The Future of Work: How Generation Z is Shaping the Workplace

today's school students known as generations ed and I recently heard a generation said t-shirt slogan which

said when I am bored I Google myself generation said were born between 1995 and 2009 they currently make up 18% of

our population 9% of the workforce but in a decade's time there will be 31 percent of our workforce now when

they're talking about a library they mean their playlists on iTunes they speak and they write in a new language

if they can shorten it they will their idea of an encyclopedia is one that they can change and contribute to and whilst

they're constantly reading it's really going to be a book from cover to cover after all they're visual communicators

so why read it when you can watch it they speak another language that sounds like my bad totes Chrome chillax epic

for sure is cray cray Yolo and these generations ads are going to spend an estimated 14,000 face-to-face contact

hours in their 13 years of schooling in three years of a university degree but they'll spend six times that an

estimated 84,000 hours as they enter the workforce and so what will the future of work look like we're on the brink of

significant intergenerational transition in our workplaces at the moment as the baby boomers who are currently making up

1/4 of our workforce and hold a lot of the leadership roles and reaching retirement years and so as they're

transitioning out of the workforce there will be just 8 percent of the workforce in 10 years time at the other end of the

spectrum as generations that are entering things are going to change I mean they're the most materially endowed

technologically literate formally educated and globally connected generations to ever grace the planet and

so the way that they approach work problem solving collaboration communication innovation will be

different as a result every generation will also have their own challenges and their own fears to overcome in fact

Generation Z a global and visual generation you communicate their top three fears simply

in visual icons those being the first being the poor Wi-Fi signal I mean it's quite a crisis for generations ed if you

can't be connected but I think even a greater challenge for them is the buffering signal I mean this is a

generation who haven't had to wait for anything they didn't even have to live through dial-up and I think the greatest

concern is this when the phone battery is out of charge I mean if you have no phone battery life as you know it ceases

to exist till you can find that power source the generations that are growing up in a time of extraordinary

unprecedented change and changes how they'll also approach their careers at the moment in Australia the average

turnover rate is fifteen percent per annum which means people change jobs every three years and four months on

average projected over the lifetime of a school leaver today it's estimated that they will have 17 jobs across five

different careers in their lifetime but what's the future of work going to look like well the intergenerational report

put out by the Australian Government periodically looks at three big social trends that all start with P that are

going to redefine what work looks like into the future the first of these being our population now Australia's

population is growing in fact we have doubled both our national and our global population since 1966 we're not only

growing but we're also ageing our population pyramids depict this visually in 1985 our population pyramid showed

there were more younger people than older people but today we're starting to become more rectangular and you can see

we're on the brink of massive aging in fact as we project to 2045 for the first time our population pyramid is going to

start to become inverted with more people aged over 60 than under 18 for the first time in that year but we don't

just have more older people we're also living for longer as well and that aging is going to have a ripple effect on all

of us in our society in fact those ripples will also ripple out to even to the Queen and if we can

just take a moment just to consider the Queen for a moment please it was 90 in 52 that she ascended to the throne

and in that year she would have had to write 40 congratulatory letters to Australians turning 100 that year

however this year she's needing to find time in her busy schedule to write 2643 by the end of the decade she'll be

needing to write 4885 and in three decades time she'll have to definitely employ the help of Prince Charles Prince

William perhaps Prince George and Princess Charlotte to write an extraordinary 18,000 567 letters to

Australians turning 100 that year so we're growing we're aging were also changing

you see three-fifths of our growth can be attributed to net overseas migration so we're more culturally diverse than

ever before in fact one in four Australians weren't born here and when you look at households that have at

least one parent born overseas 46% of households have either one or both parents born overseas we're incredibly

culturally diverse culturally rich and that will be increasingly reflected in our workplace communities as well as our

increasing multi-generational community we've currently got six generations in our communities the builders the baby

boomers Generation X Generation Y generations Ed and the generation to follow them were born since 2010 the

year marked by the electric car charging station the launch of the iPad the launch of Instagram and the beginning of

generation Alpha I heard a story of a mum talking to her Generation alphas son and said now sweetie mums been really

sick this week she's had a virus and a little gen alpha said back to her don't be silly mum only computers can get

viruses they're growing up in different times and each generation will have different challenges and different needs

for example we know Maslow's hierarchy of needs the need for survival security our social needs our self-esteem needs

and self-actualization but gen Zed and Gen Alpha have identified a more fundamental need for that generation

which is the consistent and constant need for Wi-Fi wherever they go we're growing we're ageing were changing with

our population the other key shift is going to be the participation rate in the workforce now the female

participation rate continue to increase and we'll actually be working later in life as well that's

exciting isn't it the retirement age is being pushed back but even with those two increases the overall participation

rate is set to actually decline because because we're currently got sixty five point one percent of our population over

