UK businesses and workers are engaged in a process of transformation

UK businesses and workers are engaged in a process of transformation, where the way work gets done, who does it, and what it even looks like, is changing.

As well as the growing demand for more agile, collaborative and customer-focused environments, businesses are increasingly reliant on technological competence. Over the last decade alone, automation processes, analytics, the cloud and several digital platforms have become core to the success of countless organisations.

These forces – together with economic, geo-political and cultural developments – have driven significant change in the UK labour market, altering the way jobs are structured and distributed across multiple sectors.

Meanwhile, the attitude of many UK employees towards work has shifted dramatically. Some now have very different priorities to their parents and grandparents when it comes to important life and career decisions, such as the need for greater flexibility, autonomy and workplace support.

Other individuals have been greatly affected by the lack of rights and protections provided to workers in their sector, due to the rise of temporary contracts, with a number of international businesses shifting away from full-time employees to short-term contract workers.

In fact, given that the world of work has changed so thoroughly, some now believe an entirely new kind of workforce has emerged, where flexible work arrangements, the ‘gig-economy’, start-up culture, and the constant disruptive power of technology now define what work means.