The Future Worker: High-intensity knowledge work demands across the world. Are we ready?
(Focus on Mexico)
The rapid growth of broader and more sophisticated channels of communications, globalization and technology together
have transformed the picture of the knowledge based professions. Technical skills alone will no longer be enough in the
high demanding and competitive market. It is mandatory to understand the business realities that are quite different
from those in the past and how the industry, core processes, regulatory environment, customer needs and different
constraints have reshaped the landscape for the future worker. This work aims to present and exploratory study based
on descriptive trends of the evolution of the modern workplace and their consequences for the future worker and how
Mexico must prepare its next generation of future workers in an international context.
Introduction
The labor market has dramatically changed. Different business models based on collaboration and innovation require
individuals to assume higher levels of self-management in a more extended-value network where consumer behavior
patterns and outside influencers increase the complexity and the need for a continuous process realignment of
businesses in all sectors. This means professional development with a deep insight into multiple Information
Technologies (IT) and business domains empowered by individualized tools, knowledge, information sources, social
networks and employment styles (Morello & Burton, 2006). However, as Sanford M. Jacoby
thinking” will remain a potent rival to the “people-centered thinking” no matter the level of sophistication of each them
and how much they have grown.
What is behind Systems thinking?
The shift to individualized work setting is raising tension in the hierarchical traditional organization, where the future
worker is taking a higher degree of control over their work environment and how they get information, sources and
tools without restrictions (Morello & Burton, 2006). Thus begins a struggle whose end result is re-conceptualization of
critical variables into a new ensemble with a new logic of its own. If seeking freedom is in the human nature, it is also
human nature to withhold it. Aligning the interest of the purposeful parts (future workers) with each other and that of
the whole (the society) is the main challenge (Gharajedaghi, 2006), where consensus is essential to the alignment of a
multi-minded system and a must to create structures and functions that fit the moment. Matching internal competencies
with market demands is the foundation of the emerging concept of the changing work environment (Gharajedaghi,
2006). The core capabilities of the future organization will lie within workers who can perform the transversal roles and
mitigate the dysfunctional nature of most organizational structures. These changes will need to be dramatic through
1
Sanford M. Jacoby, a professor of management, policy studies, and history at the University at California at Los
Angeles cited in the article “Cog or Co-Worker” written by Meter Coy. BusinessWeek (August 20, 2007).
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Convention