions in the United States will continue to be held by white males. The situation for working women is similar. In 2007, women made up 40 percent of the 3 billion people employed worldwide but held only 24 percent of senior management positions.²²

But companies are seeing that developing an inclusion strategy is essential to better matching of their diverse business offerings around the world. One way to address this is to develop the talent pipeline as early as possible. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that high school graduation rates for Latinos and African Americans in the United States hover around only 60 percent. Of these graduates, only half go to college, and of this group, only 40 percent graduate—yielding an overall 10 percent college graduation rate.²³ Look for more corporate K–12 partnerships such as the ones created by Lockheed Martin for aspiring engineers and Deloitte for accountants, profiled in chapter 4, to present career options and possibilities to middle and high school age students.

17. THE LINES AMONG MARKETING, COMMUNICATIONS, AND LEARNING WILL BLUR

Marketing organizations and learning departments will enter into stronger partnerships to repackage some corporate learning programs into consumer education. These new consumer communities will be created to build stronger consumer connections to a brand and hopefully to increase consumers’ loyalty and brand preference.

The consumer electronics firm Sony is already doing this with its Backstage 101, a branded consumer site that has more than a hundred interactive courses and tutorials, articles, and videos in the areas of personal computing, home entertainment, digital photography, and digital video. Users of Backstage 101 rate and review all the online courses, participate in forums and individual course discussion boards, tag other users’ reviews and discussion posts, and share content on social bookmarking sites. These online courses are used as corporate training for Sony sales associates as well.²⁴ Look for more partnerships among heads of human resources, corporate learning officers, and chief marketing officers as corporate training programs are reimagined as consumer education online offerings and become part of the marketing/communications mix to increase market share and consumer satisfaction.

18. CORPORATE APP STORES WILL OFFER WAYS TO MANAGE WORK AND PERSONAL LIFE BETTER

As employees increasingly expect to be in control of all aspects of their lives, companies will take a page from the enormously successful iPhone App Store and create corporate app stores to help employees better manage their lives at work and at home.

Today, there are more than 100,000 iPhone apps in twenty categories, including books, business, education, finance, medical, and games. Consumers have downloaded more than two billion apps, which have generated over a billion dollars in revenue for Apple and its developers.²⁵ There are applications for every stage of life: iSeniors, a program designed to locate the nearest senior living centers based on your GPS location; myHomework, an application designed to help students keep track of their academic responsibilities; Diagnosaurus, a reference tool that diagnoses an illness based on its symptoms; and PetMD Dog First Aid, a medical encyclopedia for dog lovers that instructs you on how to respond to your pet’s medical needs and locate the nearest veterinary clinic.

Now imagine the power of customized apps offered by an employer. On the business side, these could include an expense report app, a goal-tracking app, or a microfeedback app. On the personal side, if you are a working mother, apps could focus on the locations of day care centers, after-school programs, homework helpers, and fitness centers. Or a Millennial employee may want apps that feature opportunities to work and study abroad or learn a new language or tips on applying for a first mortgage. Customization and personalization will reign as employees both access and develop applications for managing their work and personal lives. Borrowing from Apple, the new motto of HR will be “Yes, there’s an app for that!”

19. SOCIAL MEDIA LITERACY WILL BE REQUIRED FOR ALL EMPLOYEES

As organizations become über-connected and embrace a range of social media, they must ensure employees know how to use this media to collaborate, connect, and innovate in the global marketplace.

This will require Chief Human Resources Officers to partner with Chief Communication Officers and Chief Learning Officers to create training and even certification to develop social media literacy. Already Telstra, an Australian telecommunications firm, has developed a comprehensive set of social media guidelines and requires all employees to be certified on how to use social media in the workplace. Telstra calls this training in the 3 Rs: responsibility, respect, and representation. Telstra employees must be clear about who they are representing, take responsibility for ensuring any references to Telstra are correct, and show respect for the individuals and communities they interact with in the process.²⁶

Here in the United States, Intel develops role-based training programs and Digital IQ certifications that licenses employees to practice social media on behalf of Intel. All these programs are under the umbrella of the Intel Social Media Center of Excellence, which push social media initiatives across the organization by creating guidelines, processes, strategies, and skill-building programs for how to be responsible and respectful using social media at work. (Intel’s Social Media Guidelines are provided in chapter 5.)

