User:Arbraxan/Work 4.0

Work 4.0 (German: Arbeit 4.0) is the conceptual umbrella under which the future of work is discussed in Germany and, to some extent, within the European Union. It describes how the world of work may change until 2030 and beyond in response to the developments associated with Industry 4.0, including widespread digitalization. The concept was first introduced in November 2015 by the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (BMAS) when it launched a report entitled Re-Imagining Work: Green Paper Work 4.0.

Conceptual Framework

Conceptually, Work 4.0 reflects the current fourth phase of work relations, having been preceded by the birth of industrial society and the first workers' organizations in the late 18th century (Work 1.0), the beginning of mass production and of the welfare state in the late 19th century (Work 2.0), and the advent of globalization, digitalization and the transformation of the social market economy since the 1970s (Work 3.0). By contrast, Work 4.0 is characterized by a high degree of integration and cooperation, the use of digital technologies (e.g. the internet), and a rise in flexible work arrangements. Its drivers include digitalization, globalization, demographic change (ageing, migration), and cultural change. Challenges include (i) the transformation of economic sectors and activities and its effect on employment, (ii) the creation of new markets and new forms of work through digital platforms, (iii) the issues associated with Big Data, (iv) the relationship between the use of human and machine labour (upskilling vs. deskilling, devaluation of experience, individual support vs. behavioural monitoring), (v) the possibility of flexible work conditions regarding time and location, and (vi) profound changes in the structures of organizations. In response to these challenges, the BMAS has developed a "vision for quality jobs in the digital age", based on policies such as moving from unemployment to employment insurance, the promotion of self-determined flexible working time arrangements, improvements in the working conditions of the service sector, new ergonomic approaches to occupational health and safety, high standards in employee data protection, the co-determination and participation of social partners in employment relations, better social protection for self-employed persons, and the beginning of a European dialogue on the future of the welfare state.

Megatrends of digital work in the future

• Telekom (2015). Arbeit 4.0: Megatrends digitaler Arbeit der Zukunft - 25 Thesen: 4th Industrial Revolution: use of cyber-physical systems (e.g. smart factory): machines replace humans (reasoning) by learning how to think ((a) self-reliant interactions with the physical world, (b) development of ability to comprehend and use speech, (c) ability to solve problems), intelligent machines becoming omnipresent.

Organizations will disintegrate: The modern work environment is characterized by networks wherein companies share standardized back-end processes amongst themselves without this being visible to the customers or employees, which in turn creates jobs without a clear organizational allocation and products without a clear origin. Highly specialized professionals communicate worldwide in special interest communities unaffiliated to a specific organization and only driven by professional expertise, with e.g. important impacts on trade unions as dedication to common interests becomes selective. Companies rely less on a workforce permanently attached to the company to provide specific services and instead use a "hiring on demand" model fuelled by the global transparency of skills and the availability of highly qualified personnel, with the employment relationship becoming a work assignment. Organizations are increasingly structured on the basis of organigrams wherein complex IT systems specify standardized processes and organizational forms as it is cheaper to adapt the organization to the software than to individualize the software, with software standardization making organizational forms more homogeneous. Accelerated demand for transparency and the necessity of co-creation with customers (open innovation) leads to the opening up of previously closed corporate structures wherein transitions inside and outside become fluid and proprietary knowledge (e.g. patents) lose their value, with the ability to scale rapidly and transparently becoming the best way forward and the crowd being part of the value-added chain. Companies increasingly rely on customers instead of employees as many (digitalizable) services are provided free of charge by enthusiastic volunteers; prosumerism blurs the boundaries between producers and consumers and voluntary digital work replaces professional employment.

