The Digital Future of Work

ONLINE TECHNOLOGIES ARE CHANGING THE WAY WE WORK. A SDA BOCCONI RESEARCH STUDY ASKS COMPANIES AND YOUNG PEOPLE ABOUT THE IMPACT OF DIGITAL INNOVATION

by Alfredo Biffi, Dept. of Decision Sciences, Bocconi
Translated by Alex Foti


Digital technologies are everywhere, dominate debates, national and international publications: symptoms of a theme that is at the heart of all social and economic visions concerning innovation and development. The pervasive diffusion of ICT is changing individual and social life, and professional life even moreso. A research study by the SDA Bocconi School of Management for AICA, the Italian Association of Computer Science, sought to understand how the direct actors of change interpret what is happening. We asked ourselves what degree of awareness and what kind of expectations the companies causing this change have, as well as the awareness and expectations of those who are preparing to enter the job market.
 
The present technological framework makes it difficult it is to understand whether jobs will be effectively destroyed in large numbers or whether growth in new industries will compensate those losses;  new areas of work will offset what failed. But it points nevertheless in the direction of deeply changing the nature, quality and logic of utilization of work time. With the new technologies we will produce more wealth but it is going to concentrated in the hands of fewer people, leading to the problem which is more political than economic of how to redistribute from the few to the many. Digital technology is likely to free up time from work, creating the need to figure out how to use one's leisure time; we will need to re-qualify the concept of quality of life within which work will not be one of the fundamental elements, or at least not within the logical categories of the past.
 
Many strong messages were sent by the actors and experts of the digital industry interviewed: many jobs will be made redundant in their physical and intellectual components (86% of respondents agreed on this point) and probably that also applies to many existing professional areas (51% of respondents). If this were true, the size of job destruction would be staggering. At the same time the corporate agents agree that for businesses digital technology is not an opportunity they can forego, but at the same time they say that companies have to worry about the associated employment impact (over 67%).
 
Young people are less aware of the negative side of innovation: they are evenly split between those who think that there will continue to be work because technology will give rise to new employment opportunities, and those worried about the negative effects. An evolution of roles and responsibilities will take place in every area and sector: managers will have evolve into the role of designers and drivers of continuous innovation, while HR managers will have to cope with change and create areas for continuous learning. For everybody, continuous education will be the key to guiding the evolution of employment and mitigate the effects of labor substitution caused by technology.
 
A big challenge for those who have the mission and responsibility to help train workers and professionals for a tomorrow that is already here!