Changes in Workplaces Over the Last 50 Years

This article discusses the changes in workplaces over the last 50 years, focusing on the impact of technology, cultural shifts, and political changes on job roles and working patterns. It explores industries such as journalism, education, and healthcare, highlighting the evolution of job roles and the challenges faced by employees. The article also discusses the changing expectations and demands of employees in the modern work environment.

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In the latter half of the last century, machine has replaced a large section of the human
workforce. However, technological intervention has created opportunities for more jobs
compared to those which it has replaced. In fact, the living standards have been greatly
transformed as an outcome of progress of technology. It has also been observed that life
expectancy has gone up with the facilitation of basic health care as well as education. Most of the
people have witnessed a rise in the standard of education. However, the report in the context of
this topic, will mainly discuss the fears of robot induced unemployment that has dominated
discussion forums in the past 50 years or so.
Many of these issues have been recognized by the recently launched World Development
report. The report emphasizes on what exact changes are happening and what can be done in
order to facilitate or aggravate this change. The main argument that can be highlighted out of this
report is that on balance, concerns regarding robot impacted unemployment seem to be
unfounded (Laslett 2015). On the contrary, the factors like automation as well as innovation
seem to be the major drivers of work in the future. The graph below shows how employability
has changed in the last 50 years.

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Graph 1: Susceptibility to Automation
(Source: Dow and Downing 2016)
Advancement of technology has capable the business firms to automate as well replace labor
with the machines in production as well as innovate and expand the number of sectors, tasks as
well as products. As evidenced by Landy and Conte (2016), the speed of innovation will help to
decide if new jobs scope or new tasks will emerge in the companies so that it can counterbalance
the declination of the old as well as routine based jobs.
For evidence, in Europe, technology has replaced some workers as well as that; it also
has raised the demand of for labourers. Overall, technology has replaced routine work is
estimated to create more than 23 million opportunities of jobs across UK from 2000 to 2016
(Watts et al. 2018). Digital economy has enhanced the boundaries of the business firms in the
last 50 years or so.

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The workplaces of modern days have no resemblance with what it had been 50 years
back. Pepin et al. (2015), remarks that whether we call it a change of time or a shift between
generations, it cannot be denied that there has been a drastic change brought about in the ways
the candidates hunt for jobs or the ways in which communication among the work forces take
place.
Some of the ideas presented by a global recruitment agency, next generation can be highlighted
in order to provide a perception regarding how workplaces have changed in the last few decades.
It can be argued that less than 20% of the job roles that existed in the 1990s, were there during
the 1950 and 60s. Again, it can also be argued that 60% of the job roles that represent in the 1990
have become obsolete now (World Health Organization 2015).
There are other dimensions also in which the professional spaces have changed over time. In the
decades like 1960 1970 1980 and the earlier part of 1990 it was observed that job seeking
candidates were standing in long queues, before employment exchanges, hunting for jobs (Dixon
2017). Since the latter part of 1990, it has been observed that the recruiters are now looking out
for deserving candidates through various social network platforms. The traditional as well as
hierarchical structure of organisation has also given way to a more flexible as well as flat system
(Segal 2018). In the modern organisations, horizontal structures of work are more prevalent,
compared to what it had been in the 1970s and 80s (Herzberg 2017).
However, compared to change is like organisational structure or working behaviour in the
companies, a greater change is the development in the gender ratio in the work places. In many
of the reputed organisations, nowadays there is Greater representation of women compared to the
80s and 90s.

