2020 Workplace – Jeanne C. Meister & Karie Willyerd

2020 Workplace (Jeanne C. Meister & Karie Willyerd, 2010) is another book I saw sitting on the corner of our Training/Development Manager’s desk (note to self: she costs me a lot of money in books).  It had to wait a couple of weeks while I finished up some others, but once I started reading it, it was tough to put down.

This book attempts to look at the workplace in 2020 from a Human Resources point of view, and how the workplace will look by then in terms of recruiting, leadership competencies, and employees – particularly in the sense that the Millenial (born 1977-1997) generation will be in the prime of their careers, and Generation 2020 (born after 1997) will be entering the workplace in full force.  The authors pay special attention to social media, and how it plays an important role in many companies already – and that role will only grow in the future.

The book is broken up into three parts.  The first is about today’s changing workplace, and discusses how workplaces now include four different generations, and are likely to include five by 2020.  It then denotes “ten forces shaping the future workplace”.  Included amongst these are such trends as mobile technology, connectivity, social learning and corporate responsibility.  None of these trends are earth-shattering, but the authors use them as a solid base from which to base the remainder of the book.

The second part of the book discusses some cutting-edge practices already being used in various organizations, many of which you’ll recognize, and some of which you probably have friends or colleagues working for.  Examples include John Fluevog getting its consumers to design its shoes, Bell Canada’s system that allows employees to submit and vote on new ideas, and the U.S. Army, surprisingly using the same software as Wikipedia, to rewrite all of their field manuals.  Zappos also makes another appearance in this book as a valuable example of what to do.  Countless others could provide extraordinary ideas to any organization, including an invaluable resource from Intel – their social media rules of engagement.

The third part discusses twenty predictions for the workplace in 2020, and how employees, executives, and human resources personnel can start preparing for this workplace of the future.  The most important, says the authors, is that individuals will be hired and promoted based on their reputation capital, the sum total of their personal brand (a topic not addressed specifically in this book, but many great resources are available), expertise, and the breadth, depth and quality of their social networks.  Other critical predictions include recruiting focused on social network sites, and work/life flexibility as opposed to work/life balance.  In general, these predictions are safe, and waver little from a standard extrapolation of what’s currently occurring.  Be that as it may, it does provide a nice summary of their expectations, and how we can better prepare ourselves for this future.  There is also a list of social media tools that everyone needs to develop.

The book was well organized and quite enjoyable.  I’m not in human resources, but still found the book of particular interest, and there are excellent recommendations throughout the book for Human Resources professionals, and any other employee as well.

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