Work, also known as labour, exertion or effort, is a type of activity undertaken in return for remuneration. It can be of a physical or mental nature and may be done as part of one’s career or as a hobby or as a volunteer activity. In addition to the direct remuneration that is received from working, people often derive satisfaction from the pursuit of work.
In physics, work is the transfer of energy from a system by applying a force to it, over a distance (or displacement). The amount of work performed can be positive, negative or zero, depending upon the direction of displacement of the object relative to the applied force and its force constant, or whether the applied force is a tensor (i.e. a vector) or a scalar.
The SI unit of work is the joule, named after 19th-century English physicist James Prescott Joule. It is equal to a force of one newton over a displacement of one meter. Other units for work include the newton-meter, erg, kilowatt hour and watt-second. In some instances, measurement units normally reserved for heat or energy content, such as calorie, therm and BTU, are used to quantify work.
A significant portion of people’s lives is spent at work, and it has a significant impact on their lifestyle. Most individuals will spend 8-10 hours a day engaged in their job and many have additional hours that revolve around their jobs, such as commuting to and from work and decompressing after work.
For many employees, their job is a major source of self-esteem and pride. It is also a significant contributor to their income and sense of financial security. The future of work is being defined as the need to create value and meaning, not just deliver outputs, and that requires creativity, imagination, intuition and other “soft skills” that can’t be automated.
The future of work should involve a sustained, creative, opportunity identification and solution-based approach to work. It should be focused on creating more value for internal and external customers, as well as addressing more complex problems and issues than previously considered. It should require employees to use their skills of imagination, creativity, intuition and empathy to seek out and resolve unseen problems and opportunities.
While there is a lot of talk about the future of work, few organizations are asking what it actually should look like. They are focusing on where, how, when and who will do the work but not what it will be. To change this, organizations will need to rethink their management systems, organizational structures and culture to ensure that they are leveraging the capabilities of the human workforce and allowing them to do what they do best: identify and solve new problems and create new possibilities.