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Analysing the major reasons behind such changes, researchers like Ottman (2017), have strongly
argued that the two factors that has come into play since the 1980 and full fledgedly, since the
millennium era are the shift in the conventional concept of typical offices to flexible workspaces
the shift from the working pattern under fixed working hours to flexible working Times (Tiger
2017). The facility of remote working was in a stage of a conception in the 1976. However, now
it is a typical reality in many of the major Global organisations and people from anywhere and
any part of the world Arnav able to work for the organisation according to their own time
preferences.
After discussing the generic changes regarding alterations in the pattern of war in the last 50
years, now it deserves mention how the job roles and the on hand working pattern of the
employees have alternated throughout the years. Development in technology, cultural as well as
historical changes throughout the workspaces, political shake-ups as well as the increasing
pressure on the resources related to operations in the companies have brought about widespread
upheaval in organisations. 223 job roles that have experienced drastic change in the last 15 years
can be highlighted with examples in order to understand how transition has taken place in the
professional field.
The first job that will be discussed in this context is journalism. In an article by Landy, F.J. and
Conte (2016), the example of a Deputy Editor of South England best regional newspaper can be
provided. He observed that with the change in media technology and data science, the nature of
the work of journalism along with the trend in exploration of news has changed in the last 25
years (Pepin et al. 2015). A typical newspaper office in the 1970s or 80on most cases, the
submitted copy of the newsletters were either typed by a typewriting machine orhandwritten. The
letters needed to be sent through letter boxes.

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In those days, the reporters could not Google for a news. They had to research for attractive and
interesting news through their contacts, door knocking, interacting with various people as well as
using the back copies.
Today, even if the journalists are sitting in a café, Court or any General Meeting, they can still
carry on their work of publishing a report on writing an article in their laptop, mobile phones or
their tablets. Reporters, back in the 1980, used to be worried about the print version of the report
only. With the advent of websites and social media, now they have to play a greater role, of
updating websites, creating news content for the Facebook pages and in fact working with the
web content development team to develop video content for the audiences also. Here in in we
can find a proper example of how Technology has created scope for new job roles and increase
the demand for new professionals who have expertise in in various technological fields. With the
advent of Technology, the production processes has gained speed, however the cost of
production has increased with that, also. The tradition of bustling of newsrooms with large
number of staff, are extinct now. The working spaces are now much more streamlined, which
many of the employees, most efficient in multitasking.
The next industry which will be highlighted here in order to depict the changes that have taken
places in the workplaces over time is the education industry. Nowadays, the teachers as well as
educators are experiencing pressure, more than ever. This is because the teaching role is evolving
dynamically over time not always rendering value for the betterment of the educators (Dixon
2017). The typical changes in the education industry, in the last 30 years, include strong
emphasis on the achievement of performance based on targets, increase in monetary demand of
the teachers as well as enhancement of expectations from the end of the students in terms of

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performance. The OFSTED regulation has played a great role in bringing about changes like this
in the education industry.
Apart from imparting education, the teachers have now a great role to play in context of
observing the development of the students, monitoring the pattern of marking students. These
needs have been fostered because of the change in the Global pattern of education where many
more pupils without the proper knowledge of English language has emerged into the Global
sphere of education. Children with special education needs have also increased day by day. In an
online blog developed by Segal (2018), one of the educators of a leading University of recent
time, who prefers to remain anonymous, has stated that in the recent two to three decades, the
profession of education has become much more oriented with data as well as performance.
Emotional well being as well as mental development of the students is only afterthought of a
very lean section of the educators, nowadays. Stress as well as anxiety of the students, of the
recent times is much more compared to what it had been in the 1980. This is because the scope
of gaining employment in a promising sector has become Limited and there are many
competitive students who are targeting an individual job post. As an outcome of this, the stress is
being transferred on the shoulder of the educators need to prepare the students in a more
professional way.
Similarly, changes have also taken place in the job roles as well as working pattern of the Care
industry. In this industry, the employees are perhaps experiencing the maximum pressure in
terms of time constraints, emphasis on achieving greater targets on a leaner budget and so on. As
stated by Ottman (2017), this has obviously affected the staff morale, negatively. As an outcome
of that, the staff of Healthcare industry to not feel connected to the treatment needs of the
patients, they only perceive their job role as a part of profession. The growing professionalism

