The future is a shared responsibility

by Karen Halford

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The future is a shared responsibility

There are four key skills that we’re going to rely on in the future, and that we need to instil in young people.

The first is simple: being personable. It’s really important to us at Vodafone that our frontline staff, the staff who directly talk to customers, have relationship-orientated contact with them rather than just transactional contact. We need to take time to understand customers’ needs – what their lives are about, at home and work – and then to think about how our products and services can help them make the most of the time they have available.

 

To do this confidently, we need to ensure that our staff are able to understand technology and, in particular, that they are really familiar with the Web 2.0 world and with the opportunities provided by converged technology. This is the second key skill.

The third key skill is leadership. The leaders of the future need to facilitate innovation in their company or organisation. Such innovation comes from people who understand and use, on a daily basis, all the technology on the market and appreciate how it can be utilised to provide useful solutions in the future.

Lastly, the fourth skill is the capacity to work in partnership with other organisations. As the workplace changes, we’re going to see organisational models change and evolve so that, in order to offer new products and services to customers, we’ll have to work effectively with multiple organisations. In our offices, it’s not unusual to see one of our staff sitting next to an employee from a partner organisation who is, in turn, sitting next to a contractor. We’re going to experience much more of this in the future, and it requires a very particular set of skills that will enable both parties to extract more value from these relationships.

The future workplace won’t require people to sit at desks for seven and-a-half hours every day. Thanks to mobile technology, we’re likely to pay fewer visits to the office and work much more from home or elsewhere. We’ll also see more conferencing and meetings carried out through webcams. The result is that organisations will need to think about the size of premises and office accommodation, and whether to put resources into buildings or into technology.

The opportunities to work virtually, and therefore much more flexibly, will lead to a more evolved world where people are able to better manage requirements outside work – whether this is looking after elderly relatives, childcare or voluntary work.

It is the responsibility of both employers and young people to prepare for the future workplace.

For employers, it will become really important to understand young people and their different needs, wants and desires, including what motivates them and how to communicate with them in non traditional ways. We’ll also need to think about how young people use social networks and how you can tap into them, both as potential employees and as consumers.

Young people need to prepare for the future in several ways. One of the most important is to be flexible. We see this already with young people who expect to have portfolio careers, rather than staying in one organisation for their whole working life. This requires good social skills, so that they can fit quickly into new kinds of environments. They might develop these in different organisations, or by gaining experience in different workplaces and teams within one organisation.

But most importantly young people need to develop core capabilities in communication and interpersonal skills. As they may not be sitting with colleagues all day every day, written and verbal skills will become even more important. They will have to develop long-term relationships with customers and with colleagues whom they may only know virtually, and so the ability to ‘tune in’ to them verbally will be crucial. This involves a back-to-basics approach in terms of literacy and verbal communication.

Combine communications skills with technological expertise and a high level of flexibility, and young people will be as well prepared for the future workplace as possible.

 

About the author

Karen Halford is Head of Resourcing and Development for Vodafone UK. The Vodafone Group Plc is the world’s leading mobile telecommunications company with more than 60,000 employees.