Digitalization and globalization arrived to change things up

If you need proof, just consider the Watson computer system that, in 2011, competed on Jeopardy! against champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, winning the first-place prize of $1 million. Still not impressed? In December 2018, a new computer program taught itself how to play chess, go, and shogi, in just a few hours, without supervised learning. And November 2020, a South Korean cable channel MBN announced that it has virtually replicated one of its news anchors with the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, which is fully controllable by the company.

Is all of this a bit scary? Yes but it’s also the natural way of things, evolution. Learning and upgrading. We are now entering the full-remote fase which will lead us to reskilling and upskilling the employees to meet the new challenges ahead. The jobs in the upcoming years will be directly connected to the creation of new ones just like happened before.

Globalization took us from exchanging spices to exchanging information – the most valuable thing in the world. The gig economy is rising, and Artificial Intelligence as well. Until it happens we’ll need to increase companies agility, be aware of mental health issues and consider the leadership roles in the companies. All of this without losing the company culture. It is, indeed, a challenge!

Traveling around the world while working for a company is possible. More and more people are adopting this trend. With the company’s ability to get used to and adapt to remote work, they are given an incredible opportunity to employees: being able to do their work anywhere in the world. Isn’t this amazing? While some stand ground on their city and prefer to work on the office site, some other colleagues can be timezones apart and still be doing brilliant work together. If this isn’t the true meaning of the future of work, we don’t know what is! 

This also means most SMEs will have to re-learn how to get things done. How to make sure things get delivered if their employees are in 3 different time zones? What online tools they can try to ensure better communication? How they will give “a sense of belonging” to people that (maybe) never met in person before?