In the 2020 workplace, this level of investment and training in developing social media literacy will be the norm as organizations see the power of using social media to build brands, collaborate in the workplace, and drive greater innovation throughout a company’s value chain.

20. BUILDING A PORTFOLIO OF CONTRACT JOBS WILL BE THE PATH TO OBTAINING PERMANENT FULL-TIME EMPLOYMENT

Top talent in specialized skill areas will have plenty of opportunities. For the rest of us, full-time, permanent employment will start with a series of projects acquired though our social networks or through contracting agencies. Today you can bid on work on sites such as oDesk, Craigslist, and Elance, and employers can test out skills on short-term projects by using people sourced through agencies or Web sites.

By 2020, prospective employees will become more comfortable starting with a portfolio career by working on several projects for different employers at the same time. The path to full-time, permanent employment may first include an unpaid internship, then a series of project-based assignments, obtained via social networks or through search agents gleaning Web sites for work. According to Steve Rodems, a senior partner at Fast Track Internships, a company that charges a $799 fee to help an intern find an unpaid job, “Internships are no longer the province of college students. More unemployed professionals are seeking them—whether to test drive a new career or just keep themselves occupied.” Rodems continues, “Ten percent of my clients today are college graduates changing professions compared to just one percent in 2008.”²⁷

Cautious about repeated cycles of hiring and laying off, companies will farm out more work to be done on a contingency basis and, in so doing, test potential future employees to ensure that there is not only a fit of skills but also a cultural fit. For prospective employees, building a reputation with several companies will allow them the opportunity to select a company whose brand and culture resonates with them and thus help reduce attrition for companies. Since more people will be doing work on temporary, contracted assignments and blogging about them, building brand loyalty beyond employees will be essential for companies.

SMART COMPANIES SHOULD PLAN NOW FOR POTENTIAL WILD CARDS

What if a series of global events dramatically changes the path of those working in the 2020 workplace? Are you and your organization thinking about what course of action and what changes your organization will make in how you source, attract, reward, develop, engage, and retain employees? As you ponder the 2020 workplace, consider what you will do if the following scenarios occur:

• There is a global lost decade in the United States that could be similar to what happened in Japan in the 1990s, when economic expansion ground to a halt. Japan went through a long recession with serious repercussions impacting job creation, innovation, and infrastructure investment.
• There is a political upheaval in China or India that results in a shift in offshoring manufacturing and services to countries with stable governments, such as Costa Rica. There will be new issues in sourcing talent in these locations.
• There are disasters such as pandemics, terrorism, and mass climate change that will create an even greater focus on teleworking, a retreat from investments in corporate real estate, and a migration to all forms of virtual work.
• There is a breakthrough in longevity as predictions of a life span of 100 years come true for a large percentage of the population. This will have significant implications on the workforce, as the five generations we have been writing about will stay in the workforce longer.
• There is more emphasis on intelligence augmentation. As technological tools become more sophisticated, they will be able to draw upon simulations and massive data sets to help us become smarter and suggest new areas in which to update our skills or target new job opportunities.

Each wild card presents a new set of challenges and opportunities for human resource leaders in how they adjust their talent management, employee engagement, reward and recognition, and learning and development practices.

The 2020 workplace will be fluid, diverse in age and ethnicity, flexible, collaborative, mobile, global, and, above all, hyperconnected. Get ready to live it. But how can you prepare? In the final chapter, we will look at some ways you can begin to implement both short-term and long-term solutions to the issues your organization will face in 2020 and beyond.