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among the staff of Healthcare industry has also become a concern for the patients. This is
because, the patients realise that the Healthcare staff, nowadays follows their routine protocol
only.
The power of medicine and life saving Technology has become much more stronger, compared
to what it had been 50 years ago. This is why, life expectancy and longevity has increased.
However, the care side of Healthcare has diminished gradually. Analysing the outcome of such a
situation in the Healthcare industry Tiger (2017), has argued that the lack in demand of the
patients for nursing care is the major reason behind this. The patients, nowadays, demands
treatment from most digitally advanced nursing care homes. This is because, they feel that life
saving technology is the ultimate requirement for keeping them safe and healthy. The Healthcare
industry is now no more and integration of respect, dignity as well as composition of the care
providers towards the patients. It is now, much more a question of money as well as serving
criteria.
Changes in the external world have also become a major reason behind alterations of attitude as
well as expectation from the end of the employees. Researchers like Laslett (2015), do not
perceive this change as an outcome of the mostly communicated shift in generation of the
employees. This is rather an outcome of the morphing changes in the characteristics as well as
demands of the employees. For evidence, they applies of 1960 1970 and 1980snot much different
in terms of their demand from that of the employees of generation x. The changes are routing out
of the development of experience of the employees over time. For evidence, the staff of younger
generation will natural demand for increase in the rate and pace of feedback, instant depression
as well as repeated Assurance of job security (Watts et al. 2018). The constant interaction of
social media with the work environment give rise to conversations regarding what better

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opportunities the employees of other organisations of the same industry are getting, within the
Periphery of an individual community or country. Naturally this is a major cause why
expectation as well as demand of every group of employees is increasing. as the employees are
now able to decide what they want from their organisation, it is expected that their role in the
organisational decision making are also increasing. Flexibility in the working patterns rendered
that the working styles of individual employees will also be different. As an outcome, the
strategic role played by managers, in context of managing workplaces, has also evolved over
time (Segal 2018). For evidence, in the 1960 is there no question of global workforce. That is
why; the companies could operate proficiently even if there were no prolific communication
channels.
Another important change that we have seen to happen drastically between the 1990 and 2000 is
increase in aging workforce and extension of the job tenure of employees. The reason behind this
is that the spirit is that the company’s had to pay to their employees where much lower in the
1960s and 70s. Compared to that, the demand in salaries of the workers, since 2000, has
increased by at least 600 to 700 percent. Since 2015, the same has increased to about 800%
compared to what it had been in the 1970 (Ottman 2017). This is why; the companies are also
attempting to extract the best out of their human capital. In this context, did not want an
employee to retire at the age of 60 or 65, nowadays. Raja, I want diversity in their workforce,
with the combination of young commander stick and digitally advanced candidates, working in
Unison which the aged and practically more experienced people who have a greater
understanding about the job role and the organisational objectives. However, because of this
combination we have also observed the development of the threat of polarization between the
employee groups having different attitudes towards the working practices. The group of

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employees are dissected in two major categories, one who had received employment in the 1970s
and 1980sand another section who has received employment after 2000. In this context, the
people who have been serving under various organisations since 1960 do not come into question
as 80% of this workforce has already taken retirement. Difference in attitude is executed by the
two specified work groups in terms of three major aspects, namely the use of Technology,
channel of communication as well as workplace culture (Tiger 2017).
However, more important than this conflict is the necessity for the employers to cope up with the
sense of ambition of the employees, developed potentially under opportunities provided by the
growth of globalisation as well as the emergence of multinational organisations, working across
countries as well as enhancement of job mobility.
This essay is a detailed debate on how organisational work procedures have changed over time.
Comparison between the working patterns of the different decades has revealed that the major
changes brought about by technology. Technological ambitions has created job opportunities as
well as obliterated various job roles. Naturally, new skills are being acquired by the young
generation of employees which is essential for Organisational fulfilment also. Closely observing
how the working pattern has changed into three specific Industries, this essay makes, it evident
that is not the generation gaps, but the experience gathered by employees who have worked in
different periods in the last 50 years, which makes their attitude to you working, different. As
discussed in the essay, globalisation is another major factor that is changing the attitude of
employees as well as employees. In summing up the changes it can be commentator that, the
organisations have become faster paced with progress of time with employees as well as
employers becoming more professional regarding their job.

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Reference List
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Herzberg, F., 2017. Motivation to work. Routledge.
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Laslett, P., 2015. The world we have lost: further explored. Routledge.
Ottman, J., 2017. The new rules of green marketing: Strategies, tools, and inspiration for
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