Technology is changing work and now we must rethink our understanding of work

The nature of work has always been changing, but the change is now faster than ever before. The change process is at different stages in different fields, but the basic trends can be identified in almost all work tasks. The relationship of work with time, place and employment will continue to change and there will be more new challenges.

‘Lifelong learning, emotional intelligence, critical thinking and curiosity are all important elements of working life today. These are just some of the elements that leaders should support and facilitate,’ says Research Director Hertta Vuorenmaa from the Aalto University School of Business.

Hertta Vuorenmaa and her guests will discuss the changing nature of work at the Better Business – Better Society seminar on Tuesday, 3 March. Focus will be on how they see the changing work, what leadership should look like, and how to change the collective mindsets of all the different actors within the world of work.

‘The nature of work should be reconsidered at the individual, organisational and societal level, and the mindset change needs to take place simultaneously on all these levels. This kind of thinking exercise should actually have been done much earlier, the future of work is now; the change is already here, and we need to understand that its everyone's business’ says Vuorenmaa.

Hertta Vuorenmaa works as Research Director for the Future of Work project and as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Management at the School of Business. The Future of Work project, which has received funding from the Academy of Finland for four years (2019-2022), brings together the multidisciplinary research on future work that is being carried out at Aalto University. The network discusses and learns about the new forms of future work and their impacts on Finnish business life and society. Participating in the network are a range of actors, including researchers, business representatives and legislators.

Further details about the seminar can be found at the following address: https://bit.ly/2Tice90. You can follow a live broadcast of the seminar on the School of Business’s Facebook page.

Research Director Hertta Vuorenmaa was interviewed by Terhi Ollikainen.