15 in the workforce but by 2050 five will decline to sixty two point four percent and that's a result of our aging

population you see when we look at the ratios you can see that in 1975 there were 15 people of working age for every

couple of retirement age today there's just nine people of working age for every couple overtime and agent as we

project to 2050 five they'll be just 5.4 people of traditional working age for every couple of retirement age now

that's going to place greater demands on the workforce for higher levels of productivity than we've ever seen before

and that's the third social trend which is redefining the workplace of the future now productivity is the only one

there that's not defined by the demographic realities but we're going to need to increase significantly we've

already seen an increase in productivity in fact for every hour and Australian works today there are twice as many

goods and services produced as there were in 1975 however largely this is contributed to or being a result of the

increased efficiencies that technology has enabled it's amazing how we can find pretty much any piece of information or

any answer within a few seconds within a few clicks of a button however unless of course we want to do some deeper

research in which case this sums it up that you know you're desperate for an answer when you look at the second page

of Google it's not just being technology though that's transformed our productivity but we'll be able to

maximize our productivity if we are people and organizations who can innovate and also the communities that

can collaborate it's where we see the intersection of these two things technology innovation and collaboration

that we're seeing sectors being transformed let's take the accommodation sector for example Hilton established in

1919 in 91 countries with approximately 600,000 beds however compare that to Airbnb

established in 2008 is in 190 countries and has over 1.5 million listings now whatever

and beer has done is an innovative approach to accommodation which has released the collaborative power of the

community for all of us to become accommodation providers if we want to and it has leveraged this over a

technology platform again you see this with the transportation network company uber suddenly we can all become drivers

so this innovative idea of Transportation has been released through to the collaborative power of the

community through the technology platforms Cancer Research UK they are a very innovative company that have made a

game called play to cure genes in space it's a computer game and as you play it you are processing significant amounts

of genetic data which would otherwise take scientists hours of work to process and so this innovative idea released to

a broad collaborative community over a technology platform has transformed this approach to beating the problem of

solving cancer sooner what makes Ted such a powerful brand well at its core it's innovation in

communication and the spreading of ideas but it's also released over to the collaborative community to take part in

the the model of TEDx events with local communities being able to take part and then it's maximized through the

communication over the technology platforms traditional leadership styles have been based on linearity and

conformity based on position and hierarchy however the leadership styles that the younger generations are

responding more to are those based on collaboration and contribution where they can participate and have a voice

and if we think about the effective leaders of the future there will not be those marked necessarily by having the

highest developed skill level or expertise in an area but rather those who are able to create a culture of

collaborative innovation these leaders will understand that as people we are designed to connect and we are

constantly connecting over online platforms but what also amazes me in a world where we've got all the

technologies to enable us to telework full time if we wanted to we still spend hours commuting to and from work every

day and every week that's because something happens when we connect and face-to-face interaction and ideas are

sparked and knowledge is transferred in a way that only happens in that context

we're also designed to contribute and it's interesting that the platforms that we spend the most time on online are

actually those where we're not just consumers of the content but also contributors is the social media

platforms it's places like blogs and even Wikipedia where we're contributors and finally this culture will also be

one that enables us to create we're designed to create and again you see this on what we're doing online we're an

example is is YouTube where we create the content now did you know there are 100 hours of YouTube videos uploaded

every single minute it equates to 115 years of content being uploaded every single week we are designed to create

what does a workplace culture of collaborative innovation look like well it's inclusive of a multi-generational

multicultural multi-skilled community and it draws on the strength of this diversity and it builds on a shared

foundation of shared values such as humility respect and authenticity productivity and outcomes output are

important in fact we've seen that that will become increasingly so but perhaps as we shift our focus from just process

to developing people from just outcomes to creating space for opportunity and innovation from transactional to

transformational leadership and create vibrant dynamic healthy workplace communities then outcomes of

productivity will be higher than ever as people are invested and as they find that they invest the 84,000 hours of

their work life in a rewarding way in a thriving culture of collaborative innovation thank you very much