workforce

This article in Technology Review gives a good account of the issues facing older workers (Aging workers, new technology).

Just ponder this for a moment:

The Economist has put its considerable thinking power to the subject of the ageing worker. Interesting profile of the UK working population.

The much vilified ex-Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld will probably be best remembered for his comment to journalists about known and unknowns.

According to the Deloitte Centre for the Edge, under 25% of the workers it surveyed are passionate about their work. Worse, the level of passion in the workforce turned out to be inversely related to the size of the company. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the self-employed were the most passionate, but the findings indicated that the larger the company, the lower the level of passion among the workers.

A guy I used to work with left an all-hands meeting one day. The company had just announced a layoff (it was long enough ago that this was still stunning, not an everyday occurrence like it is now). He turned to me and said, “They always get rid of the mailroom guy.”

What he meant was that the burden of whatever circumstances caused the company to cut back fell on the lowest-paid employees. And whatever mistakes the mailroom guy had made, they hadn’t caused the company’s distress.

This report, from Friends Provident and created by the Future Foundation, looks at the workforce of the future, through the eyes of three groups: those over 55, new graduates and the ‘sandwich generation’ who are balancing the dual demands of young children and ageing parents. It is the second of their reports and speculates how things on what life will be like for your average worker in of 2020.