What the future holds

I have also fancied myself as an amateur Futurologist, predicting trends and events, usually related to business and people. Not all my predictions have come right but a few over the years have.

by Russell White

I recall writing in 1992 for a now defunct trade publication, that email would be the pre-eminent B2B communication tool. More recently, how Amazon will open physical stores and that Twitter will increase the character count to 200.

The pace of change seems to accelerate – perhaps it’s an age thing – but as always I look towards the future, as far as 30 or 50 years, when sadly, I and most probably you, will not be here.  

Anyway, one thing that will change rapidly in the next ten years or so will be the movement towards gender neutrality. We are seeing revolution in the workplace of companies  beginning to take Diversity and Inclusion seriously. There are a number of factors driving this. They are not altruistic. As I predicted two years before Brexit, there were going to be skills and employee shortages as a result. The pandemic has exacerbated this and so consequently companies are having to look at a more diverse pool of candidates to fill their vacancies. At the same time, a company’s customer base will also look at their employee policies and buy from businesses that are inclusive and shun businesses that do not follow what will become societal norms.

To be fully inclusive and take into account people who don’t identify as either male or female, society will change. No longer will there be Men and Women toilets or indeed when addressing a crowd, saying ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ will be seen as antiquated by not being inclusive. More emphasis will be placed on gender identifiers (He/Him, She Her, Me/My). This is not far off in the future and we’ll see this in the next few years.

As I said, I like to look ‘beyond the horizon’ into the future and will soon be writing my thoughts about life in 2121!