Work in the digital economy will be different. THe role of humans in the production process is changing as they increasingly supervise machines automatically carrying out routine processes and physically strenuous activities and only intervene in emergencies instead of regularly and actively providing labour. New forms of interaction between humans and machines are coming to the fore, ranging from humans controlling machines over machines as colleagues to mergers between humans and machines or even the management of humans by machines. Digital services are divided into smaller parts and delegated to "virtual labourers", who provide their services as piecework under pressure from automation and whose individual contributions are identified through big data analyses. The ability to combine and interpret big data in various areas of life in a meaningful way is one of the key capabilities of digital work and cannot be supplanted, though working with big data differs from traditional data analysis in that hypotheses are no longer required. Highly qualified specialists work on projects, providing services around the world for which they were selected based on globally transparent and comparable qualifications, implying that the geographical location of the service provider no longer plays a role. Similarly, traditional workplaces and working hours are becoming a thing of the past, allowing workers to organize their work individually and thus e.g. better combine work and family but also creating new stress factors such as the feeling to constantly work. However, the automation of work is finite as certain creative niche activities cannot be undertaken by machines in the foreseeable future, making entrepreneurial skills, creativity and the control of machines highly valuable. In high wage countries, activities involving direct human interactions will be more highly valued and the proportion of these jobs is growing, whereas standardizable and anonymous processes, especially in the ICT field, will become subject to offshoring and further efficiency pressure. The flexible and demand-oriented allocation of orders to labour brokers results in the dissolution of traditional employment relationships and processes; work time is made up of micro-slices of work times spent on various tasks, which the employee combines according to necessity and ability. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly common for the providers of creative or intellectual services to be expected to implement them in concrete form, a trend favoured by the spread of 3D printers and other tools. The ever-increasing importance of IT allows "nerds", such as precocious app developers or data experts, to find their way into the upper echelons of the corporate world and disrupt corporate cultures as only technical skills come to determine employability. Remote working, the anonymity of crowd and click work employment conditions and the flexibilization of working hours will also bring social groups not available for traditional employment relationships onto the labour market, including start-ups and click-workers in emerging economies.

Work 4.0 presents substantial challenges to organizations and their leaders. The workplace of people in flexible employment relationships extends into the public space, with physical offices becoming temporary anchor poins for human interaction, especially networking, but work taking place everywhere and decreasingly so within the office. As workers (still) performing repetitive tasks yearn for rewards and ever more accessible distractions, the gamification and intuitive operation of IT interfaces are becoming increasingly important, thus turning the work environment into a virtual playing field and requiring from employers the integration of gaming design principles into standardized IT applications. As the ties between employers and employees are loosening, flexible forms of work and cooperation lead to employees always having one foot in the labour market, which in turn makes systematic staff development more difficult at a time when expectations and demands regarding directly usable qualifications increase. The demise of geographically located workplaces is also associated with a change from a presence to a results culture, wherein it becomes more important for managers to motivate workers through personal ties even via impersonal channels rather than to control workers. The increasing pace of innovation requires the constant replacement of innovative business areas and transformation of existing business models, while the companies' core businesses - if profitable - must be pursued as efficiently as possible, creating a "two-handed" management that simultaneously explores and exploits. Digital workers are quantified in the form of individual data packages, their skills, experience and capacities, a process in turn facilitating the allocation of matching tasks but which may disrupted by the data profile, thus making staff selection both less intuitive and less dependent on cultural matches. Environmental characteristics, processes, work results and the workers are continuously recorded through sensors to provide both the employer and the employee with information about the quality of work and potential improvements, which may create ethical problems.

White paper on Work 4.0 (BMAS)

• Drivers and Trends of Work 4.0 (Digitalisation, Globalisation, Demography, Cultural change)
• Policy options (employability/employment insurance; flexible/self-determined working time; fostering good working conditions in the service sector; Occupational Health & Safety 4.0; high standards of employee data protection; transformations in co-determination and employee participation; social protection for self-employment; future prospects for the welfare state and European social dialogue)

=> Re-imagining work by identifying trends, testing innovations, and strengthening social partnership

• Challenges presented by Work 4.0 (employment effects of structural change; new forms of work via digital platforms; big data and the world of work; industry 4.0 and human-machine interactions; presenteeism and flexible work; organisational restructuring and work 4.0)

The Future of Work: Skills and Resilience for a World of Change (EPSC)

