Jobs of the Future

​Cognizant’s Centre for the Future of Work has written two reports about jobs they anticipate will emerge over the next decade. To do so, they studied the major macroeconomic, political, demographic, societal, cultural, business and technology trends. These trends include: growing populations, aging populations, populism, environmentalism, migration, automation, arbitrage, quantum physics, AI, biotechnology, space exploration, cybersecurity, and virtual reality. 

However work changes in future, our foundational belief is that our human imagination and ingenuity will be the source of human work ad infinitum”
BEN PRING, COGNIZANT

They feel that these jobs (and others) will begin to replace work that is being automated away. Some are already observable in the marketplace, but will expand further over time.

Two videos (roughly 4 and 6 minutes long respectively) which give examples of the new jobs Cognizant see:

Cognizant plot their jobs of the future against two axes: how technology-centric the roles are, and how soon they expect them to emerge. They also describe three key themes from their research which define roles which suit us as humans:

• Coaching – helping others get better at things e.g. managing finances
• Caring – improving people’s health and wellness
• Connecting – interfacing between man and machine, or linking the physical and the virtual

No matter how technological our age becomes, ultimately we as humans want the human touch”
BEN PRING, COGNIZANT

The roles profiled in the two videos are:

• Personal Data Brokers – creating value from data, including pricing and trading data on data exchanges, they help their clients (organisations and individuals) recognise the value of their data
• Man-Machine Managers – they define the roles and responsibilities for blended work (done by both humans and machines), and set rules for how they should collaborate to accomplish a task
• AI-assisted Healthcare Technicians – qualified nurses work in tandem with AI technology to offer affordable medical diagnostic care with a human touch that AI systems alone can’t, reaching more people more quickly than existing models
• Haptic Interface Designers – they design sensory tactile experiences for us, including the use of textures, working at the “cutting edge of technology, marketing and materials”
• Vertical Farm Analyst – maintaining vertical farm facilities, analysing crop yields and educating their customers on best practices on preparing the produce that their community eats most, they are “techies with green thumbs and a knack for organising”
• Cyber Offense Agents – digital warriors who protect national interests through offensive cyber attacks against that nation’s enemies!
• Head of Business Behaviour – those in this role use people data to understand what makes an organisation’s workers tick, overseeing the ethical collection and analysis of employee data
• Machine Risk Officers – building human-machine trust, addressing machine ethics issues, and protecting their company’s brand, reputation and finances from the unknown consequences of machine failures
• Esports Arena Builders – these designers define and build all aspects of the user experience of the esports industry, including the arenas themselves

People understand that work’s changing more quickly than ever before and the robots aren’t coming – they’re here!”
BEN PRING, COGNIZANT

Comments on the videos highlight that many of the roles mentioned can be taken over by artificial intelligence (i.e. become automated) over time, because “basically any process can be automated to some extent”. Think of slide-rules, calculators, and spreadsheets, and their impacts on financial services roles. 

Another challenge is whether the future roles listed by the Centre for the Future of Work are largely a reframing of existing roles, a natural evolution to incorporate new technologies, or entirely new. The answer impacts how big the opportunities to perform these roles will be. For example, how many roles would exist for Heads of Business Behaviour versus today’s HR professionals or for AI-assisted Healthcare Technicians versus today’s nurses and doctors? A commonly-cited example of a new role since the millennium is the rise of Digital Marketing Managers. While that role definitely requires new skills, including mastery of social media, some of the people performing it today have surely transitioned from other declining marketing areas such as print?

Please share your thoughts on the future of work, including the types of skills that will stand us in good stead for the future. Are there any future roles you’re particularly inspired by?

In the future, work will continue to be core to our identities, our nature, our dreams and our realities, but it won’t necessarily be the work we know or do now”
BEN PRING, COGNIZANT