Is your employer checking your Facebook account? Probably - but your next boss will be a remote worker using computers to automatically monitor and cross-reference every digital trace of you, then automatically offer you a job. This is what analysts are calling Work 3.0, where companies will abandon costly hiring and firing, time-consuming interviews, and even office space for short-term online contracts automatically awarded to self-employed home workers with the right expertise for any given task.
We could all be about to become part of a "human cloud". "We're now at the tipping point of a workplace revolution," says Duncan Miller, international marketing communications manager at Mitel, whose research earlier this year into modern working practices helped coin the phrase Work 3.0. "New, innovative working environments will emerge that are no longer tied to a single location. Many employees will no longer operate from static, physical places, but will work within a human cloud, supporting companies from limitless locations."
Work 3.0 is primarily the product of new technology. The first phase, currently under way and probably something most of us have already done, is known as "bring your own device": you take your iPad to work, check your work e-mail on a smartphone, and often attempt to access the corporate network with your own gadgets.
Miller calls this trend "fundamental" in the workplace revolution since it's now workers, not bosses, who are setting the technology agenda. "Workers are choosing their devices and technologies, and how, where and when they want to work, taking more control of their working lives."
That technology is influencing how we work is no surprise, although in the next 20 years it could get very impersonal. "Complexity is on the increase and time to market is on the decrease, and with these challenges what we think of as a job will change," says IT commentator Peter Chadha, who thinks that companies will require more expertise to stay ahead of competitors, but only for short projects. "The web will make this more possible than ever, not only by giving them mechanisms to work with one another from remote locations using virtual reality technologies, but also by sourcing the individuals more dynamically."
The traditional job interview could fall prey to intelligent software algorithms that can take information from multiple sources of an online reputation - such as LinkedIn profiles, tweets, online calendars and work published online - and accurately calculate who the experts are, and if they're available.