MORE HUMANE JOBS – WE ARE STILL UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THEM.
We live in extremely exciting times. Humanity is becoming more conscious. Companies are starting to take more care of their employees. More and more people are questioning what they do for a living and want to find more purpose. We are creating more social businesses than ever before. The topics of health and personal wellbeing have never been bigger, Yoga and mindfulness are booming.
Despite the horrible things that are still going on on this planet, and the way we treat mother earth, global society is becoming more humane and heart centered. Is it shameless to express such a view in a phase of all the desasters we are going through? Well, I dare to stay optimistic.
According to the WEF (1), by 2020 5 Million people will have handed over their jobs to technology.
There is fear that the world is becoming overdigitized with less and less people having paid work. Fear, however, we all know this, is a real bad advisor. It’s crucial to get out of this anxiety and realize that every change harbors huge opportunities. What we want to do is to turn this energy around and take positive action.
Human skills and our preception of them are developing rapidly as well. We no longer want to waste our skills in monotony.
What do I mean by human skills? What makes us human are compassion, love, tenderness and connectedness. What we really want to develop is our competence in empathy, supporting, educating, leading, empowering, creativity.
Finally, we have the opportunity to create jobs that are more humane – and it is already happening.
The Impact Hub Zurich is a great place to connect with open minded people. There I met Valentina. We discovered that we completely resonated in this and a number of other topics. During one of our countless inspiring discussions, she introduced me to the work of Kevin Kelly, who analysed exactly this trend and came up with the following conclusion:
‘Most jobs dealing with logic and productivity are going to be computerised and robotised within the next 5 years. On the other hand, everything that creates experiences for people, which is what humans are good at; asking questions and establishing real human connections, will gain more traction in the near future. The few things that are increasing in cost are experience based, personal coaching being one of the fastest growing fields.’
And ‘the guardian’ even finds that technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed. And ‘it found a 909% rise in nursing auxiliaries and assistants over the last two decades. Analysis of the UK Labour Force Survey from the Office for National Statistics suggest the number of these workers soared from 29,743 to 300,201 between 1992 and 2014’.
In the same period there was also a
‘580% increase in teaching and educational support assistants
183% increase in welfare, housing, youth and community workers
168% increase in care workers and home carers
On the other hand, there was a
79% drop in weavers and knitters from 24,009 to 4,961
57% drop in typists
50% drop in company secretaries.’ (2)
These jobs in this list that are growing are seen as very regular social work. What we also see, however, is the development of jobs, which we still feel a little uncomfortable with. Example: professional cuddlists. In my perspective, this is a perfectly logical development. Not long ago it was judged as weakness and illness if you went to a psychologist. It was a proof that you were not able to deal with life by yourself – which was seen as illness. Today, the number of people going to some sort of psychotherapy is soaring. A big part of society has come to realise that accepting help is perfectly normal and fosters personal growth. We perceive it as normal to pay someone to talk to about our challenges.
But what about touch? Mankind is in bad need of safe human touch. We are in a high deficit of it. Maybe we are shy, haven’t received hugs at home, are introverted, selfcentered, too busy, touch never felt safe, you name it. While today it is accepted to see a therapist to talk to, it is not yet accepted to go to cuddling ‘therapy’ – cuddling for our basic human needs, but also for healing more profound psychological issues, such as physical and sexual abuse, autism, etc.
Accepting this service as we accept the service of psychotherapy requires a shift in mindset.
What we are experiencing is the unfolding of our true humanity, away from the torturous toil to the development of the capacity of our hearts – our true essence. This will forever keep us different from artificial intelligence. And with this in mind and heart we can create new jobs and services that match our essence much more than the mundane work we do today.
With UNUmondo, we are on this very path.
It’s a service with which you can learn German and Swiss German in real life instead of in a classroom. You choose a local coach and engage in activities that you would do with a friend. You learn German while communicating with a person you can truly connect with. It’s a very personal service, sometimes almost like two friends meeting. This is crucial, because learning with the human touch does not only feel much better and is more fun, it is so much more effective than in a classroom. That way we do not waste precious time that we can spend with loved ones, with ourselves, or wherever we really want to spend it on.
Moving away from the belief of ‘no pain no gain’ towards accepting for yourself that learning is supposed to be fun and must be relevant to you and your life, where making mistakes is the way forward, where you connect with another person, still requires time, but we are on it.
And we hope with UNUmondo we can contribute even just a little bit to this shift, towards creating jobs and services that are more humane.
(2) https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/5-million-jobs-to-be-lost-by-2020/
Cuddling makes you feel like a human being: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hgTL92OtxQ