The New Workplace - let's face the future!

buglawton

There's a promising series on the radio, episode 1 available now:
The New Workplace
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b063zn9h

In Ep 1 it was a surprise to hear that an aspiring Premier Inn manager expected to earn a bit over £20K for the responsibility to managing a complete hotel site. This is all achieved by having fiendishly clever back office functions that take out all the admin and middle management from the organisation. This is what Whitbread does with it's Costas and Premier Inns.

So this seems to be the future for generalists - only rocket scientists, brain surgeons etc will be able to hope for a lot more.

What's the chance of buying an average one bedroom flat on a salary of £20k? And if both partners are earning, of buying an average South of England house, on these kinds of salaries, especially if you admit during the mortgage interview that you have the temerity of thinking of bringing up a family?

Out,_Vile_Jelly

Premier Inns offer great value, but their admin is pared to the bone. I recently had to notify them of a change to a group booking and ended up having to send a ye olden dayes letter on parchment as there was no email for the hotel's front desk and nobody ever answered the phone. So I imagine being one of their managers is considerably less stressful than other hotels when all the bookings are done online and managed centrally, they have minimal staff to oversee and can happily parrot "please email central Customer Services" to any difficult customers. Not all jobs with "director", "manager" or "executive" in the title are actually that special.

Thrugelmir

Rents while cheap still low compared with London have risen fast. Particularly for new tenancies. I'm sure that there are historic reasons for the low rents.

lisyloo

It's pretty obvious to me that todays graduates will not be able to buy the boomers houses.
Central London is a law unto itself because there are enough good jobs and enough foreign investment to keep it permanently high, but long the rest of the country will have to moderate.
This does not necessarily mean a crash. It could mean a period of nomial stagnation (real terms decreases).
Immigration and globalisation means that there is no reason for employers to put up wages beyond the level where people will strike.

kabayiri

I've been thinking about work related activity as 'commodity'.

Whenever we see products and services become viewed at the level of commodity then the implicit value placed on these things dropped and so do prices.

Take chip design. It used to be niche and high value. Now it's a question of custom programming multi-purpose chips and you can buy this work function from India or China; wherever the best price is.

Graphic design has seen perhaps an even more dramatic drop in labour rates.

Why shouldn't we see the same occuring in legal or managerial or sales?

michaels

I guess it all depends whether there isi a large suitable pool of labour to recruit from. European freedom of meovement and Euro zone stagnation has to date ensured that employers can fill most 'general' vacancies without having to offer more money - no doubt tightening of benefits criteria, reduced pubic sector employment and later retirement also increase the available workforce. There is also the possibilty of outsourcing some roles both in production and for example customer services to lower wage economies.

However in some locations and some jobs the labour supply is tightening hence the increases being seen in real wages. Should Euro zone growth also turn off the supply of immigrant labour then we may see companies being forced to increase wages to fill positions. Whether this will play out as higher wages, higher prices or reduced profitablity and employment remains to be seen. There is obviously also the posibility of trying to reduce labour per unit of output by substituting automation or better technology which was already mentioned in the Whitbread piece.

lisyloo

Why shouldn't we see the same occuring in legal or managerial or sales?

You won't find many experts in UK law abroad.
Similarly you won't get many UK finance experts abroad.
Managers have a human aspect to their job. Line management needs to be local, but project or account management could be outsourced if you can get the skills.
We have not found the sales skill to be available in India and I guess there are cultural aspects as well as the ability to travel (it's easier for westerners to get Visas).

Should Euro zone growth also turn off the supply of immigrant labour

If skills were available then finance, legal, project management could in some cases be done remotely.

Yes I think our whole standard of living is under threat.
If you genuinely believe in equality then you might see that as a good thing.
Many people think they are egalitarian until it affect their own standard of living.

CLAPTON

if all (or most salaries ) become 20k then house prices will fall to enable the houses to be sold.

supply and demand will determine the price unless the government intervenes

kabayiri

lisyloo wrote: »

You won't find many experts in UK law abroad.
Similarly you won't get many UK finance experts abroad.
...

At this point in time I would agree.

I am sure that in our recent past people would make similar expertise claims for shipping or language or administrative practises.

To achieve commoditisation you first have to implement common protocols and measurement standards. The UK has a strong history in doing this.

Maybe things like finance and law are just down the line?

I hope this doesn't sound like a prophecy of doom, just highlighting the fact that we have to challenge our assumptions in a changing world.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

buglawton wrote: »

In Ep 1 it was a surprise to hear that an aspiring Premier Inn manager expected to earn a bit over £20K for the responsibility to managing a complete hotel site.

Not quite...

The show was misleading as the interviewed junior employee didn't realise what his more senior colleagues earn.

Go to glass ceiling or any of the similar sites and you can check Whitbread salaries...

As I understand it from a quick google a very junior Premier Inn shift manager will earn around 18-20K. They then also have a hotel operations manager in each site on around 30K. For every 3-5 Premier Inns there is a cluster GM earning circa 50K to 60K. And then Regional Ops managers on a fair bit more.

A Costa assistant manager will earn circa 18K, a store manager circa 28K, area managers around 40K, etc.

PasturesNew

It'll all be robots in the future anyway. Unmanned hotels .... smartphone ID/entry, robot room service/cleaning. One fella sitting in the far east being alerted by a computer to movement on 1000 cameras so he can decide if he needs to press a button to call the police to a mugging/burglary.... although the in-house security-bots could apprehend somebody until they're interviewed remotely to discover their purpose and intention.