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Competence Centre on Foresight

We foster a strategic, future-oriented and anticipatory culture in the EU policymaking process.

  • Page | Last updated: 24 Jul 2019
Potential implications of changing nature of work

Digitalisation and new technologies are fundamentally changing the nature of work, business models, institutions and society as a whole.

Strategies have to be developed to address:

  • The education system has to be adapted to a growing access to an increasingly diversified and fast changing amount of knowledge.   The aim should be to give young people the capacity to learn.
  • Workers are called to constantly upskill, retrain, and adapt to emerging skill needs, given the fast-changing jobs landscape. Greater efforts are needed to promote participation in lifelong learning activities and investing in re-skilling and education of workers in order to help them adjust to new requirements and avoid having tens of millions of people unemployed.
  • A coherent tech/digital-literacy program is needed to avoid new divides, fragmentations, polarisation and isolation.
  • Digital competence developments are observed since very young age across Europe, mainly in family context and in an uneven and patchy way, depending mostly on the digital landscape available and on the digital knowledge in family.
  • EU's network of Digital Innovation Hubs could help developing local solutions in Europe for addressing training and developing partnerships for a safe and socially ethical AI development.

| Related Megatrends: InequalitiesTechnologyEducation;

  • Fiscal strategies, social protection and labour market policies should consider support the increasing independent, solo-preneurship, and flexible work systems to address the root-causes of the emerging work crises, rather than the symptoms.
  • While self-employment and other forms of work outside of traditional employment are expanding, social safety net regimes (pdf) for these workers have yet to be established.
  • More than 50% of independent workers in Europe are not covered by unemployment benefits.   
    | Related Megatrends: InequalitiesHealth
  • Shared economy platforms (e.g. Uber, AirBnB, Helping, Upwork, etc.) proliferate outside the existing labour laws and regulations; therefore, new employment and self-regulation system frameworks should be considered. Taxation and fiscal policies should be adapted to the expanding shared economy, digitalization and globalization.

More on this Megatrend

The "digital revolution" is impacting everything, from economy, innovation, science and education, to health, sustainability, governance, and lifestyles. Digital technologies will fundamentally change business models, institutions and society as a whole, as new ecosystems emerge.

  • Automation and robotization are considerably increasing productivity. However, the related increased profit is not reflected in the income of the workers and even less so in the contributions that corporations make to society. Therefore, policies should align productivity increase with income, tax and social contributions of business, to address unemployment and re-skilling.
  • Anticipation of the effects of AI & robotisation for social transition needs to ensure that everyone benefits of technological advancements, that economic growth is also reflected in income and living standards of all citizens. The European Pillar of Social Rights aims to support a positive transition.
  • AI is increasing proficiency and can also identify workers' best use of skill, which might be disregarded by their usual everyday job. E.g. GE and Shell already employ algorithms for managerial work and to match projects with employees based on their skills.
  • AI will change workplaces; it will allow better work-flow management, productivity increase and merit-based promotion, but also give managers extraordinary control over their employees. 
  • coherent strategy and policy approach is needed to avoid potential disruptive structural changes and to assure that digitalization benefits the majority of the population, encourages further innovation and development, and that it helps address the global challenges.
  • EU-wide policy should regulate the social and economic aspects of AI and robotisation (including robot taxation) to guarantee a standard level of economic benefit and security for society. Commission, in its White paper on AI, expressed support to a regulatory and investment oriented approach with the twin objective of promoting the uptake of AI and of addressing the risks associated with certain uses of this new technology.
  • Smart-city developments should prioritise on healthy lifestyle of increasingly independent citizens.

| Related Megatrends: TechnologyInequalitiesUrbanizationHealth