The Perhaps Not So Agile Future of Work

We would be wrong to simply assume increasingly more motivating work environments in the future.

For many people work in the last decades has become more challenging (in a good way), more fulfilling, and even more fun because of the adoption of an Agile way of working in their organization. But if human history tells us anything, it’s that progression of any kind is never gradually, never steady, and not even guaranteed to make things better. If our work environments follow the path of our political environments, we could be in for a rather disappointing future on the work floor.

When comparing modern work environments with those in previous decades or centuries, we can see a lot of improvements that have made our lives more pleasant in general. Where the week in 1870 consisted of six 10-hour workdays, we now work less than five 8-hour workdays a week on average. The average pay has gone up enormously, from less than 100 dollars per year in 1870 to almost $50k in 2020. All kinds of secondary benefits to make life more pleasant have been added over the years — like paid vacation days, insurance, healthcare, etc. — and certainly in the last twenty-odd years, new developments in the way of working have contributed a great deal to increased happiness at work for many around the world.