• Trends and Transformations in Work 4.0
• Rise of Independent and Alternative Working Arrangements
• What is changing in the world of work and what is not
• How to capture value in the new world of work
• Changing work-life patterns and preferences
• The future of work is all about skills
• Implications for public policy with regard to education, skills, social policy and data policy

Technological stress

• Katarina Stanoevska-Slabeva (St. Gallen): Technological stress, i.e. psychological stress caused by the overtaxing of users by technical devices or systems (incl. link to Luddism); causes: information overload, overtaxing, lack of work-life balance, bad communication => higher burnout

Synthesis Report of the National Dialogues on the Future of Work (ILO)

• Drivers of change (Globalization, Demographics, Climate change, Technology)
• Work and Society

• To work or not to work?
• Development today and in the future: From survival to happiness; the knowledge society and the risk of increased inequality; who benefits from increased productivity?
• The purpose of work in society: Culture and values; remuneration and well-being?; creating healthier workplaces
• A changing labour force: the families and the changing role of women; a 24-hour society and the issue of working time; mobility and transport

• Decent Jobs for All

• Full employment?
• A changing labour demand: employment creation: multiplication or destruction?; Sectors of particular interest for future job creation (industrial sectors, emerging "cross-cutting" economic sectors)
• An outdated supply of labour? Adapting the labour force to skills requirements
• Cohorts highlighted in the national dialogues: women, youth, workers with disabilities
• Policy responses: Relevant and coherent?

• Organization of Work and Production

• Evolving definitions of work, employee, enterprise and employment relationship
• Organization of work between tradition and new business models: Questioning the employment relationship; increasingly non-standard employment; new forms of employment; protection of workers' rights beyond the standard employment relationship
• Organization of production: from small to big enterprise structures, or vice versa?; Global supply chains and their governance; Re-shoring

• Governance of Work

• Towards a new governance system?
• Ensuring governance throughout the world: A new national governance framework for the future of work (ensuring fundamental principles and rights at work; ensuring governance through legislation; impact of the formalization of the informal economy in ensuring rights for all; are national labour institutions fit for purpose?; adapting to new circumstances to ensure efficacy; Corporate Social Responsibility) and a new global framework for the future of work (pivotal role of ILO; International Labour Standards; Standards Review Mechanism; Regional and sub-regional systems; labour clauses in international trade and investment agreements)
• Building the future of work with the participation of all: the importance of social dialogue and diverse social dialogue institutions as well as collective bargaining in the future of work
• Building the future of work with all relevant stakeholders: Tripartism and tripartism plus

Additionally, ILO has a series of 12 issue briefs on the future of work, including on the future governance of work, new approaches to growth and development, the management of change during every phase of education, technology for social, environmental and economic development, the ending of global gender inequality in the workplace, and the role of work for individuals and society. The work of ILO is managed through the Global Commission on the Future of Work and the Future of Work Centenary Initiative and presented on the ILO portal on the Future of Work. The Global Commission on the Future of Work is chaired by Ameenah Gurib-Fakim and Stefan Löfven.

Additional resources

• Oxford Study on the Future of Work
• BDA (2015). Chancen der Digitalisierung nutzen - Positionspapier der BDA zur Digitalisierung von Wirtschaft und Arbeitswelt
• Resources from the seminar on Work 4.0 - digitalisation of the labour market by the DG Employment, Social Affairs, and Inclusion
• Jobs for Work 4.0: The Future of Employment
• VDMA: Work 4.0 - Humans at its heart
• Paper by Autor
• Paper by Autor and Murnane
• Gregory, T., Salomons, A., Zierahn, U. (2016). Racing With or Against the Machine - Evidence from Europe (ZEW)
• World Economic Forum: Future of Jobs
• OECD: Future of Jobs and Skills

See also

• Industry 4.0

External links

• White Paper on Work 4.0 by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs of Germany (2017)
• Homepage of the ERASMUS+ project Jobs for Work 4.0: The Future of Employment

Category:Work