Yellow, Red, Green Or Blue: Which World Do You Want To Live In?

PwC’s ‘Workforce of the future: The competing forces shaping 2030’ gives a starting point to understand the different factors and scenarios shaping the future of work

- Manav Seth

The word ‘change’ has become synonymous with progress, development and advancement in recent times. While conventional wisdom tells us that change is inevitable, we somehow still resist it because there is comfort in the known, and safety in understanding what to expect. But these are interesting times we live in, where the world as we know it is changing on a fundamental level: lives, work, technology, economies, countries are evolving, and as PwC’s ‘Workforce of the future: The competing forces shaping 2030’ puts it, “This isn’t a time to sit back and wait for events to unfold. To be prepared for the future you have to understand it.”

The report, which takes a step back and accounts for the various factors that could shape our future, conjures four plausible scenarios, drawn from research carried over almost an entire decade. However, within the foreword itself, it announces, “No exploration of the future of work will ever be conclusive. Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of our age is its ability to surprise and confound.” The report dives headfirst into understanding the several currently prevalent forces that will impact our future, constructs four world-models with distinct features and power structures, discusses their impact on future jobs, and finally spells out what individuals and organizations can do to tide over this ‘change’ as smoothly as possible. “We should remember that intellectual complacency is not our friend and that learning – not just new things but new ways of thinking – is a life-long endeavor,” says Blair Sheppard, Global Leader, Strategy and Leadership Development, PwC.

What will determine the future?