The Changing World of Work – Mega Trends

The Changing World of Work – Mega Trends

The current world has evolved into a place of megatrends at work. Singh, (2012) defined megatrends as a sustained, global and macroeconomic and transformational forces of development that impact economies, cultures, business, personal lives, and society, therefore describing the future world and its growing speed of change.  This document covers technology, globalization, and mobility at work as megatrends.

Technological Changes

Risks of technology on an Organization

The introduction of new technology to an organization may increase risk-taking behaviors and attitudes in some critical safety domains. For example, Anderson & Felici, (2012) states that Avionics and Air Traffic Management Industries (ATM), for example, is required to cater to the growing demand for services and performances that are cost-effective. New technology institution may have contentious results. This is because it escalates the requirements and demands on security and performances. Although the organization expresses its increasing demands over safety targets and performance over technological innovations, technology risks always seem to remain constant or to increase. This, to some extent, explains the reasons why perceptions of risk remain unchanged for ATM industries.

According to Spacey (2020), innovation risk is another type of risk that is caused by technological changes. This is a special risk type that is associated with aggressive change rates and experimentation practices. It requires risk management of novel types, and it is associated with improving skills of those handling the newly innovated technologies in the organization. Employees have to be coached to adapt to the introduced changes and of which may add up on the company’s normal costs and expenses. The attitude of employees may also develop negatively because some may not be ready to embrace the new changes made. This may, to some extent, affect the productivity of an organization.

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Risks of globalization to an organization

Price Pressure

Corporations that are globally investing in health care, retail foods sector and public utilities have to request host governments to control product prices in the cases of high commodity prices worldwide or during inflation. When governments drive consumer prices down, they affect the profitability of cooperation’s investments globally in an adverse manner. Political pressures on governments to control prices have been more evident in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America (Kiielmas, 2020).

Cyber Security

The company’s information systems attack may cause consequences that are beyond commercial confidentiality, such as vulnerability to prosecution and investigation by all operating country’s governments if sensitive information such as tax information is disclosed. Company directors may be left in the open to lawsuits from both customers and shareholders if breaches of fiduciary obligations are disclosed.   (Charvat, 2012)

Reputation

The reputation of a company is a very important but intangible asset and is based on the perceptions that customers, the media, the government, shareholders and general public have.  Bribery and corruption allegations on a company may lead to governmental expropriation and persecution, loss of customers worldwide and the collapse of the company in general (Kiielmas, 2020).

Mobility in the workplace

Mobility at work can also be referred to as nomadism in the corporate world. Mobility in the workplace may be functional mobility where staff can take different roles over time, temporal mobility where employees can be transferred from one company to another for a given period, or geographical mobility which involves where one chooses to work.

Risks of mobility on an organization

Organizations at an enterprise level can fall victims of data breaching by external malicious exposure via contractor access or hapless third parties, or data loss.  When using mobiles, organizations can come across viruses, malware, unsecured Wi-Fi, or access to insecure apps while unauthorized, of which all can be exacerbated through the BYOD phenomenon.  An example is when computer networks of big banks were infiltrated in August 2014 and stole saving and checking account information. It was realized that the entry point was one bank employees’ personal computer, where the attack later moved to the inner systems of the bank.

References

Anderson, S. and Felici, M., 2012. Emerging Technological Risk. London: Springer London.

Charvat, J., 2012. Homeland Security Organization In Defence Against Terrorism. Amsterdam: IOS Press.

Kiielmas, M., 2020. What Are At Least Five Risks That Could Affect An Organization’s Global Operations?. [online] Smallbusiness.chron.com. Available at: <https://smallbusiness.chron.com/least-five-risks-could-affect-organizations-global-operations-57999.html> [Accessed 22 March 2020].

OECD. (2019). OECD employment outlook 2019: The future of work. OECD Publishing.

Spacey, J., 2020. 36 Types Of Technology Risk. [online] Simplicable. Available at: <https://simplicable.com/new/technology-risk> [Accessed 22 March 2020].