Why are Boomers vital to the future of work? What value do they bring right now?
The current workforce is becoming more automated than ever. Jobs that were once done manually can now be done by robots. That trend will only continue to grow in the years to come.
With that on the horizon, many people wonder if Boomers have any value to bring at all.
Being a Boomer myself, I’ve wrestled with the question of whether or not we matter to the future of work. I recently discussed this on Leading the Factory Forward and realized that we will be a vital piece of it.
Here are the 4 main ideas of why this is true:
1. Demographics
People are living longer and are staying healthy for longer. In general, people are going to be around for a longer amount of time going into the future.
However, on the flip side, a researcher named McKinsey has said that we actually have a problem in that there won't be enough people to sustain the productivity, economic output, and lifestyle that we have now. On top of that, he estimates that about 17 million people will need to change categories of jobs.
To combat this, we have to start thinking about our lives, not as a single mountain where we learn, earn, and then retire, but more like a series of several mountains. This will help support people who are just being born long into the future.
2. Technology Changes
As I mentioned earlier, many people today are scared about robots taking all of our jobs. However, think about how technology changed the workforce in years past. In 1900, about 50% of the workforce was in farming, while in today's world only a small percent of workers are still in farming.
That didn’t result in 40% unemployment. It just meant people had to learn new skills and move on to new jobs. That is what will happen with the advent of new technology in today’s world.
It is predicted that about 30% of jobs could be automated in the future. Because of this, people will have to learn to work with the machines not against them.
3. The Silver Entrepreneur/Workers
Boomers have amazing skills because of their experience and the lives they've lived, such as:
They've seen a lot of history and different things happen. Because of this, they can sense new patterns.
Boomers know how to work around things that go wrong.
Because of their experience working with people over the years, through both the good and bad, they also know how to work with people.
To keep up with the future of work, they just need to learn new technology and maintain their growth mindset.
4. The Future of Work
The pandemic has accelerated things, such as more people working remotely, changed mindsets around how work gets done compared with how we've done it in the past, and getting used to having fractional employment (finding people for hours of work at a time, rather than having everything done by full-time employees). Additionally, there will still be skills that are required and therefore will not be automated. Some of these skills are curiosity, imagination, intuition, creativity, empathy, and emotional and social intelligence. The Boomers can still contribute to this future because, as I said earlier, we're not only living longer, but we're living healthier.
Because part-time work is bigger now more than ever, Boomers who want to work at a more measured pace will be a vital piece of the future of work.
